sony and nook both choke on this epub

[porphyry5]

I converted the html version of Rute, the Linux Administrator Manual (rute.html.tar.bz2) to epub, and the result appeared excellent in calibre's ebook-viewer.

But when I copied the epub to both my ereaders, a Nook Glowlight and Sony PRS-300, both have extreme difficulty with the file. Both will show some pages in the file, and they both will show the exact same set of pages. But both fail to respond when I try to access other pages, whether by Go To or page-turn, and instead exit the file completely and return to their Library page. Both readers choke on the exact same set of pages also.

I've examined these "bad" pages in ebook-viewer and can see nothing exceptional about them. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might cause this reaction?

[AlexBell]

I wonder if you might be better off raising your concern in the ePub forum; it might well be a poorly formed ePub file.

For what it is worth I have found that the latest version of the calibre manual won't run at all on the Sony desktop reader, and has many problems on a Sony T3. Coincidence?

[kovidgoyal]

Device based epub renderers are rather underpowered. You canot expevt arbitrarily complex epub to always render well in them. The trick I use for these cases is to convert to mobi and then convert the mobi to epub, which almost always dumbs down the markup enough.

Since MOBI is html 3.2 you will lose any advanced formatting in the html.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Device based epub renderers are rather underpowered. You canot expevt arbitrarily complex epub to always render well in them. The trick I use for these cases is to convert to mobi and then convert the mobi to epub, which almost always dumbs down the markup enough.

Since MOBI is html 3.2 you will lose any advanced formatting in the html.

I wonder whether the key word here is 'arbitrarily', and whether it might not be a good idea to use the trick you describe before the file is released. After all, I suspect that most of us use a 'device based epub renderer'.

Failing that, perhaps it might be a good idea to let people who use a device based epub renderer know of the trick before they download the file.

[porphyry5]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Device based epub renderers are rather underpowered. You canot expevt arbitrarily complex epub to always render well in them. The trick I use for these cases is to convert to mobi and then convert the mobi to epub, which almost always dumbs down the markup enough.

Thanks for the tip, I'll do that, certainly a better prospect than converting it to text and then to epub, which I was anticipating.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Since MOBI is html 3.2 you will lose any advanced formatting in the html.

Not a problem, Rute is html 3.2

[porphyry5]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Device based epub renderers are rather underpowered. You canot expevt arbitrarily complex epub to always render well in them. The trick I use for these cases is to convert to mobi and then convert the mobi to epub, which almost always dumbs down the markup enough.

Since MOBI is html 3.2 you will lose any advanced formatting in the html.

Many thanks, that worked perfectly.