08-03-2014, 02:27 AM | #1 |
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completely unable to change the cover page
Sometimes when you download a scientific PDF from a company, they add an advertisement to the first page that indicates what company provided the document as well as what University the person who downloaded it was from. Well, I wanted to put a similar type of thing at the start of some ebooks (EPUBs) -- even before the cover, I meant to convey that in my first sentence. And I'm really exasperated with the level of resistance that the software has given me in my attempt at accomplishing this. The two relevant features in Calibre's editor, as far as I can tell, are the ability to change the order of the xhtml pages by dragging them up and down the list. And then there's the right-clicking a page and you have the option to set it as the cover page. I think it's odd you cn set something as the cover page, even if it's not the first one, but oh well, I figured I'd just put my advertisement at the top and set it as the cover page and I wouldn't have any problems. And that worked...provided the application I used to view the ebook was SumatraPDF. FBReader and Mobipocket reader forced the cover image to appear first! and to make things even more complicated, the advertisement wouldn't even appear at all in one of these applications -- I forget which. It literally just completely ignored the addition. And I was repeatedly opening the same files in the three different applications, so I know that I didn't make any kind of mistake. And to make thinsg even weirder, I removed one of the books from Calibre and then re-added it -- I forget exactly why I did this -- and when I re-added it it gave me an error and said it couldn't read teh meta data, so I said "oh well" and manually entered all the meta data in, and I was surprised to see that one has the option to add a cover in metadata, which is in addition to Calibre's editor. And adding a cover in metadata totally overrided all my work in editor -- this time, even in SumatraPDF.... Unbelievable...
Last edited by u238110; 08-03-2014 at 02:29 AM. |
08-03-2014, 03:32 AM | #2 |
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If you add a cover to calibre metadata, you are saying you want to override the cover provided in the book. That is the whole point of calibre metadata to begin with.
When yo manually edited it, you replaced the cover with the ad? |
08-03-2014, 09:15 AM | #3 |
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I re-assigned the ad to be the cover and I made it first in line. And I've just had someone tell me that my ad does not show up in Adobe Reader. I imagine the metadata has been the issue all along: it was always over riding things.
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08-05-2014, 08:46 AM | #4 |
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So, there are three factors here. Ability to designate an xhtml file as the cover image; ability to designate an image file as the cover image; and ability to add a cover image in metadata. One wonders why Calibre gives a user the option to set a page and an image as the cover image both at the same time (I'm talking about right-clicking one of the listed xhtml files and rigfht-clicking oen of the image files). Anyway, I tried annhiliating calbre's concept of a cover image entirely by disbaling all of these, and even then I wasn't able to prevent the image from displaying first (once again, the image was on the second page of the epub). So, the first xhtml file was my text ad and the second one was the book cover image (although it wasn't designated as such, but rather just a page with an image). I also tried completely deleting the image entirely. Well, this got rid of the image and the result was that the ad appeared as the first thing in Mobipocket Reader and it did not appear in FBReader. And in case you haven't been following, SumatraPDF never gave me a problem and when my ad was set as the first page, it always appeared first, no matter the various nonsensical "cover image" configuarations. I also subsequently discovered that Calibre has its own reader and it too never gave me any problems. And I finally tested it in a first edition Kindle (which required converting to .mobi, of course) and my ad did not appear in the Kindle. what's interesting is that my text ad was entirely missing from the Kindle manifestation and the FBReader manifestation: I used the searches to search for the words in my ad and the searches revealed that my ad simply hadn't regsitered with the document. And I'l emphasize that when these same files were opening up in Mobipocket, Sumatra, and Calibre's viewer, my ad did register. Once again, the latter two were always just fine; Mobipocket always gave the image priority, no matter what.
I tried an interesting experiment. I started a brand new document in Calibre's editor and I simply created three pages: I put text on the first page, an image on the second page, and text on the third page. This is the format that I'm going for. Ad (text) followed by cover (image), followed by book (text). However this time it was as much of a clean slate as possible: just three simple newly created xhtml pages. And the result? Only the first page registered in all of the manifestations. |
08-05-2014, 09:25 PM | #5 |
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It is nobody's fault but yours if you try to do what ebooks are fundamentally designed not to do.
calibre will attempt to set the cover in each way it can be specified, which is the best way to make sure it works everywhere. The Kindle ebook specs say that cover.xhtml is invalid (and it will ignore them if they exist, I suppose, but there is no mobipocket tool in existence AFAIK that will create one) and thus conversions will always remove that in favor of using the metadata cover.jpeg in the appropriate meta field. You can specify whatever you want in an EPUB, if nothing else then by editing the raw text files -- that still doesn't mean any ereader/app/program will respect it. Especially if it runs counter to the accepted conventions. |
08-07-2014, 02:34 PM | #6 |
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How come when I created three xhtml pages in Calibre -- placing the words test on the first and the third and an image in the middle -- only the first page would load up in all of the applications?
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08-07-2014, 02:37 PM | #7 | |
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Quote:
An actual eBook, however, whether ePUB or MOBI, has STRUCTURE. Without the structure, it's either corrupted, or doesn't function, or doesn't (in the case of ePUB) pass ePUBcheck. It's not simply a set of "pages" carrying whatever is slapped on them. An ePUB is a container that has a spine, and has designated places (and meta, etc.) for each element that makes it work. What you are trying to do is to essentially violate that structure. And you're angry because it's not working? All you have to do is simple: make your "ad" an image. Then make it the first page of the book. That will solve your problem. You may find that using SVG solves this for you best, but a jpg or PNG will do. That fulfills the "need" of the eBook for the structure it requires, and solves your problem at the same time. But if you continue to try to put a file outside of the required structure of the book, it's not going to work. I mean, sure, it might work in a PDF reader--because the PDF reader doesn't care--but it won't work reliably. Use an image where the spine, etc., expects an image, and you'll have your solution. FWIW. Hitch |
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08-09-2014, 10:16 PM | #8 |
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Thanks for your info. But I think my last post needs a little more consideration.
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08-10-2014, 07:13 AM | #9 |
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The answer on the face of it would be the second page is majorly defective and stops the rest from being displayed.
This may not happen in any browser based ereader because browsers are very tolerant, the html being used, as explained by Hitch, for display. In ereaders, the html gives structure and if it is bad, then it will fail. |
08-10-2014, 08:42 AM | #10 |
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I just created three brand new pages in a brand new session in Calibre.
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08-10-2014, 07:00 PM | #11 | ||
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Quote:
As I said: eBooks have structure; they are not simply conveyances for displaying whatever you want, wherever you want it. I have already told you how to create the effect you want. I'm sorry it doesn't suit you (not sure why that is, either), but at this point, it seems that you are "square peg, round hole"-ing this. If you want actual help, post your "ePUB" here with everything, and let the good folks here take a look at it. Nobody can help you with this: Quote:
Post your test ePUB, and more than likely, you'll receive an answer. Or don't, and don't. {shrug}. The fact that this doesn't work the way you WANT it to, or THINK it should, doesn't mean it isn't working. Hitch |
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