E-readers not recognizing chapters

[exaltedwombat]

There's one BIG reason for a HTML Table of Contents - the Look Inside feature in the Amazon Store. Showing a prospective buyer the Contents in the 10% of the book that is shown can be very desirable.

On the general question, you need to embrace the difference between print and eBook layout. We are not defining the position of words and pictures on a page, we are pouring them into a container. The user is in charge of screen size, font size, maybe margins... There's no point in trying to be a control freak, it will just be over-ruled!

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

There's one BIG reason for a HTML Table of Contents - the Look Inside feature in the Amazon Store. Showing a prospective buyer the Contents in the 10% of the book that is shown can be very desirable.

I'm sorry, but that's not a good reason (there are others, but not this one, in my opinion). That's exclusively a feature of a particular vendor, which besides corresponds to a different format. We are talking about ePub books, and Amazon does not sell ePub books.

Your reason then downgrades to something like "an HTML table of contents is converted to an inline TOC in mobi, which then shows in Amazon", but that loses much of its strength, and there are other ways to have an inline TOC in mobi.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Jellby

I'm sorry, but that's not a good reason (there are others, but not this one, in my opinion). That's exclusively a feature of a particular vendor, which besides corresponds to a different format. We are talking about ePub books, and Amazon does not sell ePub books.

Your reason then downgrades to something like "an HTML table of contents is converted to an inline TOC in mobi, which then shows in Amazon", but that loses much of its strength, and there are other ways to have an inline TOC in mobi.

Agreed. Amazon is popular... and thriving, but the ePub format hasn't been reduced to Kindle-book source-code quite yet.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by theducks

You misunderstood me. There are readers that don't allow the NCX to be nested (Flat NCX only)

Usually this means they display a flat TOC but they still support nested source.

Dale

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Usually this means they display a flat TOC but they still support nested source.

Dale

Nice to know that the items are not just discarded/ignored

I know (known feature )that on my PEz (ADE) I can't select the parent of a nested group in the 'Menu'. Normal flow will show this page just fine.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by theducks

Nice to know that the items are not just discarded/ignored

I know (known feature )that on my PEz (ADE) I can't select the parent of a nested group in the 'Menu'. Normal flow will show this page just fine.

Select the top item to return to the parent flow.

Dale

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Select the top item to return to the parent flow.

Dale

That is what happens, but the page is not shown, only collapses the menu

Ch (lvl 3) ending text
-----
Part (lvl2) title-Intro page
-----
Next Chapter (lvl 3)

You can't use the menus to get to view 'Part'

[DaleDe]

Yes, the PEZ only displays the data at the lowest level of the tree assuming that is what you want to do. You can view the upper levels but not the book itself. I submitted this to Jinke a long time ago but of course there are not upgrades to the PEZ. I use LBook on my PEZ but it has the same limitation I am afraid. Normally this is not a problem as there is usually no text between the various levels but it is annoying to have to go to the bottom level. After you are in the book you can use previous page to see the middle level. However, we are off topic.

Dale

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Agreed. Amazon is popular... and thriving, but the ePub format hasn't been reduced to Kindle-book source-code quite yet.

Authors like to publish. I've found the Kindle Store is where they generally do it, because Amazon make it easy to set up an account, Kindle own the dedicated-reader market, and it doesn't smack strongly of vanity publishing like Smashwords or Lulu.

Do you have different information?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

Authors like to publish. I've found the Kindle Store is where they generally do it, because Amazon make it easy to set up an account, Kindle own the dedicated-reader market, and it doesn't smack strongly of vanity publishing like Smashwords or Lulu.

Do you have different information?

I might, if I had the first inkling of what it is you seem to think we're discussing. I'm talking about epub and epub practices. You know... the format that Sigil—the program this forum is dedicated to—produces.

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I might, if I had the first inkling of what it is you seem to think we're discussing. I'm talking about epub and epub practices. You know... the format that Sigil—the program this forum is dedicated to—produces.

Yup. And very often the epub is thrown into Kindle Previewer and the result uploaded to Amazon. How are YOUR epubs mainly distributed, if they're not for your exclusive use?

[DiapDealer]

Irrelevant. If you feel discussing the epub format without the constraints of its secondary relationship to Amazon's formats is only pertinent to "personal use" situations, then we're unlikely to find any middle ground anyway. Suggest we drop it. I am.

[exaltedwombat]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Irrelevant. If you feel discussing the epub format without the constraints of its secondary relationship to Amazon's formats is only pertinent to "personal use" situations, then we're unlikely to find any middle ground anyway. Suggest we drop it. I am.

I'm not clear what you're objecting to? It's pretty standard practice to use Sigil to prepare an epub file, run it through Kindle conversion and deliver both epub and mobi versions to the customer. Are you taking some sort of moral stance that epub should stay as epub, and mobi is the work of the devil? ;-)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

I'm not clear what you're objecting to? It's pretty standard practice to use Sigil to prepare an epub file, run it through Kindle conversion and deliver both epub and mobi versions to the customer. Are you taking some sort of moral stance that epub should stay as epub, and mobi is the work of the devil? ;-)

Good lord no! I've never owned any other reading devices than Kindles, I absolutely adore Amazon! I often use Sigil to create epubs expressly for the purpose of converting those said ePubs to Kindle books. What I'm getting at is that there's the ePub format--always was, never intended to be anything else, "I'm making an ePub" ePub. And there's ePub that's intended to be converted to a Kindle Book. Often times, they're at odds with each other (in anything other than the most rudimentary of straight-up text presentation). So I would rather that ePub "best practices" discussions be concerned with ePub and little else. ePub--the mobi-source--best practices would be best discussed in MOBI/Kindle venues (along with the other legitimate ways of creating Kindle books). There's things I might do to ePubs that are going to be converted to Kindlebooks that I would never dream of doing in an ePub that was going to be delivered to an ePub-reading device/app; and vice-versa. If what you've described is indeed "pretty standard practice," then it's no wonder there's such horridly formatted ebooks out there.

I'm out for real this time. We're too far off topic, now.

[exaltedwombat]

No, really, this is interesting and very pertinent. I have NEVER been asked for "epub only". I've never been offered a budget sufficient to prepare two separate optimized versions (and why stop at two? The new crop of tablets, with their various reader applications, have their own set of quirks). The practical name of the game is making code that converts elegantly to a range of devices. Unfortunately, this, in practice, means abjuring layout features that don't.

So "How will this convert to Kindle" is an essential question when preparing a book. Otherwise we're like the (fortunately dwindling) band of Mac-using web designers who when told "This site is broken in IE" smugly reply "So what?" :-)

Of course, once InDesign users catch on that they also could write simple code that converts cleanly through its "Export to epub" function, a lot of employment will disappear.