One little validation error -- forgiveable?

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

(scheme isn't a valid attribute for dc:identifier)

Yes, it is: http://www.idpf.org/epub/20/spec/OPF...#Section2.2.10

[Psymon]

Um, I'm not sure if you people are helping me, or confusing me even more.

I thought I'd go looking for an example of "valid" metadata in epub3 format, if only to see how they do those items in question, and came across this page...

https://code.google.com/p/epub-sampl...UB/package.opf

For that aforementioned ISBN item, where before I had this...

<dc:identifier xmlns:ns2="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" ns2:scheme="ISBN">978-0-9680573-5-3</dc:identifier>

...on that example page they had this...

<dc:identifier id="pub-identifier">urn:isbn:9781449328030</dc:identifier>

...so I just switched out my code for theirs (with my ISBN number, of course).

The other two metadata items that I had which had the word "scheme" in them were...

<dc:identifier opf:scheme="calibre">ab26fb4c-2009-488d-9299-5711d36d9663</dc:identifier>
<dc:identifier xmlns:ns1="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" ns1:scheme="calibre">ab26fb4c-2009-488d-9299-5711d36d9663</dc:identifier>

I certainly didn't put those in, in my original epub that I made in Sigil -- Calibre must have inserted those. So I delete them, saved my book, and with my book still open nothing changes.

But then I close my book, open it again -- and they're BACK! Calibre obviously inserts those things on its own, even if you delete them.

I find all this epub3 stuff absolutely exasperating. I can't believe that there's not some simple software that could easily convert an ebook from epub 2 to 3 -- or at least a decent, NON-confusing tutorial to explain how -- never mind epubcheck, too, which only runs in a command line and which I find frustrating to use. I don't know why someone hasn't made a GUI version of that, too.

I really appreciate everyone's help with this, but I think I'm just too old (or stupid) to learn how to get this book converted to epub3 -- at least, not without having to surmount what is a VERY steep learning curve for me. It's unfortunate to not add in that nice audio file to go along with my sheet music, but until they come up with an easier, simpler way of making epub3 books (for old dummies like me), I guess I'll just have to live with that. :/

Of course, with that said, I'm still open to suggestions for how to actually do this -- at least, if it's an easy/easily-understood one.

[kovidgoyal]

It's simple, no one cares enough about EPUB 3 to develop any tools for it. It's a solution looking for a problem.

As for your confusion about <dc:identifier>

<dc:identifier opf:scheme="calibre" id="pub-id">whatever</dc:identifier>

is valid in EPUB 2, but, it is not valid in EPUB 3

In EPUB 3 it needs to be replaced by this

<dc:identifier id="pub-id">whatever</dc:identifier>
    <meta refines="#pub-id" property="identifier-type" scheme="calibre">calibre</meta>

or if you dont care about the scheme part, just

<dc:identifier id="pub-id">whatever</dc:identifier>

calibre only knows about EPUB 2 so it will always generate <dc:identifier> elements with the scheme attribute.

If you dont want it to do that, go to the editor preferences, and under calibre integration turn off automatic metadata update.

So, the executive summary for people that would rather not understand:

1) Turn off automatic metadata update under calibre integration in the editor preferences
2) Remove the scheme attribute from all <dc:identifier> tags
3) Give yourself a gold star, epubcheck now approves of you, and no one else cares

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

3) Give yourself a gold star, epubcheck now approves of you, and no one else cares

+1

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yes, it is: http://www.idpf.org/epub/20/spec/OPF...#Section2.2.10

It's not a valid attribute in EPUB 3.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Give yourself a gold star, epubcheck now approves of you, and no one else cares

No star for me.

I soooooooo appreciate your help, time and effort, but I've been trying my best to follow all the instructions that I've been getting -- and pulling my hair out (what little I have left) all through the process -- and I just can't seem to get things to validate.

I've been wasting weeks on this -- not just my time, but everybody else's time here, too -- and I just don't seem to be getting anywhere.

I think I'll just give up on this, and just not use that audio file (one audio file, which is the one and only reason to try to make this epub3 instead of 2), and just provide a link to the online (web) version of the article that it can be found at instead. Hopefully eventually they'll come out with a decent epub3 editor, or more automated way to convert from 2 to 3, but I just don't think I'm going to get anything accomplished this way.

