Troubleshooting iOS sideloading from iTunes

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by ptmkenny

In the market I am working (Japan), there are far more iOS devices than anything else, so it's crucial to get the formatting correct on iOS. That's why I'm doing this.

Since most of your customers will most likely get a KFX file, you might as well install the Calibre KFX Output plugin and sideload KFX files to your iOS devices via the File Sharing function of iTunes.

[jhowell]

When Amazon introduced the KF8 (aka .azw3) format in 2011, the rendering engine for that format was not added to the iOS app, perhaps due to Apple's insistence on apps using the built-in Safari rendering engine for HTML. Instead that app uses a similar format (AZK/KCR) created for viewing books using a web browser (Kindle Cloud Reader). This causes books in the iOS app to be formatted differently from the other Kindle apps/devices in some cases.

In 2015 Amazon introduced another new format, KFX (aka Enhanced Typesetting). KFX is not based on HTML and the same rendering software is present in all Kindle apps and devices updated since then, including the iOS app. So if you publish a book on Amazon and it shows "Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled", as most books will, then iOS users running the Kindle app will receive the book in KFX format and it will be displayed using the KFX rendering engine.

However, this may not be relevant to you at this point. KFX is a language-specific format and I don't believe that it supports Japanese yet. So if you are publishing a Japanese language book then it will not support Enhanced Typesetting and will still be using the older KF8 and AZK (on iOS) formats. In that case what you have been doing makes sense.


Added: I have seen hints that Amazon is working on improving Enhanced Typesetting support for Chinese and adding support for Japanese. I don't know when.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jhowell

When Amazon introduced the KF8 (aka .azw3) format in 2011, the rendering engine for that format was not added to the iOS app, perhaps due to Apple's insistence on apps using the built-in Safari rendering engine for HTML. Instead that app uses a similar format (AZK/KCR) created for viewing books using a web browser (Kindle Cloud Reader). This causes books in the iOS app to be formatted differently from the other Kindle apps/devices in some cases.

In 2015 Amazon introduced another new format, KFX (aka Enhanced Typesetting). KFX is not based on HTML and the same rendering software is present in all Kindle apps and devices updated since then, including the iOS app. So if you publish a book on Amazon and it shows "Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled", as most books will, then iOS users running the Kindle app will receive the book in KFX format and it will be displayed using the KFX rendering engine.

However, this may not be relevant to you at this point. KFX is a language-specific format and I don't believe that it supports Japanese yet. So if you are publishing a Japanese language book then it will not support Enhanced Typesetting and will still be using the older KF8 and AZK (on iOS) formats. In that case what you have been doing makes sense.


Added: I have seen hints that Amazon is working on improving Enhanced Typesetting support for Chinese and adding support for Japanese. I don't know when.

One correction. AZK is not HTML based. It is a prelude to KFX using JSON.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ptmkenny

@jhowell Ok, maybe I have misunderstood how publishing on Amazon works now.

Oh, well, you are hardly the first. :-)

Yes, I intend to publish a book (KDP only, no print version).

This book includes some CSS with floats that I am using to make "speech bubbles" with faces next to each line of dialog.

I should be most curious to see this CSS and a batch of the matching HTML, if I may? You're saying that you're putting faces (images), floating to the left/right of text, *inside* a dialogue bubble graphic? Is that right? 3 elements, one a background image?

This CSS works fine on my Paperwhite, Android tablet, and the Windows and Mac Kindle apps, as well as Kindle Previewer. However, on iPhone and iPad, it's messed up. From what I've been able to tell from searching the net, the iOS apps use a different rendering engine than the rest of the Kindle family. Some things work and other things don't, and there's no documentation about what specifically works on iOS (if such docs exist, I would be very grateful to be pointed to them...)

No documentation worth a damn. Lots of speculation. It's all trial-and-error, for those of us that do this regularly.

You're doing this testing with the Preview MOBI? Sorry--I think you're not, right? You're not uploading the MOBI file (or whatever source doc) to the KDP, then downloading the Preview mobi, and testing that, are you? I can't remember what you said, in the initial posts.

And you're sideloading all of these? You're NOT emailing them to your device(s), right? (Emailing to any device will typically get you an unrealistic result).

May I ask, what's happening on all the KF7 devices, with this? I can't envision the original intent working very well, so what's your fallback coding? So that it degrades gracefully?

So, from what I read, I thought that the "right" way to test what an iOS device will see is to create an AFK in Kindle Previewer and then sideload it onto the iOS device. I have also tried emailing the mobi file to myself and delivering it to the iOS device-- this also works, but it delivers a file with different formatting than when I sideload the AFK (this formatting is also messed up, but in a different way).

