Possible replacement for EPUBCHECK

[JSWolf]

What's the point of pbubcheck having code to change to missing images when it's not used in ePub2 and ePub3?

[Kayadelenium]

JSWolf — it is used in EPUB 3; you are seeing it hidden rather than absent. Measured just now, one EPUB 3 book with one image that nothing references:

without any flag — epubcheck: silent. epubveri: silent.
with -u — epubcheck: USAGE(OPF-097). epubveri: USAGE OPF-097.

OPF-097 is a usage note rather than an error, and epubcheck hides usage messages unless you pass -u. epubveri does the same thing, deliberately, so that a book gives you the same report from both tools by default.

In EPUB 2 you are right, and that is the part worth separating: epubcheck never asks the question there at all. Its rule lives in the EPUB 3 checker and has no EPUB 2 counterpart, so an unused image in an EPUB 2 book gets no answer from either tool — which is why it looked missing to you and present to Doitsu. You validate different versions.

That gap is what 0.13.3 fills, as ADV-010 behind --advisory. It is opt-in because reporting something epubcheck is silent about is exactly the kind of difference that looks like a false positive if it turns up unasked, and it never changes the verdict.

So, to see an unused resource:

• EPUB 3 — epubveri -u -i book.epub (or epubcheck -u), in either tool;
• EPUB 2 — epubveri --advisory -i book.epub, epubveri only.

And one thing worth knowing if you try it from Sigil or calibre: both plugins run with usage and advisory off, so it will not appear there unless you turn them on in the plugin's settings.

[Kayadelenium]

A correction to my own advice above. I said you could turn usage notes and advisory checks on "in the plugin's settings". That is right for calibre and wrong for Sigil.

In calibre, Doitsu's plugin has a real preferences dialog — from the Edit Book toolbar, or Preferences / Plugins / Customize.

In Sigil there is no such thing. A plugin gets no settings screen at all: Manage Plugins shows name, version, author, type, engine and platforms, and nothing else. A plugin can store preferences, but the only way to change them is to edit its JSON file by hand, or to ship a second plugin whose whole job is one checkbox. Neither is something to ask of someone who just wants to validate a book.

So on Sigil the switch is effectively unreachable, and that is worth knowing before anyone goes looking for it. We are thinking about what an editor integration should do about it — a validator that hides half of what it found behind a setting nobody can reach is not much use.

None of this changes the command line, where --advisory stays opt-in for the reason I gave: a script diffing epubveri against epubcheck has to see the same report from both.

[Kayadelenium]

JSWolf — the unused-image check from #221, and a correction to what I told you in #272.

I said then that a plugin runs with usage notes and advisory findings off, so you would have to switch them on. That was true of the two plugins that existed that day. There are four now, and the two I wrote behave the other way round.

Mine: there is nothing to switch on. The Sigil one shows every finding, each line labelled ERROR, WARNING, USAGE or ADVISORY. That is not generosity — Sigil gives a plugin no settings screen at all, and a switch nobody can reach is worse than no switch. The calibre one shows everything too; its three boxes in Preferences / Plugins / epubveri / Customize are there to turn things off, not on.

So open an EPUB 2 book in either and ADV-010 is simply in the list: nothing draws, applies or loads this file. No flag, no JSON, no preference.

Doitsu's: my earlier answer still stands. His calibre plugin has a preferences dialog with the setting in it. His Sigil one has nowhere to put a dialog, so the setting lives in the plugin's JSON preferences file and you edit it by hand. His threads are the place to ask about those two.

Both of mine are days old and I would rather you found a wrong error in one than not, so: https://github.com/veripublica/epubv...ugins/releases

[PeterT]

A very minor suggestion; would it be feasible to include some means of distinguishing the two plugins from each other, such as including the word sigil or calibre in the zip file name, rather than both being named epubveri_vx.y.zip?

[JSWolf]

Now I'm seeing epubveri mentioning unused images. That's good. Then I can remove unused images.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Now I'm seeing epubveri mentioning unused images. That's good. Then I can remove unused images.

That's never been an issue for me since I use Sigil's Delete Unused Media Files tool.

[Kayadelenium]

A note for anyone here who would rather not use a command line: there are now editor plugins that run epubveri for you, and both were updated today.

Sigil: https://github.com/veripublica/epubv...g/sigil-v0.3.0
calibre's Edit Book: https://github.com/veripublica/epubv...calibre-v0.3.0

They download the epubveri binary themselves and verify it against the release checksums before running it, so there is nothing else to install. Findings land in the editor's own panel and a double-click puts the cursor on the problem.

Both are days old and have mostly been run on macOS, so they are worth trying rather than relying on. Doitsu's own epubveri plugins are in the Sigil and calibre plugin indexes and remain the tested option. Discussion for each lives in its own thread, and I will keep plugin news there rather than here:

Sigil: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=374939
calibre: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=374940

What is most useful back is the same thing as always: a book where epubveri reports something epubcheck does not. That is the report that changes the software.