azw3 conversion bug?

[KleineMaus]

Hello community,
I want to convert an epub file (made by Sigil) to azw3 in calibre 0.8.55.
There are two problems: First, the generated Table of Contents will not be at the beginning of the azw3 file although this option is activated. It remains at the end.
Second, and this is the main problem, Kindle for PC will not show the the cover. I tried everything: "use cover of source", "upload new file", etc. Indeed, the cover is visible in the epub file and of course I marked the cover page and the cover picture explicitly as "cover" in Sigil before.
How could the cover made visible in Kindle for PC?
Thanks for any help. I already wasted hours for nothing.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by KleineMaus

How could the cover made visible in Kindle for PC?

Not sure if it's the same for K4PC, but to get it to show in some of the other apps checking "Enable sharing of book content via Facebook, etc. WARNING: Disables last read syncing" under the Mobi output settings is supposed work. Haven't tried it myself.

[DiapDealer]

Are we talking about:

1) the "Go to cover" functionality from within the book when reading it in K4PC?

Or:

2) the cover thumbnail-image that shows when browsing your K4PC library?

There is no solution for number 2. More recent versions of K4PC simply don't use the ebook file for finding/displaying those thumbnail-images anymore. Sideloaded content will always show the default blue-book-with-bookmark-sticking-out for its cover thumbnail in the library view.

[KleineMaus]

@DiapDealer: we are talking about 2. Does this mean the thumbnail will be shown in "normal" mobile Kindles? If so, I don't care about K4PC - I used it just to verify because I do not own a Kindle.

[DiapDealer]

Other than the Kindle Fire (and possibly the Touch? I'm way behind the times), those thumbnail cover-images just aren't really used for much. You have to click quite a few buttons just to even see them. There is no Home page library view that shows the cover images except for on the Fire (I think?).

[KleineMaus]

OK, , so my problem seems to be solved.

[jgaiser]

I download all books I purchase from Baen in epub format. I'm in the process of converting a number of these books to azw3 format for my Kindle Fire and there have been no problems, until last night.

I've got a long list of Honor Harrington series books I'm *trying* to convert and I'm having problems with converting from the GUI. The books convert without any visible errors, but when displayed all I get is the cover graphic and many, many, many blank pages in the calibre viewer. If I try to look at the file on the Kindle, all I get is the spinning busy cursor. I've even tried re-downloading the epub from The Fifth Imperium site with no luck.

I did say I couldn't get the file to convert the GUI. From the command line, I was finally able to get it to convert successfully by first converting the file EPUB-EPUB and then EPUB-AZW3.

Can someone download the epub from:

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/2...tion/index.htm

and tell me if I'm crazy or not?

I've tried this conversion with the first 4 or 5 epubs on this CD with no success from the GUI and readable files from the command line.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

and tell me if I'm crazy or not?

I don't have a Fire—and I can't attest to your sanity—but I can tell you that downloading that epub and immediately doing an ePub->AZW3 conversion results in an AZW3 (no errors in converting with 0.8.55) that the Kindle Previewer cannot open (emulating the Kindle Fire): "Open Error. Error opening book.Book failed to open in KRF." I had no problems using the GUI to convert it, but the resulting ebook seems non-functional. Doesn't work right in calibre's viewer either... behaves with the blank pages like you described.

Will have to investigate more.

EDIT: it's not a pretty ePub to begin with, by any means. Lots of ePub validation errors. However... an ePub->ePub conversion seems to fix the majority of those errors -- and then the resulting ePub->AZW3 seems to work fine in calibre's viewer as well as the Kindle Previewer in Fire emulation mode.

[jgaiser]

Just tried converting the file with kindlegen (V2.3 - latest, I think) under Linux. A number of warnings (mostly HTML tag specified in content is not supported by Kindle readers. Removing the tag: 'script' in file: blah). The generated mobi6/azw3 file does work with the calibre viewer. I'll have to give the Fire a try.

[JSWolf]

The problem is that most of BAEN's eBooks were created with an OLD version of Calibre. They really need to update to 0.8.55.

I do think this is one for a bug report.

[kovidgoyal]

The problem is the self closing script tags. The Kindle's kf8 renderer (and calibre to emulate it), render kf8 markup in WebKit's html rather than xhtml mode which causes problems with self closing tags. I had forgotten to fix self closing script tags in KF8 output. An oversight that will be remedied in the next release.

[KleineMaus]

Hello,
there is still an issue that the automatically generated Table of Content link page will NOT show up at the beginning of the azw3 file although tagged in the azw3 options menu. Is there any solution or workaround?
Thank you

[KleineMaus]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Not sure if it's the same for K4PC, but to get it to show in some of the other apps checking "Enable sharing of book content via Facebook, etc. WARNING: Disables last read syncing" under the Mobi output settings is supposed work. Haven't tried it myself.

@AnemicOak: IT WORKS on K4PC!!!!!!! Cover is shown in the library view.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by KleineMaus

Hello,
there is still an issue that the automatically generated Table of Content link page will NOT show up at the beginning of the azw3 file although tagged in the azw3 options menu. Is there any solution or workaround?
Thank you

That will also be fixed in the next release.

[KleineMaus]

... any idea about the target date (just to know not to push )
thanx