The "mostly-right" way is to make the AZK, and yes, then manually side-load it, using the USB and iTunes, to the iOS device of choice. Don't bother emailing it to yourself, the result you will see will be misleading at best. Or sideloading the MOBI. Neither will work worth a damn. Only sideloading the AZK works to get you a mostly-realistic view of the end result. (Also--are you testing this on any first-gen iPads? If not, you should find one and you may want to take a Xanax or a drink, before opening the book....)

Yes, the iOS devices use a completely different rendering engine, and all you can do, pretty much, is use media-queries, but even then, you cannot format the entire book to work perfectly on all the devices, if your results are skewing this much, between the KF8s you've tested and the iOS you've tested, unfortunately. There are some things you *can* do--and some you can't. And no way, of course, to segregate the buyers/books. You can't make one file for iOS owners, one for Fire owners, etc. That's what the Media Queries are for--but I'm assuming you know that, based on what you've said so far.

In the market I am working (Japan), there are far more iOS devices than anything else, so it's crucial to get the formatting correct on iOS. That's why I'm doing this.

Well...so? It's certainly that way in the US, but that doesn't affect the overall reality of where people are reading MOBI books. No doubt about it, there must be more iPhones, in the USA, than Kindles. More iPhones and iPads, no doubt about it. But if I were a betting man, I'd say that the vast majority of Kindle books are NOT read on iOS devices. Not all in. Dunno if Kindles are an endangered species, in Japan, but...I don't see the numbers in terms of majority being any different. If you think that everyone reads on iPhones, then perhaps you should be publishing this to iBooks?

I'm trying to envision what you've described (as the book), in the Kindle app on an iPhone...

Hitch

[ptmkenny]

Thanks everyone. I really went down a rabbit hole after I started researching KFX, which does not support Japanese at this time.

Reading Guido Henkel's book "Zen of eBook Formatting" convinced me to dramatically reduce the complexity of my HTML and CSS. I didn't realize how lacking the rendering implementations are, which immediately reminded me of the time I had to work around IE6...

I now have most of what I want working on iOS, Mac/Windows, and the Paperwhite.

The trickiest thing was to do speech bubbles like you see in a chat app. Due to a lack of support for CSS positioning, I ended up implementing each bubble as a paragraph with drop caps (using the chat avatar icon instead of a capital letter), which looks reasonably close to a chat and doesn't break.

Thanks again for setting me the right down the right path!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ptmkenny

Thanks everyone. I really went down a rabbit hole after I started researching KFX, which does not support Japanese at this time.

Reading Guido Henkel's book "Zen of eBook Formatting" convinced me to dramatically reduce the complexity of my HTML and CSS. I didn't realize how lacking the rendering implementations are, which immediately reminded me of the time I had to work around IE6...

I now have most of what I want working on iOS, Mac/Windows, and the Paperwhite.

The trickiest thing was to do speech bubbles like you see in a chat app. Due to a lack of support for CSS positioning, I ended up implementing each bubble as a paragraph with drop caps (using the chat avatar icon instead of a capital letter), which looks reasonably close to a chat and doesn't break.

Thanks again for setting me the right down the right path!

And those are working in KF7?

Hitch

[ptmkenny]

@Hitch I have no idea, but KF7 devices were never sold in Japan and, to my knowledge, Japanese language support began with KF8.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ptmkenny

@Hitch I have no idea, but KF7 devices were never sold in Japan and, to my knowledge, Japanese language support began with KF8.

So, these will only be sold in the JA store? If you said that earlier, and I missed it, my apologies.

Hitch

[ptmkenny]

@Hitch Most likely the books will only be sold on the Japan store, but even if they are sold on other stores, I imagine it will not be a problem because (as far as I know) KF7 does not support the Japanese language anyway, so no Japanese books work on those devices.

I have a second generation Kindle and it can't open any of the Japanese language books in my Amazon account.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ptmkenny

@Hitch Most likely the books will only be sold on the Japan store, but even if they are sold on other stores, I imagine it will not be a problem because (as far as I know) KF7 does not support the Japanese language anyway, so no Japanese books work on those devices.

I have a second generation Kindle and it can't open any of the Japanese language books in my Amazon account.

Yes, but...that was kind of my point. Amazon won't preclude folks from buying those, any more than they stop people with DXes or K2s from buying books in Cyrillic, which work about the same as I'd expect a book in Japanese to work. That's just not how they roll. AT least, not the last time I looked. As Japanese is now a supported language, perhaps they will but if it's not working on your K2...then I question what they mean when they say "supported.' Usually, that means that they've added the Unicode and character sets for the language to work on the KF7s, too.

But, I guess we'll find out when you/your client publishes. It would be good if you could keep us updated on it.

Hitch