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Old 08-19-2012, 06:39 PM   #1
tbrosz
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Mobi to EPUB: TOC format issue

I am using Calibre to convert Mobi files to EPUB files. The Mobi files were generated by Adobe InDesign 5.5 with the Kindle conversion plugin. The Mobi file has endnotes and a working (linkable) table of contents.

The results are very good. The endnotes are at the end of the EPUB document (InDesign's EPUB converter can't do this if you have chapter breaks) and link back and forth nicely. The table of contents (in blue) also links back and forth properly.

My only complaint, and I admit it's a minor one, is that the table of contents is right above the first chapter, without the break that I see between other chapters. In short, "Chapter One" starts just below the last entry on the table of contents on the page.

I wouldn't mind a "new page" break at this point if it can be done without a lot of code work I don't know anything about. Suggestions? Or is this minor format glitch a non-issue for something I'm going to publish on Nook?
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Old 08-20-2012, 06:49 PM   #2
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Why not generate the ePub from InDesign instead of using Calibre to convert to Mobi file?

Also, you could actually delete the ToC you are wanting to modify as there should be the NCX ToC that uses the link to the ToC from ADE.
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Old 08-20-2012, 07:09 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
Why not generate the ePub from InDesign instead of using Calibre to convert to Mobi file?

Also, you could actually delete the ToC you are wanting to modify as there should be the NCX ToC that uses the link to the ToC from ADE.
InDesign 5.5 gives me only two options for placing footnotes: at the end of the paragraph the footnote is in, or at the end of the chapter. Both of these really mess up the flow of the document's narrative.

I wanted the footnotes at the very end of the EPUB document, like the Kindle format has them. The Calibre converter gives me both the chapter breaks and the endnotes. InDesign gives me a choice of one or the other.

The current format issue is very minor. I don't have the code knowledge to "tweak" a page break into the document between the TOC and "Chapter One."

I'm hoping somebody either comes up with a robust plugin for InDesign that gives me as many options as the Kindle plugin does, or that Adobe eventually brings the program itself up to speed. As I understand it, version 6 isn't much of an improvement in this specific area.
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Old 08-20-2012, 07:28 PM   #4
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An endnote is just a link to the anchor for the endnote regardless of where it is. So move the endnotes to the end of the eBook and link to them and link back to where you were.
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Old 08-21-2012, 12:12 AM   #5
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Okay, I fixed it.

No doubt an HTML wizard would have simply inserted a page break command of some kind between the table of contents and the first chapter.

Me, I'm not an HTML wizard. NCX and ADE is all Greek to me. So I went back to the original InDesign manuscript file, and went to the page with the table of contents on it. I squeezed the text box containing the table of contents upwards just a little bit, leaving some room at the bottom of the page. I then inserted a single-line text box in this space. Inside that text box, I added an InDesign page break command.

Ran it through the Kindle exporter, and converted the Kindle to EPUB with Calibre. Bingo. The table of contents and Chapter One are now on two separate parts.

Thanks to JSWolf for the help and advice. It would have been more useful if I were more knowledgeable!

Last edited by tbrosz; 08-21-2012 at 12:14 AM.
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Old 08-21-2012, 06:45 PM   #6
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Have you double checked the code in the ePub to see how clean it is? Sometimes converting from Mobi can be a real mes before it's put up for sale.

Besides, why are you using InDesign if you don't know how to use it? You should be using it to create the ePub. Not having Calibre do it from an inferior format. That means that any ePub features that would be used when making the ePub properly, will be lost. So what you are doing (very possibly) is giving your customers and inferior product.

I told you what endnotes are and where the go. Just spend the time moving them so they are endnotes and not footnotes and you can create the ePub from there.

Last edited by JSWolf; 08-21-2012 at 06:48 PM.
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Old 08-21-2012, 07:05 PM   #7
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I have a title page. It says, out in the real world, "Castle Falcon by Tom Alan Brosz." That's all that's on that page.

This is what that single page (part0000_split_000.html) looks like in code:

Quote:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Castle_Falcon_9.5_EPUB_2012-05-24</title>
<link href="../Styles/stylesheet.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="../Styles/page_styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

<body class="calibre">
<div class="calibre1 calibre1" id="castle-falcon-9-5-epub-2012-05-24">
<p class="title">Castle Falcon</p>

<p class="subtitle">By</p>

<p class="subtitle">Tom Alan Brosz</p>

<p class="title-139877-0-override"><span class="no-style-override">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>

<p class="calibre2" id="calibre_pb_0"></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
No doubt some of that is noise. Some is certainly just comments or labels. Notice the "calibre" throughout. Which parts are doing useful work and which aren't? God knows. The point is I don't have the time to learn to program a book format at the code level if I can do it any other way to get a working result.

My current file reads properly using the PubIt preview, Nook for PC, Adobe Digital Editions, and Calibre's own viewers. If there's extra stuff in there, I'm not going to worry about it until it actually creates a problem.

If my job was formatting e-books for people, it would be a different story. But I've got my book out, and now I have to work on finishing the next one. On Microsoft Word. I really like WYSIWYG. I'm old enough to remember using Electric Pencil.

Don't get me wrong. Your advice and help are still greatly appreciated.
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Old 08-21-2012, 08:19 PM   #8
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Please stay away from Word if you plan on making an eBook. Word is an awful mess when it get converted. Even filtered HTML is really bad. And it does take a lot of work sometimes to fix the mess. The mess can cause issued changing the font style, night mode, font size and other issue can happen.

Just so no to Word.
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