Manually trimming the metadata.opf and toc.ncx file

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Wouldn't it be nice that you know which lines are mandatory, and which aren't?

You could just save time by reading the official ePub specifications which do actually detail which things are mandatory and which things are optional in terms of reader device/software support for a fully-compliant ePub file.

Now, if you just want to see how much of the mandatory stuff you can get away with leaving out before whatever error-correction exists in various readers starts to choke on not having them there, that's a different matter.

ETA: If you really want to make a truly minimal ePub, start from scratch because adapting other people's templates means you end up with whatever features they decided to use, which you may or may not consider totally superfluous to your own book.

[Keroberos]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

And I hope some programmers might read this thread and decide it indeed benefits to not make everything mandatory, but just imply a code within reader software/firmware, that if some specific line of code is not present, a standard pattern will be followed.
I think they should have done that from the start; Like why does every epub needs to have a mimetype file and a container.xml, if for most books these files are identical?

This makes no sense, you are wanting to remove xhtml from the epub in an attempt to make it use less resources, but you want the e-reader programmers to add more code to their readers to correct for the missing bits you think aren't necessary, that kind of code uses resources--probably more than you could save by removing the xhtml restrictions. Web browsers allow for incorrect html because they have a lot of code in them to help correct broken/buggy html.

The epub spec is more strict so they can be opened with the most minimal hardware/software requirements.

[ProDigit]

ETA: If you really want to make a truly minimal ePub, start from scratch because adapting other people's templates means you end up with whatever features they decided to use, which you may or may not consider totally superfluous to your own book.

That's what I'm basically doing. Through the process of elimination,I eliminate what I don't want or need in my book; though I got to spend some time tomorrow doing more testing on my device,to see what works,and what doesn't.

[Toxaris]

Just stick to the specifications. Even if most readers now will allow you to create invalid ePUB's and still work, they are still wrong and there is no guarantee they will still work on other readers.
The ePUB format is already quite slim (contrary to what you claim) and compression makes it even smaller. By tinkering with the opf/ncx you might save 10kb, but probably a lot less. It will take a lot of effort and will gain you almost nothing and possibly generate faulty ePUBs.

The 'why is this needed' is an academical question and should be treated as such. Not for publication of books.

[ProDigit]

I personally do not believe ePub is optimized code at all!
From there my complaint, if I would have invented the epub, I would have given it the options it now has, but I would have optimized code to look more like the code in this post:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...27&postcount=3

and not make any hyperlinks and headers mandatory for coding the page.

If you understand anything about coding an HTML document, I've included 2 html's for you to take a look at.
This is what I call "optimal coding".
One is the smallest chapter I could find in the new testament. I chose that one, because not the text of the bible matters here, but the coding done to create this page.
The other is a bible framework I used from before I had only the Sony PRS-505 reader, which was only able to read LRF files back in the days.
LRF files do not support an internal toc, so I had to create one from scratch in HTML format.

If you look at both pages, it's possible, but very difficult to make the coding overhead any smaller than this (see files below).
I had to compress the file, because this site does not allow uploading of HTML files.

[Doitsu]

Usually, I don't feed trolls, but in your case I couldn't resist.

Originally Posted by ProDigit

I personally do not believe ePub is optimized code at all!

Nobody said it was and nobody forces you to use advanced ePub features. Make your book as small and as plain as possible, remove as many mandatory ePub elements as you can get away with and enjoy the glorious feeling that your ebook will open a few fractions of a second faster.
Don't like header tags or hyperlinks? Simply remove them and use the search function of your reader instead. It will probably take at least twice as long, but at least you'll be reading an "optimized" ebook.

IMHO, optimizing an ePub for size instead of layout or functionality doesn't make any sense at all. OTOH, if you have too much time on your hands, who am I to tell you what to do with it.

[huebi]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

If you understand anything about coding an HTML document, I've included 2 html's for you to take a look at.

nxc and toc files are NOT HTML. They are XML, and in XML there are things just mandantory. You have to live with that, otherwise you are producing invalid ePubs. Please read the specs BEFORE you're fantasiting or doing assumption only based on thoughts.

ePub is an standardized standard and some things are just defined as they are. Its ridiculus to discuss about that.

[DiapDealer]

and not make any hyperlinks and headers mandatory for coding the page.

You keep saying this, but you keep ignoring the fact that you've been told over and over that there are no mandatory hyperlinks in the OPF/NCX files. What you keep mistakenly referring to as "hyperlinks" are the xml namespace declarations. Those namespace declarations could be named anything that uniquely indentifies them. But the various developers/groups that have defined those namespaces, use familiar URLs for their unique names so that it's easier for people who have no idea what those namespace specifications are to research those specs. The namespace URI is not used by the parser to look up information. But they need to be there so parsers know which namespace scheme you're using.