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Old 04-15-2010, 02:50 AM   #1
Daddy Warpig
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iBooks, Table of Contents, Missing Cover image.

When reading in iBooks, at the top of the screen is a button that activates the Table of Contents/Bookmarks screen. The TOC is read directly from toc.ncx.

In landscape mode, across the page from the TOC is the cover of the book. Sometimes. Some books have one, the others don't. They show the generic brown book/white lettering cover.

I have delved down into the contents of several books, and I cannot find out where I can add this cover.

Any information will be appreciated.
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Old 04-15-2010, 04:18 AM   #2
pdurrant
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Daddy Warpig View Post
I have delved down into the contents of several books, and I cannot find out where I can add this cover.
It's in the opf file. there need to be a meta data entry identifying the content that is the cover image.

For example, if in the manifest section of the opf file you have

<item id="cover-image" href="Images/9781905946105.jpg" media-type="image/jpeg"/>

then in the metadata section you need

<meta name="cover" content="cover-image"/>


The id value in the manifest needs to match the content value in the metadata. name="cover" is required. That's how iBooks identifies the cover image.
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Old 04-15-2010, 10:09 AM   #3
Daddy Warpig
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Originally Posted by pdurrant View Post
It's in the opf file.
Thank you for the help. The "meta" value was indeed missing.

I want to say this about ePub: I have never encountered a file format so pedantically fussy about needless detail, while at the same time being so inept at providing clear definitions of those details.

ePub is more finicky than HTML, more finicky than CSS, more finicky than video conversion software (look at the encoding options of Handbrake), more finicky than audio software.

Conversely, ePub files are far more fragile than any of these, far more difficult to edit, far more easily damaged. That's insane.

Face it, books are just text (novels, that is, not comics, magazines, textbooks). One simple HTML file could provide all the features of ePub- reflow-able text, styled text, @font face, etc.- in a simple format any WYSYWIG editor can output.

More, it can do tables easily and embed images easily. Table of Contents? Named anchors. Allows for "arbitrary" linking, just like the toc.ncx.

Metadata in the <head>, a folder for images and a stylesheet (if you don't want the css in the <head>) and the damn thing's done. Zip it, change the extension, and go.

Simple. Easy. Robust.

ePub's morass of bizarre and Byzantine requirements to implement the simplest and most basic of information- text- is insane. For example, requiring multiple files and folders and mandating that one specific file be first in the zip archive.

I've been encoding DVD's for my iPhone. It's harder to add a cover image to ePub than it is to include 5.1 stereo and regular stereo audio tracks, subtitles, chapter markers, metadata, and a cover image in the m4v. This bespeaks an ineptness bordering on the legendary. It's appalling.
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