Mobi & AZW Page Break NOT working

[eschwartz]

Forgiven.

[Wendy Wolfe]

(follow-up question from a non-pro...)

I'm using the Calibre editor to write a "family recipes" EPUB. Eventually, it will be KindleGen'd to a side-loadable mobi for my Kindle-centric extended family.

Reading this thread made me realize that if I go the pagebreak-after-each-recipe route... I'll have more than 500 files in the final EPUB (last recipe count was approx 500 & one file per means a lot of files). Oh my.

Also, it is going to be a challange to work with in the "Files Browser" because it seems that I can't organize the kazillion text files into subfolders. (More on this at the end of this note.)

Do any of the EPUB editors allow for a directory structure to organize the "text" files?

Or is this just the reality of dealing with this kind of EPUB?

Thanks

Sidenote:
Interestingly, the Calibre editor allows me to place "text" files into subfolders (text/xxx.html, text/sub/yyy.html, text/sub/ggg.html are all valid). I played around a bit & everything seems to work fine. I assume that there's a reason why the UI doesn't detect/surface the organization. It would be a rather nice feature of v.large books.)

[pdurrant]

A new file isn't the only way to create a page break in an ePub. Using CSS and pagebreakbefore should work fine.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Wendy Wolfe

(follow-up question from a non-pro...)

I'm using the Calibre editor to write a "family recipes" EPUB. Eventually, it will be KindleGen'd to a side-loadable mobi for my Kindle-centric extended family.

Reading this thread made me realize that if I go the pagebreak-after-each-recipe route... I'll have more than 500 files in the final EPUB (last recipe count was approx 500 & one file per means a lot of files). Oh my.

Also, it is going to be a challange to work with in the "Files Browser" because it seems that I can't organize the kazillion text files into subfolders. (More on this at the end of this note.)

Do any of the EPUB editors allow for a directory structure to organize the "text" files?

Or is this just the reality of dealing with this kind of EPUB?

Thanks

Sidenote:
Interestingly, the Calibre editor allows me to place "text" files into subfolders (text/xxx.html, text/sub/yyy.html, text/sub/ggg.html are all valid). I played around a bit & everything seems to work fine. I assume that there's a reason why the UI doesn't detect/surface the organization. It would be a rather nice feature of v.large books.)

You can set up any kind of structure you would like for ePub. Some editors are limited in what they support but as you have found out the Calibre editor does not. There is only one hard coded file and it is used to find the starting point for all of the rest.

Every text (xhtml) file does start a new page in your book. There are other ways to have page changes. Most readers load one file at a time into RAM but some load the entire book.

Dale

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Wendy Wolfe

Also, it is going to be a challange to work with in the "Files Browser" because it seems that I can't organize the kazillion text files into subfolders. (More on this at the end of this note.)

Do any of the EPUB editors allow for a directory structure to organize the "text" files?

Or is this just the reality of dealing with this kind of EPUB?

Thanks

Sidenote:
Interestingly, the Calibre editor allows me to place "text" files into subfolders (text/xxx.html, text/sub/yyy.html, text/sub/ggg.html are all valid). I played around a bit & everything seems to work fine. I assume that there's a reason why the UI doesn't detect/surface the organization. It would be a rather nice feature of v.large books.)

As you saw, calibre allows you to put files in your own folder layout.

However, the File Browser used in the editor sorts books according to data type, and all Text files will be listed together.

If you built a ToC with proper nesting, you can view it in a separate panel, and use it to navigate around as well.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

A new file isn't the only way to create a page break in an ePub. Using CSS and pagebreakbefore should work fine.

Paul:

I think that for mobi, we're still using separate pages/files for "breaks." Now, it could be that we're just stuck in a rut, but I think...nope, I'm pretty sure that even now, for mobi, the only way to get headings right, on the "page" (so to speak) is to use new files.

Now, I can see that this might be distressing for someone trying to assemble 500 recipes. Wendy, does the placement of the "top" of the recipe really matter to you? Do you care if it's precisely 3 lines down from the top of the screen, or is that a secondary concern? (This is about the eventual mobi-fication of her book, to be clear).

I would note, from a user-standpoint, that for rendering, the more files the merrier, in terms of snappy loading times. This is true for both ePUB and MOBI, IMHO. I've done ePUB/mobi with over 900 "files," including images; and man, the more XHTML files, the snappier THAT goes.

Hitch

[Wendy Wolfe]

Thanks all. Very helpful.

I've gone down the one-recipe-per-file route. The page breaks increase "usability", so they are worth the effort. The render times are a happy bonus.

The suggestion to use the toc.ncx and spine to navigate around is brilliant.

Thankfully, the recipes were in a MySQL database & already written in HTML snippits. Once I designed a template recipe-detail page, it was quick work to extract the data & write a script to create the xhtml files. The project is turning out to be less onerous than I expected.

Again, thanks.
-w