PNG in KF8 yet?

[Oxford-eBooks]

HANG ON HANG ON HANG ON..... I think I've found an alternate glyph that I can use in place of the toublesome one the customer was using. KP3 likes it. If Only I can convince tham that this one is so much better than the one they used. They can have their striped tables back

... though I'm not gonna get the day spent on this back though. Ah well, c'est la vie!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Oxford-eBooks

Hmmm.. I thought I saw a thread recently (dont ask me which) where someone said that you can't rely on embedded fonts. Might have been an iOS thing? I've not had problems embedding fonts in the past.

Hilariously: All but ONE of the icons are found in a font that I embedded, but one of them had to be taken from a different font and wouldn't render. Would have gotten away with it ALL if it hadn't been for that one pesky glyph!

Oh, the shaded table rows work just peachy on KP3 not a problem AT ALL.

I would make sure that you test on things other than KP3, just to be on the safe side. KP3 is...it's almost a browser-renderer. Don't get me wrong, it can be very reliable in lots of ways, but you will get performance and alignment and other things in KP3 that you don't get in the wild.

And of course, make sure you test in KP2.9x, too, in the DX emulation, for the KF7s still loose out there.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

The problem is that Mobi will not work with embedded fonts. So if you are relaying on font(s), then you are screwed.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is that Mobi will not work with embedded fonts. So if you are relaying on font(s), then you are screwed.

Jon:

And what "mobi" file are you talking about? The KF8 mobi most certainly will, but she can never upload it now, b/c a reflowable MOBI can't intake any longer.

So it's moot. She can upload an FXL MOBI or an ePUB (or zipped HTML, etc.)

Not sure why you're even mentioning MOBI and embedded fonts, really. The older (KF8 aka "dual" thanks to Calibre) MOBI-style files are being created from the uploaded ePUBs, for distro to the older devices (DX, etc.).

Hitch

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Oxford-eBooks

What I'm currently finding is that I have a table with shaded backgrounds on alternate rows.

You could also create zebra striping with pseudo selectors not listed in the Kindle Publishing Guidelines.
For an example, see the screenshot of a KF8 book taken with my old Paperwhite 2. The epub2 source file is here.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Jon:

And what "mobi" file are you talking about? The KF8 mobi most certainly will, but she can never upload it now, b/c a reflowable MOBI can't intake any longer.

So it's moot. She can upload an FXL MOBI or an ePUB (or zipped HTML, etc.)

Not sure why you're even mentioning MOBI and embedded fonts, really. The older (KF8 aka "dual" thanks to Calibre) MOBI-style files are being created from the uploaded ePUBs, for distro to the older devices (DX, etc.).

Hitch

Doesn't Amazon still convert to Mobi for the older Kindles or has that been done away with?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Jon:

And what "mobi" file are you talking about? The KF8 mobi most certainly will, but she can never upload it now, b/c a reflowable MOBI can't intake any longer.

So it's moot. She can upload an FXL MOBI or an ePUB (or zipped HTML, etc.)

Not sure why you're even mentioning MOBI and embedded fonts, really. The older (KF8 aka "dual" thanks to Calibre) MOBI-style files are being created from the uploaded ePUBs, for distro to the older devices (DX, etc.).

Hitch

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Doesn't Amazon still convert to Mobi for the older Kindles or has that been done away with?

The answers are in the post you quoted.

amazon still supplies MOBI to devices that need it but does not accept it from authors/publishers.

People have been asking you to actually read posts that you reply to. Are you ever going to start doing so?

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Oxford-eBooks

Hilariously: All but ONE of the icons are found in a font that I embedded, but one of them had to be taken from a different font and wouldn't render. Would have gotten away with it ALL if it hadn't been for that one pesky glyph!

What, exactly, are the symbols (and tables) you're trying to reproduce?

(Show us images of the PDF pages.)

Originally Posted by Oxford-eBooks

Oh, the shaded table rows work just peachy on KP3 not a problem AT ALL.

A "shaded table" with transparent PNG? That just sounds like it's asking for trouble once users fiddle with their settings.

(I hate websites that do that with my color overrides.)

(Also, images-of-tables... poor idea. Better to do actual HTML tables. See my detailed topics below.)

Originally Posted by Doitsu

You could also create zebra striping with pseudo selectors [...]

Yes, that is also a possibility.

Originally Posted by Oxford-eBooks

Oh bother and heck. Transparent PNGs still not reliably supported in 2022?

Amazon/Kindles have had oddities with transparency for years.

See my famous:

• 2013: "Tutorial: Formulas to PNG"

where I tested out various types of transparency.

And like Hitch said, Kindlegen always converted PNG + changed to white background too.

Calibre to MOBI/KF8 was able to somehow generate them fine... but Kindlegen (and Amazon's official ingestion system), nope.

Originally Posted by Oxford-eBooks

What I'm currently finding is that I have a table with shaded backgrounds on alternate rows. There are PNG icons (nicely made with transparent backgrounds). BUT... on the white background lines, SOME of the PNGs have aquired the background colour of the shaded cells!!!

[...]

Just gonna have to drop the alternate shading and face the customer.

