Ignoring page numbers?

apbarratt · 09-15-2013, 04:55 AM

Hi guys,

First post and first day with Calibre so forgive any naivety.

I've been trying to convert the same word document I've been using with KDP using Calibre to create an ePub. This seems to work perfectly except when I open the newly generated ePub on my Kobo Mini I notice two strange things.

The first is the page numbers at the bottom of the screen, Page 9 of 156 for instance. This is based on the original Word document which is sized A4 and has little relevance in an eBook. It will happily increment its page count every few "screen turns".

The second is once again the page numbers, only these ones appear again every few pages on the right hand side of the screen, subtly overlapping the text. I believe these have arrived from the page numbers in the footer from the docx file so I shall try removing them and see what happens so it's the other ones I'm needing help with.

How do I ask Calibre to ignore the number of pages that were in the original document? It's clearly storing this number in the meta data somewhere and as discussed, it really is redundant in an ebook.

Thanks in advance for your help,
A. P. Barratt

kovidgoyal · 09-15-2013, 05:05 AM

Those page numbers are not in the ebook, they are geenrated by the Kobo. Open the epub file with calibre's viewer and you will see no page numbers.

apbarratt · 09-15-2013, 05:34 AM

Why does the Kobo do this? It seems very coincidental that the Kobo is generating the exact same number of A4 pages as the original word document. If the Kobo were generating its own page numbers, why wouldn't it show the number of Kobo screens, so that it increments by one page on each page turn? I wouldn't mind that.

I recognise that other devices (including Calibre's own viewer) don't show the page numbers but clearly the original number of pages is being stored somewhere in the file for my Kobo to know what number to show.

apbarratt · 09-15-2013, 05:46 AM

Perhaps another line of thought to follow would actually be, how do I ask Calibre to ignore page dimensions? If Calibre is noticing that my word document is A4 and storing it somewhere in the file and my Kobo sees this, then it may be this that causes it to guess the redundant page numbers.

davidfor · 09-15-2013, 06:23 AM

As you are creating an epub, the page numbers are calculated by the device. See https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/ADE#Page_numbers for how they are calculated. If the numbers match the original document, that is a fluke. I believe this method is common for all devices that use the Adobe SDK. The page number in the margin is the same and there is an option in the reader settings to turn it off.

If you want a per-screen page count on a Kobo device, you need to send the epub to the device a kepub. This will be read using a different renderer. To do this, you can use the KoboTouchExtended driver.

kovidgoyal · 09-15-2013, 07:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apbarratt

Perhaps another line of thought to follow would actually be, how do I ask Calibre to ignore page dimensions? If Calibre is noticing that my word document is A4 and storing it somewhere in the file and my Kobo sees this, then it may be this that causes it to guess the redundant page numbers.

calibre does not store page numbers during conversion.

BobC · 09-15-2013, 07:50 AM

Has your EPUB been created with a page-map.xml file ?

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Adobe_Digital_Editions have a look at Epub Extensions, Page Map.

If so this could explain what is happening. If so you could delete the file using Sigil so ADE would display the "correct" page (bear in mind that in any case for an EPUB displayed by ADE a "page" is 1024 characters, irrespective of the text size etc)

BobC

apbarratt · 09-15-2013, 11:48 AM

After searching around it does seem that yes, the general belief is that Kobo generates these page numbers itself and that no one has ever questioned how it calculates these numbers. Seems to me that it is based on an A4 page with 12 point text as that is what my book is written in to create the exact same page count. Seems like an odd choice seeing as I've never read a novel on A4 paper and as I've said, I feel page numbers being shown in this way just seem a little mad on an e-reader.

I discovered I could turn off the sporadic margin numbers in the Kobo settings which curiously it gives the following explanation for:

"For some Adobe EPUBs, these page numbers serve as a consistent reference across all eReaders and devices."

Which I personally would say confirms my suspicion that the page numbers are stored within the EPUB that Calibre is producing but I suppose the software's Creator knows best so I shan't argue.

BobC, thanks for the tip. I don't believe a page-map.xml file was involved at any stage of the EPUBs creation process, certainly not through my own action. I simply provided the .docx file that my Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac produced, added a cover image and hit convert. Could it be that there is a page map integrated into my docx file?

PeterT · 09-15-2013, 11:58 AM

Time out... Those page numbers shown by Kobo in ePubs are using the well understood ADOBE page numbering scheme; every chunk of 1024 byte compressed data represents one page. These are the numbers shown at the bottom of an ePub on the Kobo as "Page x of y".

These numbers are NOT stored within the ePub.

The "x" does not change on every screen page turn as you are probably still on the same 1024 byte "chunk" of data.

The comment about
"For some Adobe EPUBs, these page numbers serve as a consistent reference across all eReaders and devices."
will more than likely be referring to books that leverage the Adobe page-map.

Agama · 09-15-2013, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apbarratt

Which I personally would say confirms my suspicion that the page numbers are stored within the EPUB that Calibre is producing but I suppose the software's Creator knows best so I shan't argue.

A wise choice! These numbers really are generated by the reader and not part of the ePub. My PRS-300 does exactly the same but with no option to switch them off, (a "feature" which has thankfully been removed from more recent Sony readers.) If you are still not 100% convinced then simply look inside one the ePubs in question - it's just a zip file, so take a copy and and inspect it for yourself: you will not find any page numbers added by calibre.

apbarratt · 09-15-2013, 12:20 PM

Cool, fair enough. It must just be a coincidence I guess.