Sorry for all the trouble -- but I do thank you very much for trying!

[odedta]

@Psy: I was working on an ePub3 which basically demonstrates all of ePub3 capabilities. It is full of Audio, Video, Javascript, Pop-ups, 3D, embedded fonts etc etc. It is a work in progress, I believe I can get everything to work, just need to find out how.

When you open the file you can see both Audio tags and SMIL in the Audio section, the file validates using epubcheck 3.0.1.

Please view the attached file and let me know if you have any questions.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by odedta

@Psy: I was working on an ePub3 which basically demonstrates all of ePub3 capabilities. It is full of Audio, Video, Javascript, Pop-ups, 3D, embedded fonts etc etc. It is a work in progress, I believe I can get everything to work, just need to find out how.

Practically nothing works in ADE (on my PC), but when I send it over to my iPad, almost everything works in iBooks -- neither of your slide shows do, though, nor the finger painting, coloring book.

For the first 3D image, I see a 3D line drawing of a rectangular box (is that what it's supposed to be?), but for the second one, the 3D oranges, all I see is small black boxes jumping up and down in an almost-black larger box (with "Oranges 0" written in orange). for "3D Collada" I see nothing at all, just a blank page.

Sorry for the bad news! It's great that you're at least trying, though, but if so much of this stuff just doesn't work, I guess it also has me wondering whether to bother at all with any of this stuff -- maybe give it another 5 years or something, wait for all the technology to catch up, and by that time most people will hopefully also have let go of their older devices, too. :/

Thanks for sharing, though, Oded!

[PeterT]

@Psymon: What version of ADE on your PC? It's not until ADE 4 that Adobe added ePub 3 support, and there are a s... load of issues right now with ADE 4 and privacy.

[odedta]

Psy, like I said, it's a work in progress, some work on iPad, some in Readium, some in ADE... In any case, the Audio tags works on iPad, Readium and Calibre and the ePub validates. Isn't that what you were looking for?

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by PeterT

@Psymon: What version of ADE on your PC? It's not until ADE 4 that Adobe added ePub 3 support, and there are a s... load of issues right now with ADE 4 and privacy.

Oh, I have 3 (and 2 and 1) -- I didn't know there was a 4 out!

Originally Posted by odedta

Psy, like I said, it's a work in progress, some work on iPad, some in Readium, some in ADE... In any case, the Audio tags works on iPad, Readium and Calibre and the ePub validates. Isn't that what you were looking for?

Oh, for sure, the audio worked just fine -- although if I was you I would turn off the autoplay, and let people start it on their own (workplace issues or whatever). I guess my problem wasn't getting the audio to work -- indeed, I got that to work just fine in my epub2 book, and it played in iBooks no problems (although my epub didn't validate, of course) -- but that's not my problem, I just couldn't seem to get the whole, entire book to get converted from epub2 to epub3, the whole process of editing the content.opf file was utterly exasperating, never mind I get frustrated with using epubcheck in a command line (I can't understand why there's not a nice GUI version of it) and each time it would take me several tries before I'd get it right (bad memory!)... only to get a pile of errors that didn't make sense half the time.

Trying to do my book as epub3 -- all just for one little audio file -- just seems like such an ordeal. Even if I did manage to get it to validate, then if/when I want to make any future changes or additions, I'd be stuck having to do them in Calibre, and I soooooooo like Sigil soooooooo much more as an editor. And then there's the whole compatibility issue, of course -- I think it came up in this thread here earlier, but some devices (esp. older ones) can't view epub3 format, never mind that even if they can, some won't be able to listen to the audio file anyway (which, in my case, was the whole point of doing it as epub3).

So it's a LOT of exasperation and frustration, for something that only works some of the time, not all the time -- I'm even possibly limiting my audience for the whole, entire book (re those devices that can't handle epub3 at all), just for one audio file (which I can instead simply provide a web link to).

[odedta]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Oh, I have 3 (and 2 and 1) -- I didn't know there was a 4 out!