I'm going to channel my inner-JSWolf here...

Zebra Striping (coloring alternate rows) is garbage.

Do not use it, do not promote it, do not continue spreading those abominations.

See the fantastic GIF: "How to make your tables less terrible".

Also see my posts in:

• 2021: "Formatting tables best practices"

and my recent post yesterday in:

• "<caption> In Tables"

If you want even more examples, see my recent comments in:

• /r/LibreOffice: "Remove gaps between Borders"

So many people create "table-like graphics" + think it "looks nice", but in actuality, they're doing a complete disservice to their underlying data.

[Oxford-eBooks]

@tex2002ans: Yep to all above... though zerbra striped tables are kind of "okay" IMO. Not one of those pineapple on pizza things for me. I used alternating classes for the <tr>s rather than even CONSIDERING doing it the fancy automatic CSS pseudo-selector way, which I imagined would be far to exotic for Kindle pipeline.
Bottom line is that it's all workled out nicely. I found an alternate glyph that renderd properly, it was some out-there wierd one. Life's too short for that, the alternative is just fine so it's all lovely TEXT in the tables and looks just peachy now.
The client WAS urging me to just take a short cut and sample the tables as images but I stood my ground on that as there are external hyperlinks in there which would... well, I'll leave you to imagine the uproar from the consumers and maybe even Amazon QA.

Thanks for the links: I'll look at those over a BIG coffee when I get a quiet moment... "quiet" ha! A client just droped 100 titles on me. Mustn't grumble though, they're for a really cool kids TV series.

Oh, and thanks to all the other contributors in this thread. I only really come onto here when I'm stuck with something, you guys always come up with the goods.

Eyebrows still firmly raised on discovering that the image conversion inherits the background colour rather than just going to white.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

The answers are in the post you quoted.

amazon still supplies MOBI to devices that need it but does not accept it from authors/publishers.

People have been asking you to actually read posts that you reply to. Are you ever going to start doing so?

The problem is that my post was correct and the reply was wrong.

I never said anything about uploading Mobi. I know Amazon does not accept that as a format. But given that Amazon still converts to Mobi for older Kindles, doing things like embedding fonts to get a specific character won't work even though it works for KF8/KFX.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is that my post was correct and the reply was wrong.

I never said anything about uploading Mobi. I know Amazon does not accept that as a format. But given that Amazon still converts to Mobi for older Kindles, doing things like embedding fonts to get a specific character won't work even though it works for KF8/KFX.

Jon:

Are you actually saying that MY reply was wrong? And where is it, exactly, that you are certain that Amazon is still converting files to MOBI, as opposed to already having old, KF8-MOBI files for extant files?

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Jon:

Are you actually saying that MY reply was wrong? And where is it, exactly, that you are certain that Amazon is still converting files to MOBI, as opposed to already having old, KF8-MOBI files for extant files?

Hitch

Wrong in that you misread what I wrote. Not wrong otherwise.

I was talking about Mobi that you download if you have an old Kindle. Not about uploading Mobi.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Wrong in that you misread what I wrote. Not wrong otherwise.

I was talking about Mobi that you download if you have an old Kindle. Not about uploading Mobi.

Yabbut, Jon, you have no way of knowing the when there.

You don't know if that was made at the original upload, or newly.

IME, for whatever this is worth--the format that is cranked out, during the PW (the Publishing workflow) by Amazon/KDP, when the file is originally uploaded, is the lifetime format for that book, unless Amazon takes specific steps. I believe that we (MR-ers) all kind of discussed this, some time back when KFX was first introduced.

We discussed whether the books sitting on the KDP shelves, so to speak, would upgrade to KFX and ET (Enhanced Typesetting) or not. Now...I've seen examples of both. Those that did (and I know that MOBIs were uploaded, "back in the day") and those that didn't. I can't know if the customer did something that promulgated this.

I don't think we can genuinely say. Hell, Jon, when did you last download a bona fide MOBI from Amazon? Do you mean AZW?

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yabbut, Jon, you have no way of knowing the when there.

You don't know if that was made at the original upload, or newly.

IME, for whatever this is worth--the format that is cranked out, during the PW (the Publishing workflow) by Amazon/KDP, when the file is originally uploaded, is the lifetime format for that book, unless Amazon takes specific steps. I believe that we (MR-ers) all kind of discussed this, some time back when KFX was first introduced.

We discussed whether the books sitting on the KDP shelves, so to speak, would upgrade to KFX and ET (Enhanced Typesetting) or not. Now...I've seen examples of both. Those that did (and I know that MOBIs were uploaded, "back in the day") and those that didn't. I can't know if the customer did something that promulgated this.

I don't think we can genuinely say. Hell, Jon, when did you last download a bona fide MOBI from Amazon? Do you mean AZW?

Hitch

I downloaded a Mobi (AZW) on October 18, 2022.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I downloaded a Mobi (AZW) on October 18, 2022.

Also Kindle DXG, DX, KK2 and earlier and KK3 on earlier FW all get KF7 downloads even if upload was epub.
Some old titles certainly are KF7 even when downloaded to PW3 or Oasis gen2, in the last year.

I always use Download to PC for USB transfer.