I made my .opf file w/ Text Wranger; could that be a problem?

[petercrowell]

Could the program I used to make my .opf file be the problem? I used Text Wrangler.

But the file does not work, or is not being recognized by Kindle preview.

The templates for these files worked just a year ago...

[xxy]

I'm afraid no one will have any clue if you don't specify it.

[petercrowell]

Hi XXY,

Not sure what you mean. I'm just asking if using Text Wrangler to create the files might present any problems. That seems clear as posted.

Thanks!

[susan_cassidy]

As long as it is a simple .txt type file, it should work fine. If it is more like a .doc file, then no.

[ATDrake]

I use TextWrangler and I have no problems.

Sometimes KindleGen can be picky over the stupidest things. Do you have the text encoding set to UTF-8 with Unix LF endings (and also have "use typographer's quotes" turned off)?

Alternatively, your files don't happen to be in a folder path that includes an # character anywhere in the path name, does it? I've found that KindleGen will completely ignore my NCX and other stuff without giving a warning if I have my files in something like, say "Blahblah series/#1 FirstBook" before compiling.

[petercrowell]

Hi ATDrake,

Thanks for your response. I'm sure you don't remember, but you talked me through the construction of my first kindle book almost exactly a year ago.

I've found two references to utf codes in the .opf file. They are:

The very first line, (also the first line of the toc.ncx file):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

and between the <metadata></metadata> tags:

<output encoding="utf-8" content type="text/x-oeb1-document"></output>


Thing is, I used the very same files you walked me through as a template for a subsequent book and it worked (still works) fine. So I tried it again with this book and it's not working.

Anyway, if the above info gives you any ideas, I'm eager to hear them.

Thanks again!

[ATDrake]

If you don't already have TextWrangler set to do so, you may need to tell it to default-output any files you create as UTF-8.

Go to Preferences/Text Encodings and select Unicode (UTF-8) from the dropdown, and while you're at it, Preferences/Text Files should be set to Unix (LF).

It's possible KindleGen may be choking on Mac line endings or a Mac OS Roman-encoded file.

If this is the case, you can check the settings on your existing files by looking at the very bottom of the window, where you'll see a bunch of info which turns out to be dropdown menus you can change stuff with.

The other thing you might try is creating a new OPF from scratch. It's possible that while you think you might have changed everything over from your template, there could be something that was missed, and that could be holding things up.

Also, check to make sure that your NCX has no superfluous closing tags or even tags which don't belong in an NCX, e.g. a </navPoint> end-tag with no beginning or a <div></div>. That's another of the things that KindleGen is picky about and will silently ignore your NCX without even an error warning if it finds one.

[petercrowell]

I've checked those settings as you suggest and they're all correct. But Kindlegen does return a warning, when I make the .mobi file, that reads:

Warning(parser):W3005: Found an unsupported text encoding. in file path/5keys.html

But it doesn't tell me what the unsupported encoding is and it does not reference a specific line in the file.

I'll scour the files for any loose code, and I'll rebuild the .opf from scratch, as you suggest.

Thanks again!

[ATDrake]

Check the 5keys.html file with TextWrangler. IIRC, KindleGen only accepts UTF-8 and Windows-1252 (and the new versions prefer UTF-8). The text encoding applies to the entire file, not just any one line.

In any case, since you've said that your TOC, NCX, and start points are all ignored, very likely something has gone wrong in your <guide> and/or <manifest> section as previously suggested.

Possibly Amazon has updated how they want things to be referenced in the OPF, and you may want to check against the latest version of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines to make sure your files are specified in the way that the latest KindleGen/Previewer want, if anything's changed since the older versions.

[petercrowell]

Well, I tried to create the .mobi file by dragging/dropping the .opf file onto the terminal with Kindlegen. It put me through a few rounds of errors, but I sorted them out and now it's functioning. It starts where I want it to start, and the Cover, TOC and NCX TOC buttons all work as expected.

It did say my cover is too small, however. So I'll have to fix that.

So far so good, thanks to your help ATDrake. Thanks so much!

[ATDrake]

Good to hear. Glad everything seems to be working okay now!

[petercrowell]

I should add, I'd previously been drag/dropping the html file onto Kindlegen. Could that be what I've been doing wrong all along?

[petercrowell]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

As long as it is a simple .txt type file, it should work fine. If it is more like a .doc file, then no.

Thanks Susan. Yes, it's all just regular .txt. This seemed like a stupid question when I first asked it, but I'm glad I did because it broke the log jam.

Thanks for your response!

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by petercrowell

I should add, I'd previously been drag/dropping the html file onto Kindlegen. Could that be what I've been doing wrong all along?

Yes, that would be exactly it. Without knowing that the OPF file exists, KindleGen can't add in the TOC, NCX, or start points, so you always have to aim it at the OPF (or an ePub) if you want those in your finished Mobi.

[petercrowell]

Well this makes my day. And I learned something!

Thanks very much again.