Suppose I wanted to make an epub???

[ProDigit]

I see,
Does that include pictures, or not?

While the HTML's may be software limited to this file size, I'm sure there are files hardware limited too. Some reading devices may not have enough memory to load up certain files, while maybe future ebook readers may be equipped with enough memory, to load up 10MB HTML files within a book.

I actually fail to understand the filesize limit for HTML's, as 280kB is quite a bit for text, but nothing for text/pictures and hyperlinks; and most reading devices have at least double if not over 32 times the memory to load such a file in their direct memory (like ram or flash)!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

I see,
Does that include pictures, or not?

While the HTML's may be software limited to this file size, I'm sure there are files hardware limited too. Some reading devices may not have enough memory to load up certain files, while maybe future ebook readers may be equipped with enough memory, to load up 10MB HTML files within a book.

I actually fail to understand the filesize limit for HTML's, as 280kB is quite a bit for text, but nothing for text/pictures and hyperlinks; and most reading devices have at least double if not over 32 times the memory to load such a file in their direct memory (like ram or flash)!

This does not include pictures. It is due to the file being loaded into ram memory all at once. Pictures are in separate files and only loaded when they are referenced from the text.

Dale

[Elfwreck]

The limit is about 40,000 words per HTML file, if there's no complex coding involved. (Some fanfic has more than 40,000 word chapters; while AO3 has recently fixed their ebook exports for extra-long chapters, at first they put 1 chapter = 1 html file, which froze up on my Sony. A bit of trial-and-error showed where the breakpoint needed to be.)

[JSWolf]

One of the reasons for this limitation is that Mobile ADE was first installed on a PRS-505. The choice was so that ADE could run with lesser hardware and it does as Sony was able to put a version of ADE on the 500.

[ProDigit]

Thank you for your valuable input guys!

I'm a little taken aback with the filesize limitation.

For the new testament,I managed to encode books upto 137kB per html, per bible book (that is without hyperlinks);but I suppose not to have any direct issues with that for now.

For the old testament, I surely will have problems with Psalms,as it has 152 books, and several hundreds of chapters.
In fact, I presume the pentateuch (first five books), will also surpass the 280kB size limit per book, which means splitting...
I don't mind splitting, just as long as it will be invisible to the end user (reading on his device).

The 280kB file limit (or 40k words) you mentioned, is it a software or hardware limitation?

Thank you.

[Elfwreck]

Firmware limitation for most of the ereaders. (Software, but not easily tweakable by the end user.) Sony readers can't read ePubs with larger than ~280kb HTML files; my PEZ froze up on some of them as well. No idea if Nooks can deal with them or not. Also no idea about phones, but for those, each PDF reading software would need to be checked.

The splitting is invisible to the end user, but most people who hand-code them put the splits where you'd put page breaks--start of a chapter or other major section.

[ProDigit]

Thank you for clarifying this!


Just an update on my progress:
I've ran into issues while making epubs, seemingly 7z does not work updating every epub.
I'll listen to the advise given to compress/make epubs with some pack, as some readers can read 7z compressed epubs, and others can't. So I'm reading up on that now...
So far the book I'm making is ready in HTML, hyperlinks need to be added but I wanted to do this after I know more about epub itself, and what makes sense and what does not adding as code within the html.

[ProDigit]

Hmm, yes...

What program should I use to compress a complete new epub?
I'm not too fond of command line programs.. Is there anything out there, free, that looks like 7z or winrar, but compresses the files as an epub (not compressing mimetype)?

Also, concerning the compression mentode, I am sure it'll be compressed less well than winrar or 7z, as they can use LZMA compression method, while epub seems to be limited to the aged zip / bzip2 compressor.

I looked for advanced Comp package, but all I could find is a debian package.
I'm running windows xp.

[ProDigit]

Ok,one of you guys is incorrect,
280kB equals 280.000 characters, 40k characters means a max filesize of 40kB;in which case I'm in trouble...

[HarryT]

Please read posts more carefully before criticising. It clearly says "40,000 words", not characters.

[ProDigit]

Words is very flexible. 40k 2letter words is a lot smaller than spell breakers.

Well, I'm testing some things on my reader, but still can't figure out why the title page works perfect, but when I replace the HTML file of the first chapter within the epub, with another html (which I name the same, and give exactly the same <head>, just a different text in the body), the page does not display.
It shows the amount of pages, but the screen is blank, and when I press next page, it says it's an illegal action....

I'm just trying to find out where the error is in my epub, no offense meant...

[Toxaris]

If you want to tinker with ePUB's like you do, stuff is bound to get broken. In any case, keep the validation tools close. Use the tools FlightCrew and EpubCheck to see if the ePUB is still structurally valid. It will tell you what is wrong with it if they think there is a problem.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Words is very flexible. 40k 2letter words is a lot smaller than spell breakers.

40k average words. If you have lots and lots of very short words, the word count will be higher. (It's often easier to get a word count than a character count for a given text.) The exact character count can be calculated--probably should be, if you want to put in lots of links & maybe other coding--but I haven't done that.

A quick check turns up that ~40,000 words is ~215,000 characters, including spaces. You'll have to experiment to sort out a more exact number.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

40k average words. If you have lots and lots of very short words, the word count will be higher. (It's often easier to get a word count than a character count for a given text.) The exact character count can be calculated--probably should be, if you want to put in lots of links & maybe other coding--but I haven't done that.

A quick check turns up that ~40,000 words is ~215,000 characters, including spaces. You'll have to experiment to sort out a more exact number.

The actual limit is the amount of memory available to store the XML "parse tree", so file size limits are only going to be approximate anyway. Really the best we can do is to say that if you restrict the size of a flow to a 280k file, or to 40k words, you should be safe enough.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The actual limit is the amount of memory available to store the XML "parse tree", so file size limits are only going to be approximate anyway. Really the best we can do is to say that if you restrict the size of a flow to a 280k file, or to 40k words, you should be safe enough.

Character count will be relevant if there are extensive links or other coding. If every paragraph has a link, it'll be a lot less than 40k words; most word-count systems will assume <a href="../Text/Lamentations05.xhtml#Verse15"> is two words, and the anchor point is one word--unless the program reads it as attached to the word itself.

An anchor point & potential links to every verse is a lot of characters that don't count as extra words to most programs. But an estimate like "200k characters and then wrap it up" would still work.