09-15-2013, 04:55 AM	#1
apbarratt Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: Kobo Mini and Kindle Paper White	Ignoring page numbers? Hi guys, First post and first day with Calibre so forgive any naivety. I've been trying to convert the same word document I've been using with KDP using Calibre to create an ePub. This seems to work perfectly except when I open the newly generated ePub on my Kobo Mini I notice two strange things. The first is the page numbers at the bottom of the screen, Page 9 of 156 for instance. This is based on the original Word document which is sized A4 and has little relevance in an eBook. It will happily increment its page count every few "screen turns". The second is once again the page numbers, only these ones appear again every few pages on the right hand side of the screen, subtly overlapping the text. I believe these have arrived from the page numbers in the footer from the docx file so I shall try removing them and see what happens so it's the other ones I'm needing help with. How do I ask Calibre to ignore the number of pages that were in the original document? It's clearly storing this number in the meta data somewhere and as discussed, it really is redundant in an ebook. Thanks in advance for your help, A. P. Barratt

09-15-2013, 07:50 AM	#7
BobC Guru Posts: 691 Karma: 3026110 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Lancashire, U.K. Device: BeBook 1, BeBook Pure, Kobo Glo, (and HD),Energy Sistem EReader Pro +	Has your EPUB been created with a page-map.xml file ? https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Adobe_Digital_Editions have a look at Epub Extensions, Page Map. If so this could explain what is happening. If so you could delete the file using Sigil so ADE would display the "correct" page (bear in mind that in any case for an EPUB displayed by ADE a "page" is 1024 characters, irrespective of the text size etc) BobC Last edited by BobC; 09-15-2013 at 07:57 AM.

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09-15-2013, 05:05 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 44,030 Karma: 22669822 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Those page numbers are not in the ebook, they are geenrated by the Kobo. Open the epub file with calibre's viewer and you will see no page numbers.

09-15-2013, 05:34 AM	#3
apbarratt Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: Kobo Mini and Kindle Paper White	Why does the Kobo do this? It seems very coincidental that the Kobo is generating the exact same number of A4 pages as the original word document. If the Kobo were generating its own page numbers, why wouldn't it show the number of Kobo screens, so that it increments by one page on each page turn? I wouldn't mind that. I recognise that other devices (including Calibre's own viewer) don't show the page numbers but clearly the original number of pages is being stored somewhere in the file for my Kobo to know what number to show.

09-15-2013, 05:46 AM	#4
apbarratt Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: Kobo Mini and Kindle Paper White	Perhaps another line of thought to follow would actually be, how do I ask Calibre to ignore page dimensions? If Calibre is noticing that my word document is A4 and storing it somewhere in the file and my Kobo sees this, then it may be this that causes it to guess the redundant page numbers.

09-15-2013, 06:23 AM	#5
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,906 Karma: 47303822 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	As you are creating an epub, the page numbers are calculated by the device. See https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/ADE#Page_numbers for how they are calculated. If the numbers match the original document, that is a fluke. I believe this method is common for all devices that use the Adobe SDK. The page number in the margin is the same and there is an option in the reader settings to turn it off. If you want a per-screen page count on a Kobo device, you need to send the epub to the device a kepub. This will be read using a different renderer. To do this, you can use the KoboTouchExtended driver.

09-15-2013, 11:48 AM	#8
apbarratt Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: Kobo Mini and Kindle Paper White	After searching around it does seem that yes, the general belief is that Kobo generates these page numbers itself and that no one has ever questioned how it calculates these numbers. Seems to me that it is based on an A4 page with 12 point text as that is what my book is written in to create the exact same page count. Seems like an odd choice seeing as I've never read a novel on A4 paper and as I've said, I feel page numbers being shown in this way just seem a little mad on an e-reader. I discovered I could turn off the sporadic margin numbers in the Kobo settings which curiously it gives the following explanation for: "For some Adobe EPUBs, these page numbers serve as a consistent reference across all eReaders and devices." Which I personally would say confirms my suspicion that the page numbers are stored within the EPUB that Calibre is producing but I suppose the software's Creator knows best so I shan't argue. BobC, thanks for the tip. I don't believe a page-map.xml file was involved at any stage of the EPUBs creation process, certainly not through my own action. I simply provided the .docx file that my Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac produced, added a cover image and hit convert. Could it be that there is a page map integrated into my docx file?

09-15-2013, 11:58 AM	#9
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,279 Karma: 74007256 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	Time out... Those page numbers shown by Kobo in ePubs are using the well understood ADOBE page numbering scheme; every chunk of 1024 byte compressed data represents one page. These are the numbers shown at the bottom of an ePub on the Kobo as "Page x of y". These numbers are NOT stored within the ePub. The "x" does not change on every screen page turn as you are probably still on the same 1024 byte "chunk" of data. The comment about "For some Adobe EPUBs, these page numbers serve as a consistent reference across all eReaders and devices." will more than likely be referring to books that leverage the Adobe page-map.

09-15-2013, 12:20 PM	#11
apbarratt Junior Member Posts: 5 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2013 Device: Kobo Mini and Kindle Paper White	Cool, fair enough. It must just be a coincidence I guess.