Oh, for sure, the audio worked just fine -- although if I was you I would turn off the autoplay, and let people start it on their own (workplace issues or whatever). I guess my problem wasn't getting the audio to work -- indeed, I got that to work just fine in my epub2 book, and it played in iBooks no problems (although my epub didn't validate, of course) -- but that's not my problem, I just couldn't seem to get the whole, entire book to get converted from epub2 to epub3, the whole process of editing the content.opf file was utterly exasperating, never mind I get frustrated with using epubcheck in a command line (I can't understand why there's not a nice GUI version of it) and each time it would take me several tries before I'd get it right (bad memory!)... only to get a pile of errors that didn't make sense half the time.

Trying to do my book as epub3 -- all just for one little audio file -- just seems like such an ordeal. Even if I did manage to get it to validate, then if/when I want to make any future changes or additions, I'd be stuck having to do them in Calibre, and I soooooooo like Sigil soooooooo much more as an editor. And then there's the whole compatibility issue, of course -- I think it came up in this thread here earlier, but some devices (esp. older ones) can't view epub3 format, never mind that even if they can, some won't be able to listen to the audio file anyway (which, in my case, was the whole point of doing it as epub3).

So it's a LOT of exasperation and frustration, for something that only works some of the time, not all the time -- I'm even possibly limiting my audience for the whole, entire book (re those devices that can't handle epub3 at all), just for one audio file (which I can instead simply provide a web link to).

If you have a local server you can use my version of epubcheck written in PHP. (for download see attached file)
It is, however, not working since my hosting company does not allow to run java commands on a shared server, it will work on a VPS or locally on your computer.

There is also a GUI for epubcheck called pagina epubchecker, i'm surprised you haven't heard of that before... using the command-line is a bitch and that's what led me to create my own epubcheck gui tool which uses all of the epubcheck features unlike no other checker available.

As for the 3D, this is what i'm trying to accomplish: http://odedta.com/projects/3d/. This is just a sample, basically, I am trying to do this in an ePub3 by embedding collada files or any other 3d file format.

Going from ePub2 to ePub3 is extremely simple! use the file I attached to see how an ePub3 opf should look like and don't get frustrated... like everything in life, it's difficult when you don't know how things work.

[odedta]

As for changing from ePub 2 to ePub 3 you need:

1. Look at how the opf in my file looks like.
2. Use this code on top of every html page you have and also have an html extension for files, not xhtml.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

3. Include a toc.html in your epub to get it validated.

If i'm not mistaken, that's all you have to take care of which is ez pz when you use Search & Replace methods for all files in your epub.

[Psymon]

"Every time I think I'm out... they pull me back in!"

I'm so glad you mentioned that Pagina epubchecker -- I had indeed heard about it before, but apparently forgot about it. Just installed it this morning and found a whole bunch of errors that for some reason the Sigil validator hadn't picked up on! And re your online validator, I had come across that before (or one like it), but my book is 14 megs in size, and yours can only handle up to 10 megs -- it's so much nicer if I can just validate off my hard drive, though, of course. I guess Pagina should do the trick, in that regard.

Okay, you've inspired me again... I think... maybe... I'm not sure. I've been spending so much time recently trying to resolve "problems," though, that I've been feeling terribly neglectful about just simply getting the textual parts of my book finished.

In other words, I do think that I will take another stab at trying to convert it to epub3 -- probably by "cheating," taking your valid book and copying/pasting my stuff into yours (and making whatever changes along the way, as necessary) -- but first I think I just need to get my epub2 version finished up, and at least have all the writing, editing, formatting and arranging over and done with.

So I'll get back to you! Might take me a while -- anything from days to weeks (I'm also waiting for one final article/chapter from another person) -- but I will get back to this, I'm sure (and back here again when I run into the inevitable problems).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psymon

"Every time I think I'm out... they pull me back in!"

I'm so glad you mentioned that Pagina epubchecker -- I had indeed heard about it before, but apparently forgot about it. Just installed it this morning and found a whole bunch of errors that for some reason the Sigil validator hadn't picked up on! And re your online validator, I had come across that before (or one like it), but my book is 14 megs in size, and yours can only handle up to 10 megs -- it's so much nicer if I can just validate off my hard drive, though, of course. I guess Pagina should do the trick, in that regard.

I've been saying on MR (for long time now) to use epubcheck and not FlightCrew. FC needs a lot of work because it does miss a lot of errors.