[Conversion Plugin] KFX Input

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I am traveling right now but I will look into it when I get back. It would be very helpful to know the ASIN of the book.

I suspect it's this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DF9CLGB/

Which is the Penguin Classics Kindle edition.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I am traveling right now but I will look into it when I get back. It would be very helpful to know the ASIN of the book.

Much appreciated - thank you. The ASIN is B07DF9CLGB.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I suspect it's this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DF9CLGB/

Which is the Penguin Classics Kindle edition.

Yes, it is. Thanks, Paul.

[Quoth]

The "house full of random swimming birds" more often needs their ebooks fixed than any others I buy, inc SP titles.

[bustacap]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

On your PW5, do you see the images with the same problem with the KFX version?

fully zoomed in, on dark pages in 2-page view (so i can better see the white line), i cant tell its there, both with the book directly downloaded on the kindle and the kfx downloaded on pc and copied there with calibre.

it only really becomes noticeable when converted from the pdf based kfx to epub (or cbz). my guess is that that sub pixel line gets "amplified" by whatever pdf conversion method this plugin uses (maybe a different cropping box than "artbox" or "cropbox" or it just behaves differently than mutool).

another look zoomed in 6400% into the pdf page, see the tiny white line at the right and bottom (which are likely part of the original, its just that they get more pronounced when converted to epub/cbz):
https://s1.directupload.eu/images/250725/fboj3g6k.png

[Jaws]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Much appreciated - thank you. The ASIN is B07DF9CLGB.

Jumping to that ASIN showed a possible source of the problem: It's a UK-origin book. Which means that in the printed edition, the US page sizes (and often ledding) are different — and due to the flightless bird's process, that's going to present problems with doing a conversion-from-a-conversion. My suspicion, which I can't prove but is consistent with another publisher's problems, is that their internal stylesheets accessed from their typesetting programs have hardcoded metric measurements that get converted to hardcoded "English" measurements for US editions (and ebooks "fulfilled to the US"), even though not visible, and then things go haywire at random deep in the decimal places...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Jaws

Jumping to that ASIN showed a possible source of the problem: It's a UK-origin book. Which means that in the printed edition, the US page sizes (and often ledding) are different — and due to the flightless bird's process, that's going to present problems with doing a conversion-from-a-conversion. My suspicion, which I can't prove but is consistent with another publisher's problems, is that their internal stylesheets accessed from their typesetting programs have hardcoded metric measurements that get converted to hardcoded "English" measurements for US editions (and ebooks "fulfilled to the US"), even though not visible, and then things go haywire at random deep in the decimal places...

It’s a British book. I’m in the UK. I bought the book from Amazon UK. I don’t understand why anything involving US measurements would be involved? I collect the Penguin Classics series and over the years I’ve bought well over a hundred books in the range. I’ve never had any issue with one prior to this.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by bustacap

is there a way to fix these 1-2 pixel borders on the right and bottom edge when converting from kfx to epub using the from kfx menu?

Originally Posted by bustacap

all images in several comics and manga by different (german) publishers. the azw3 versions of the same titles (when they were still available) didnt have this and the versions on the webreader dont have this either (not that i can tell anyway).
the from kfx log says theyre pdf. using mutool (tested with both artbox and cropbox) on the pdf doesnt leave that pixel edge. looking at the pdf, there seems to be a tiny sub pixel (<1/10th maybe) line

The KFX Input plugin uses calibre's built-in "page_images" PDF to JPEG conversion routine which in turn uses pdftoppm included with calibre.

I have looked at several books available to me in KFX format that use PDF as the internal image format. So far I have not seen the problem you describe in the JPEG files produced when converting those to EPUB using From KFX.

In order to research this further I would need access to a book that exhibits the problem. Posting copyrighted material is not allowed here on MobileRead but if you PM me a link to somewhere I can download one the those KFX files I will look into it.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I’ve bought the book “The Nichomachean Ethics” by Aristotle (Penguin Classics). The book displays correctly in the Kindle app on my iPad. I imported the book successfully into Calibre using the KFX Import plugin. Attempting to convert to ePub fails with numerous lines similar to:

calibre, version 8.7.0
ERROR: KFX conversion failed: <p><b>Cannot convert The Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics)</b><br/><br/>Exception('box-align right with float right in /cKS.xhtml\nbox-align right with float right in /cKS.xhtml...

Since that book is available in the US I was able to examine it to see what is going wrong with the conversion from KFX.

The problem is in how the numbers placed to the right of the text throughout the book are handled. The publisher used unusual HTML formatting to achieve this. It is rendered properly in KF8/AZW3 format. However Amazon's conversion of the book to KFX alters the formatting, causing the numbers to become embedded within the text instead of being kept separate.

The next release of this plugin will no longer produce an error when that unexpected formatting is encountered. Unfortunately conversion will still result in incorrect placement of the numbers, matching how the book renders in KFX.