converted mobi files with 5-way controller enabled for K3

[RachDvn]

Forgive this possibly ridiculous question, but I'm having a crazy moment. I could swear that I recently read somewhere that Calibre converted mobi's would now support the 5-way controller feature on Kindle, enabling the jump chapters feature. I've just run a conversion, and the 5-way controller is still useless.

Did I dream this feature up? (Sadly, it IS possible. This damn project of mine is haunting my dreams!) Or am I missing something in my conversion? Someone put me out of my misery...

~Rach

[RachDvn]

Ok, partially answered my own question. Maybe.

I ran another conversion of a different file, (call it "story 2") which was an azw to mobi, and the 5-way controller works for jumping chapters. I'm pretty sure that IS new.

However, the conversion mentioned in my first post (call it "story 1") was regarding a Word doc saved as html converted to mobi. That one is NOT supprting the 5-way controller. To test a theory, I just sent this Word doc to Amazon for conversion, then ran THAT azw through Calibre. Sadly, still no 5-way action. So, can I assume it's something inherrintly wrong with this doc? Although not done by me, I happen to know that Story 2 was originally created from a doc sent to Amazon, so I'm a bit baffled why it's working for some and not others...

Thanks and sorry for not having my head screwed on tonight...

~Rach

[Strether]

I think that in order for the conversion to mobi to give you the waypoints, you have to have a properly formatted toc in the file you're converting from.

Jim

[chyron8472]

What strether said.

I asked this question at some point, and Kovid himself said that the "chapter markers" will work properly if you have a properly formatted Table of Contents.


This means a few things for your conversion settings:

• For the original ebook, if you have working chapter markers and a working TOC, you should not have "Force use of auto-generated Table of Contents" checked, so that Calibre doesn't modify either the chapter markers or the TOC
  
• OR for the original ebook, If you have a Table of Contents, but no chapter markers, it's possible that the NCX file embedded in the ebook is missing, so you should have "Force use of auto-generated Table of Contents" checked, but also have "Do not add Table of Contents to book" checked in the MOBI Output section, so that the chapter markers use the NCX file Calibre created, but the book browses to the front of the book instead of the back, when navigating to the TOC.
  
• OR for the original ebook, if you have chapter markers, but no Table of Contents, it's possible that the NCX file is working, but whomever published the ebook didn't create a TOC. In this case, you'll need to have settings as though the chapter markers are not there in the original ebook, because when Calibre creates a TOC, it will restructure the chapter markers as well.
  
• OR for the original ebook, if you find that only some chapters have markers while others don't, it's possible that the NCX file has multi-level chapters. MOBI files generated from Calibre sometimes don't play well with these when creating chapter markers (from my experience.) In this circumstance, what you need to do is to convert the ebook to ePub; edit the ebook in Sigil; open the Table of Contents Editor window in Sigil and verify that the appropriate chapters are listed; then save the file and convert it from ePub to MOBI. This process should move the entries in the NCX file to all be on one level.

[cybmole]

my full sequence, for any source where toc is not right is this:

1. convert to epub in calibre with heuristics on & structure detect options on ( default) values
2. open & save epub in sigil ( check while open that chapters now have h2 tags, fix if not.) this is because sigil we build a toc, using the tags which step 1 heuristics should have added.

3. view epub with calibre viewer - should see a good TOC - if not, panic & figure out what's gone wrong.

4. convert epub to mobi with calibre - heuristics off ( as that step is already done)

5. view mobi in calibre viewer ( just to to check that mobi toc is OK ).

6 send to Kindle

[lyric]

Dear cybmol,

I am having problems with this for a certain book. Can I ask your advice?

I have followed your instructions to the letter. Up to part 3 everything works perfectly.

Except: the TOC I see for the EPUB in the calibre viewer is hierarchical. With major headings, (for parts of books) and then subheading (for chapters) underneath them. This hierarchy is indicated via a triangle - clicking on the triangle shows/hides the chapter labels for a given part.

Eg

Part 1
1
2
3
Part 2
1
2

etc.


Now, when I convert to MOBI, only the major headings are retained. The minor chapter headings are gone.

E.g. I only have

Part 1
Part 2

Do you know why this is, and how I can fix it?

Thanks a million,

Dan

[cybmole]

ok - hierarchical is because you have a mix of h1, h2 & h3 tags. the calibre viewer indents to show/hide the sub headers..

what to you see if you look at the mobi with the same calibre viewer - I'd expect to see the same structure.

NB kindle navigation does not jump to H3 tags, only to h2 ( & to H1 I expect)


check if your minor headings are h3 that could explin whey the are lost in mobi

you can easily change h3 to h2 in Sigil because Sigil will take care of matching end tags
so just find <h2
replace with <h3
in Sigil code view across all documents should do the trick.

as always, take backups beforehand.

[lyric]

Hi cymole,

The minor headings are h2 in Sigil. The major headings a "Normal" (i.e. h1) in Sigil.
I have checked the ncx file Sigil has generated, and all entries are present and correct (indeed the distinction between major and minor headings does not seem reflected in the ncx at all).

One thing which is notable is that the minor headings are roman numerals, which the default auto-chapter detection XPath might be having an issue with.

Really I just want Calibre to use the ncx file and not autogenerate its own TOC. It seems like Calibre is ignoring the ncx file in the conversion, doing its own autogeneration and not seeing the subchapters (possibly due to the numerals).

Many many thanks for your help and advice.

