Aura KA1: some chapters aren't complete

[petercreasey]

Kobo Aura 1

Occasionally I'll get a book where every so often (probably near the end of a chapter) a chapter suddenly ends without even finishing a sentence. And the next page has the beginning of the next chapter.

Any ideas what might be causing this?

Thanks!

[davidfor]

Any time I have seen that, it is an error in the book, usually incorrect nesting of tags. You will need to look at the source of the book. Opening it in either the calibre editor or Sigil and running their built-in error reporting is usually to find the error.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

Kobo Aura 1

Occasionally I'll get a book where every so often (probably near the end of a chapter) a chapter suddenly ends without even finishing a sentence. And the next page has the beginning of the next chapter.

Any ideas what might be causing this?

Thanks!

I've also seen that with a several epub3 ebooks (mostly created using Vellum) when read using RMSDK on my Kobo. It seems to be tied to using a <hr> tag when creating a section break. Either sending to my Kobo as a kepub so the epub3 renderer is used or editing and changing the <hr> section breaks to a different format works for me.

[petercreasey]

David and David, I always download the epubs to either Calibre or to Adobe Digital Editions and then move them from there to the KA1.

I never do anything to the ebooks beyond the foregoing sequence.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

David and David, I always download the epubs to either Calibre or to Adobe Digital Editions and then move them from there to the KA1.

I never do anything to the ebooks beyond the foregoing sequence.

Can you name some of these book?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

David and David, I always download the epubs to either Calibre or to Adobe Digital Editions and then move them from there to the KA1.

I never do anything to the ebooks beyond the foregoing sequence.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of badly built books out there. Most will probably display OK, but some will trigger bugs, or have invalid code that won't display properly. These books are likely to display properly elsewhere. Some ebook reader apps are very forgiving of errors. But, the epub renderer on the Kobo devices is unforgiving of errors. If there are errors in the code, it will probably not display properly.

The only way to see for sure is to look at the code. Open it in the calibre editor and run the error check. Or find the bit that is missing in the book and see what that looks like. Or, let us see the book. If it is something freely downloadable, post a URL. Or post the book if it is legal to do so. Or, upload it to some private storage and PM me or someone else here a link to download it so we can look at it.

[petercreasey]

An example of a problem book is Exposed in Darkness: In Darkness by Heather Sunseri.

[petercreasey]

Originally Posted by davidfor

let us see the book. I

David, hopefully I've successfully included it herewith as an attachment.

[petercreasey]

Maybe it's my imagination, but the omissions seem to be more frequent in the second half of the ebook.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

Maybe it's my imagination, but the omissions seem to be more frequent in the second half of the ebook.

I'll have a look at it tonight. But, that statement made me think of something that would help. Which chapters are missing text? And what is the last word displayed.

Also, does changing the reading setting, especially font size, change anything?

[rashkae]

Best remove that post with the book before the mods drop by.

Edit: I'm curious....I haven't spotted any outright errors I would expect to cause a problem you described. However, this books eppears to be a kepub that's been been renamed to .epub. How did you say this book was downloaded/transfered again?

Edit 2: Ok, you can ignore my previous question... I just downloaded the epub right from Kobo and got the same code spaghetti. I seem to remember this being a bug (long since fixed) in kobo's process from over 5 years ago, where their epub downloads were getting kepubpified....

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Best remove that post with the book before the mods drop by.

Edit: I'm curious....I haven't spotted any outright errors I would expect to cause a problem you described. However, this books eppears to be a kepub that's been been renamed to .epub. How did you say this book was downloaded/transfered again?

Edit 2: Ok, you can ignore my previous question... I just downloaded the epub right from Kobo and got the same code spaghetti. I seem to remember this being a bug (long since fixed) in kobo's process from over 5 years ago, where their epub downloads were getting kepubpified....

I wonder if this is because the source book is an epub3. I found one like this recently and converting it back to epub2 resulted in some interesting things. One of which was that if there was hr on a page, the page above the hr would be blank. But, when you pressed on the blank area, it would select a word! Something in the stylesheet made that text white-on-white. I couldn't work out what the problem was, so I just read it as a kepub. It was a nicely styled book, so I didn't mind. I'm wondering if this has similar styling problems for the epub renderer.

[DNSB]

Since the epub was free on Kobo, I downloaded an new copy and the code was the same dogs breakfast. A quick look at the epub shows it was created with Vellum (the .svg files in the Images directory especially the vellum-created.svg was a dead giveaway).

In the text files, I found a fine collection of <hr class="ornamental-break ornamental-break-as-hr"/> lines which are the ones I find triggering the blank block errors. So I ran some saved search/replace in Sigil to clean this up.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I wonder if this is because the source book is an epub3. I found one like this recently and converting it back to epub2 resulted in some interesting things. One of which was that if there was hr on a page, the page above the hr would be blank. But, when you pressed on the blank area, it would select a word! Something in the stylesheet made that text white-on-white. I couldn't work out what the problem was, so I just read it as a kepub. It was a nicely styled book, so I didn't mind. I'm wondering if this has similar styling problems for the epub renderer.

I've seen the same type of mess in a couple of epub2 ebooks generated by Vellum and kepubbed by Kobo. The same hr triggering big blank spots.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I've seen the same type of mess in a couple of epub2 ebooks generated by Vellum and kepubbed by Kobo. The same hr triggering big blank spots.

The code is familiar and I'm pretty sure the other one was produced the same way (it was The Diving Series Box Set by Kristine Kathryn Rusch).

In any case, those hr's are triggering the problem I mentioned. There is one about halfway through Chapter 1 on page 13/14. It is three quarters of the way down the page but the top of the page is blank. Long-press anywhere in the blank area and I get the dictionary pop-up for the word.

Other than the above, I don't see any other missing text. The lack of a widows and orphans setting are causing problem, so I can see some large gaps at the bottom of a page with a line or two on the next at the end of a chapter. This plus the hr's also seem to put some big gaps at the end of pages with the hr's on them.

The ToC is also missing. Both the XHTML and NCX versions are there, but neither are used. Adding it as a kepub, and it all seems OK.