[GUI Plugin] EpubMerge

[JimmXinu]

Good point. I looked before, but I didn't see that Tools -> Table of Contents was a submenu.

[Joliet Jake]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Epub format stores the TOC in metadata; any TOC that appears in the text pages, while somewhat common, is technically part of the book and not the 'official TOC' as such.

In contrast, other formats such as mobi and azw3 (kindle formats) store the TOC in a visible page, usually at the end of the book.

By default, EpubMerge combines the metadata TOCs together, nesting the original TOCs in a tree. That can be changed in in Epubmerge's config. There's also an option to flatten the TOC to a single level.

EpubMerge doesn't have any way to generate a consolidated in-text TOC like you describe. Calibre's own Conversion tool can, and you can do an epub->epub conversion. I haven't looked at how well that works and convert does sometimes change things more than you might like.

I converted the book into a .DOCX and saw the proper ToC (which I could see in Calibre, but not when I actually opened the ebook in Calibre). Then I converted it back. It now works the way I want it to.

Originally Posted by theducks

No need to risk conversion making other changes
Calibres EPUB Editor can generate an Inline (HTML) TOC from the NCX
It is on the Tools menu

I only saw this after I converted into .DOCX and back. I didn't suffer any problems with conversions, but I found the command and will remember this for next time.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

Good point. I looked before, but I didn't see that Tools -> Table of Contents was a submenu.

Jimm could you snag/hook that bit of code and add an Insert Inline option to the PI?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by theducks

Jimm could you snag/hook that bit of code and add an Insert Inline option to the PI?

Possibly. Adding one from scratch would certainly be do-able. I'm not convinced I would want to, though.

If EpubMerge inserted an in-line TOC, it would be in addition to whatever in-line TOCs already exist in the source epubs. And there would be the questions of where it should go and how it should look.

Epub standard files keep the TOC in metadata. If a user wants an in-line TOC, I think it's best they use a different tool to do it.

[kjn]

Thanks for a great job!

Would it be possible to add the functionality to append an ebook to another rather than merge them? Assuming you have a book made from pieces a and b (a, b) and want to add c. With Epubmerge on the files you get a new book ((a, b), c) but you'd rather want (a, b, c).

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by kjn

Thanks for a great job!

Would it be possible to add the functionality to append an ebook to another rather than merge them? Assuming you have a book made from pieces a and b (a, b) and want to add c. With Epubmerge on the files you get a new book ((a, b), c) but you'd rather want (a, b, c).

I don't see that as being a common enough case to include special code for; plus there are many other ways to do essentially the same thing:

• You can merge a, b, c directly if you still have them.
• You can unmerge (a, b) back to a, b assuming you had the 'Keep UnMerge Metadata' setting checked (it's on by default).
• You can split (a, b) to a, b with EpubSplit.
• You can use EpubMerge's flatten TOC feature.
• You can use another tool such as Calibre's Edit book to modify the merged TOC as desired.

[kjn]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I don't see that as being a common enough case to include special code for; plus there are many other ways to do essentially the same thing:

I do this process relatively frequently, putting together collections for my own use with the short stories and chapters from writers I follow (eg on Patreon).

It's not only the ToC that's the issue here, it's the cover and other metadata that has to be recreated with the merge. That makes the workarounds tedious to use.

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version

2022-01-11
- Changes for upcoming Qt6 Calibre
- Update Translations

This version contains changes necessary for the upcoming Qt6 Calibre version.

I haven't tested against every version, but EpubMerge should still be backward compatible to v3.48 and newer.

Qt6 is a GUI library change, so any issues are most likely to be in the EM Config dialogs.

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version

2022-01-17
- Explicitly set --output-profile=tablet when doing epub3->epub2 autoconvert in BG. For #7

2022-01-11
- Changes for upcoming Qt6 Calibre
- Update Translations


Did you know Convert would resize images by default? Because I did not know that. Setting --output-profile=tablet prevents it.

[JimmXinu]

New Version Released

Version 2.12.0 - 21 Jan 2022
- Explicitly set --output-profile=tablet when doing epub3->epub2 autoconvert in BG. For #7
- Changes for upcoming Qt6 Calibre
- Update Translations

[Redshifter]

I've recently discovered that for some reason I have multiple ePUBs of the same book... each with different chapters that the others don't. Know of a way to fix that?

[JimmXinu]

Calibre's built in Edit Book feature is a good starting point for editing content and removing chapters if that's all you want to do.

EpubMerge is for concatenating existing epubs.

EpubSplit can make new epubs by selecting chapters from an existing epub to make a new epub.

[Pixelmator]

First of all I would like to thank you for the great plugin. So far it has always worked perfectly. For some reason I can't merge a few epub files. It gives me the following error message in Calibre:
"Remove Failed Anthology Book?
EpubMerge failed, no new EPUB was created; see the background job details for any error messages."
Do you know where I can find said file with the error messages?
I get the same error on macOS and Windows. I have updated to the latest plugin version.

[JimmXinu]

In Calibre, there should be something like "Jobs: 0" in the lower right corner.

Click that to open Calibre's Jobs log. You should see EpubMerge job (assuming you ran it in the same Calibre session).

Double click it to see the background job output.

[dmx87212]

I am also having an issue where the file is failing to be created. Below is the error message from "jobs".

EpubMerge: Book Names - Book 1 Anthology
Failed to initialize plugin: 'C:\\Users\\Zachary Jenkins\\AppData\\Roaming\\calibre\\plugins\\Barne s & Noble.zip'
Failed to initialize plugin: 'C:\\Users\\Zachary Jenkins\\AppData\\Roaming\\calibre\\plugins\\Fanta stic Fiction.zip'
EpubMerge: DEBUG: 2022-03-01 09:15:22,669: calibre_plugins.epubmerge.epubmerge(172): prep output:0.001994609832763672
EpubMerge: DEBUG: 2022-03-01 09:15:22,675: calibre_plugins.epubmerge.epubmerge(338): write rootfile OEBPS/content.opf to 1/OEBPS/content.opf
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "runpy.py", line 194, in _run_module_as_main
File "runpy.py", line 87, in _run_code
File "site.py", line 82, in <module>
File "site.py", line 77, in main
File "site.py", line 49, in run_entry_point
File "calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 215, in main
File "calibre\utils\ipc\worker.py", line 150, in arbitrary_n
File "calibre_plugins.epubmerge.jobs", line 84, in do_merge_bg
File "calibre_plugins.epubmerge.epubmerge", line 358, in doMerge
File "xml\dom\minidom.py", line 1969, in parseString
File "xml\dom\expatbuilder.py", line 925, in parseString
File "xml\dom\expatbuilder.py", line 223, in parseString
xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 114, column 77
==================================================

Beginning Merge...

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I have been using EpubMerge for a long time and haven't encountered this issue before. How can I solve this problem?