Cheers,

Dan

[cybmole]

normal is not the same as h1.

ti avoid confusion if the epub has an expllit toc , as an html page, I would delete that, so the only toc is the one which sigil will build from h tags.

that should go thru conversions ok.

AFAIK - calibre on default settings does not create TOC . It does try to tag chapter headers via heuristcs & structure detect, but it does not make a new toc unless you tick force generate....

i think the roman numericals thing is not relevant. once the h2 tags exist ( verified in sigil) then I know of nothing in calibre that will then remove them.

PS after reading a related thread - it could just be that mobi / kindle does not like/support nested headers.
so quick fix would be to change all h1 & h2 to h2 tags. You can still have different styles for what used to be h1 & h3, you'll just have to define & code them


you need to prcoceed carefully step by step.
1. be happe with epub toc as displayed in calibre viewer.
2. put all calibre settings back to default ( i.e. you don't want to have heuristics mess with headers if they are already sorted ) - convert your epub to mobi. - view mobi in calibre viewer.
your toc should be as before - i.e. you should be seeing identical toc in both formats, with same viewer. can you get that far OK ?

PS I am not hure how calibre viewer handles a choice of TOC i.e. if there's hard coned html one AND an ncx file both present. that's why I prefer to get rid of the hard coded one early in the process.

[lyric]

Deleting the hard-coded TOC fixed the problem!

Thank you very much for your help. :-)

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by lyric

Deleting the hard-coded TOC fixed the problem!

Thank you very much for your help. :-)

excellent -

meantime I was looking at "one I made earlier", which is also on my Kindle.
it has a mix of H2 & H3 in the epub and showed as nested. when epub is viewed.

when I view the mobi , the nesting has gone, but all the toc entries are still there in the calibre viewer).

on my kindle: menu - go to - toc on gives an active list which does contain also the h3 waypoints.

the 5 way is strange
e.g. in the epub I have this code

<body class="calibre">
  <h2 class="calibre2" id="calibre_toc_3">Part I</h2>

  <h3 class="calibre3" id="heading_id_2">Lelio Rising</h3>

  <div class="calibre1" id="calibre_pb_4"></div>

when reading normally on Kindle, I will see ( on new page)

Part I

Leilo rising

( both lines on 1 kindle page.)

then page break to chapter start

but the 5 way will jump to Leilo rising , not to Part I, & will show Leilo Rising that at top of a new page. I can't explain that

[RachDvn]

The file I converted last night where the waypoints are working, has no TOC. In fact, all the files I'm working with have never been published and don't have TOC's. They are the musings of many different writers in a creative writers group, and so were mostly all written in Word, saved as webpage, posted on our website. The files I'm converting have 2 origins.
1. Someone else then copy and pasted the story from our web page back into Word, and sent it off to Amazon for conversion, then emailed the azw files as attachments to me (about 500 files) to convert with Calibre so I can spruce them up.
2. I (stupidly?) volunterred to run the eBook conversions from here on out, and so have a second round of stories that I've been copy and pasting from our website back into Word, with intention of saving as filtered web page and converting to mobi.

I would assume most of the original docs/azws have no chapter markers at all. I've forced them with heuristics, which does now give me chapter breaks (most of the time). I've tried selecting "Force Use of TOC" but have never seen a TOC appear. I've attached a file (72 Hours) which has no TOC (and no options selected for a TOC), yet after conversion from azw, functioned with the 5-way controller. Admitedly, this is not the case with most files I've tested, but an oddity (About 2 in 10)

I've also attached a file, Binkie's Snapshot (Word and resulting mobi) that has chapter detection (thanks to heuristics), but I can't make a TOC appear, therefore still no working waypoints. I guess I'm not understanding what needs to be done to it.

I've had several recommendations to use Sigil instead of Word, which I may do in the future, but for the hundreds of files i have now, I think I'd loose my mind if I had to hand edit each one. I'm also a bit intimated by the program as I'm a bit over my head and the little I've played with it, can't figure out what I'ma ctually meant to do with it, lol. Sorry to sound like such a dunce.

If anyone has time to look at these attachments and help me untangle myself, I'd kiss you on webcam

~Rach

[RachDvn]

(referencing the previously attached "Binkie's Snapshot) While I couldn't get the TOC to create on initial conversion from zip to mobi I re-ran the mobi through Calibre with the same TOC settings selected and it DID create a TOC and 5-way controller is working like a charm. Surely though, there must be a way to get the TOC to function during the first conversion...

(I tried all combinations of "force TOC" and "do not add TOC")

[cybmole]

i think you will find that the Kindle 5 way controller works independently of what is in the toc and works even if the toc is mssing, because all it does is skip to the next header tag.

to see if Kindle thinks it has a TOC you need to go: book - menu - go to - then select the TOC option & it will them show you what it has.

I sort of gave up trying to understand when / how / if calibre builds TOC - I settled for convert to epub, then open + save in Sigil , then convet epub to mobi -which seems to consistently create a good one ( so long as H2 tags exist in the document )

[RachDvn]

Cymbole, I'm trying to take your advice. I've been trying to figure out Sigil...

I loaded the Word web page/zip into Calibre, selected heuristics to detect chapters, converted to epub, saved it, opened it with Sigil. When i select "TOC editor", nothing is listed. When viewing code, no h2 tags around chapter headings. What am I missing?

Here's what I'm getting in the epub on Sigil:

<p class="MsoNormal1"><span class="calibre3">Chapter 1</span></p>