Epubcheck: New Error under upgrade to Validator 4.0.2

[Phaedrus Wolfe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can't blame Calibre for this one. The sloppy code was in the HTML. Calibre just did a garbage in, garbage out.

Nobody ever blamed Calibre for this one. Yes, as kovidgoyal pointed out so wisely, HTML is not the ideal for which Calibre is designed to optimize. As you so "wisely?" pointed out, garbage in, garbage out.

Therefore, due to the lousy attitude found mostly by you on this board, please allow me to state the bare facts with no attempt to be politically correct.

1) Our templates are fine. As a publishing company, our programmers have looked over the situation herein. They found:

2) There is an issue in MS Word which causes offending code to be inserted prior to section breaks in many situations. This is not a template issue or a failure to use styles. It can easily be duplicated.

3) kovidgoyal seems to be more interested in pushing the use of DOCX than fixing MS Word errors in HTML files. Fine. Thats his business and his decision, but do not let it be said that we failed to alert him to this issue.

4) Using HTML is superior to using DOCX for publishing companies as it allows us more control over exactly what ends up in the styles and how the overall use of horribly bad manuscripts from authors can be fixed by writing custom scripts to overcome difficulties. Of course, we will add to our scripts a solution to this issue as well. Apparently, nobody here is interested in the solution once our programmers fix it.

5) This problem with ms word conversions to HTML is plaguing Smashwords and Stealth. It possibly may be bothering others. Smashwords sent me here to see if kovidgoyal could work up a solution, even though kovidgoyal and Smashwords have a longrunning relationship in that the "Meatgrinder" manuscript converter used by Smashwords is in reality Calibre source code. I bet everybody would love to know that.

6) Should kovidgoyal be interested in solving this minor MS Word to HTML problem, a lot of people would be appreciative -- however the intelligence level of other people monitoring this forum seems to be so low as to prevent an intelligent discussion of the programming issues to fix this. Never mind, our programmers will solve it for us.

7) I don't have time to waste in adding more to this. kovidgoyal seems to be a nice guy.

Have a nice day, Sir.

[Phaedrus Wolfe]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Hmmm... very likely answer would be:

Word => HTML (likely filtered) => Calibre => epub.

That sums up the problem precisely. There is an issue in MS Word which causes offending code to be inserted prior to section breaks in many situations. This is not a template issue or a failure to use styles. It can be duplicated at will.

[Phaedrus Wolfe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Use a style in word for heading hyperlinks that specifies the color as black.

Thank you, kovidgoyal. We have done that in our styles for which we have four seperate styles devoted to hyperlinks, each with its own purpose and usage. That is also a major reason we are using HTML rather than DOCX in Calibre. In HTML we can control the output of how these hyperlinks are displayed. In the DOCX files, even with styles used, we are not able to control the output and all hyperlinks turn out blue, unless we jump through hoops for all hyperlinks to turn out black. DOCX is by far easier to use, and you are quite correct that Calibre processes it better than HTML. Thanks for that advice.

Please allow me to repeat: There is an issue in MS Word which causes offending code to be inserted prior to section breaks in many situations. This is not a template issue or a failure to use styles. Our programmers will fix this issue for us, but Smashwords requested that I alert you of this rather than contacting you directly themselves.

Thank you for the suggestions you sent.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Phaedrus Wolfe

[. . .] As a publishing company, our programmers have looked over the situation [. . .]

Seeing as you have programmers who are presumably well versed in the technologies concerned, and who have intimate knowledge of the problems you are confronting, why don't you get them to:

• download the calibre source;
• make the required changes to the calibre code;
• do the necessary testing;
• and submit the changes to Kovid for inclusion in a future calibre release;

BR

[Phaedrus Wolfe]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Seeing as you have programmers who are presumably well versed in the technologies concerned, and who have intimate knowledge of the problems you are confronting, why don't you get them to:

• download the calibre source;
• make the required changes to the calibre code;
• do the necessary testing;
• and submit the changes to Kovid for inclusion in a future calibre release;

BR

Can't you read? I was doing Smashwords a favor.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Phaedrus Wolfe

Can't you read? I was doing Smashwords a favor.

Why would you do that?
They charge for their services.

[Phaedrus Wolfe]

Originally Posted by theducks

Why would you do that?
They charge for their services.

They also have their own programmers as well as a direct connection to kovidgoyal. Don't worry, I wont be doing any more favors this direction.