03-08-2012, 04:25 PM | #1 |
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Problems with Springy and Mobi
I've generated my mobi file and it's up on Amazon - no prob. But when I try to get inside the file now to check out the html, springy tells me
<em>The archive is invalid or of a type that Springy cannot handle.</em> The file is complete - there wasn't a second's hitch uploading it to Amazon. And I can read it just fine on my Kindle Fire. So is there a trick to getting inside of this thing with Springy? |
03-08-2012, 04:43 PM | #2 | |
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(You can "unzip" the source portion of the output of kindlegen, but that gets stripped out before Amazon delivers the ebook to anyone) |
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03-09-2012, 10:06 AM | #3 |
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No, but -
I have two mobi files. One a friend did for me. One I did myself. Both were acceptable to Amazon. I can see the stuff inside of my friend's Mobi, and I've even edited the html and saved it, just fine. But the one I did myself, also acceptable, when I try to crack it open with Springy, won't allow Springy to open it. Both were generated by inDesign - hers on a PC, mine on a Mac. I'm wondering why Springy would work on one but not on the other.
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03-09-2012, 10:08 AM | #4 |
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Oh - and it wasn't made with KindleGen; my mobi is output through the InDesign plug in - that worked marvelously well. But could that be the problem, now I think of it? I've watched A-M's Lynda from start to finish, but it was done before the plug-in came online.
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03-09-2012, 11:33 AM | #5 |
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If you were able to open a MOBI with springy and alter the html inside... that was only the original source (x)html you were editing and not the MOBI itself. MOBIs have to be "rebuilt" each time from the modified source. There is no way (currently) to edit a MOBI (like you can edit the contents of an ePub).
I would guess your friend's MOBI (that you could open with Springy) was built with kindlegen. That's why you could access the source. Your MOBI (which you can't open with Springy) was built with the ID plugin and doesn't have the source package included. When you upload a MOBI that includes the source to Amazon, that source is stripped out before it gets delivered to anyone. Last edited by DiapDealer; 03-09-2012 at 11:36 AM. |
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03-09-2012, 12:56 PM | #6 |
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Ah. Okay. Springy presented me with this result from the mobi:
folder: META-INF file: mimetype folder: OEBPS I opened the OEBPS folder to find file: content.opf Text? file: gardener.xhtml Folder: Images And two files, the Css template and the toc.ncx So - this is the source material? Or a combination of source and binary file? When I used Springy to open MY ebpub (saved out of InD 5.5) I got the same first three items. However, when I opened the OEBPS, I got a number of files - I assume html files, since they have Safari icons - ordered stupidly - 1, 10-19 etc. Why would they program it that way, I wonder? It's so hard to use a 0 before the single digits? If I open one of those files I get (which you'd expect) a web page thing - not the presentation of html, which I assume I could get to by accessing source in Safari. I didn't like that. I really liked the way I could access it from my friend's .mobi. So are you telling me that if I make changes in the .mobi html - or for that matter, in the epub html - and save them, they will not be reflected in the uploaded file unless I generate a new file - no, wait, then I'd have to simply go back to the indd file and do the changes there? How stupid is this: I have a little icon I stick in when there are pauses in the narrative - I'd use a double return in a print file for that. But when I look in the image folder, even though each usage has the same paragraph style indicated in inD - each one of these things seems to have been given a DIFFERENT CSS styling? They're numbered with a fmt-1 etc. This really is junky html. That's why I stopped using Dreamweaver's user side and tried to write my own as much as I could. |
03-09-2012, 01:14 PM | #7 | ||
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Edit source... then rebuild the MOBI (whether that rebuild is done with the indd plugin, kindlegen, mobipocket creator, or whatever). That's how MOBIs are altered: change the source.... rebuild the MOBI... each time. You can't modify them on the fly. |
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03-09-2012, 02:30 PM | #8 |
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Well then -
That pretty much clarifies things. Hmmm. But with epub, you can mess around? Or is it the same thing?
One thing I'd LOVE to do is change the CSS and html for the stupid TOC - they use H1 tags, and the thing is gigantic. But now that I'm writing this, maybe they do it because fingertips are gigantic. So maybe I don't need to change anything. No. There is one thing that I wanted to be able to change - page breaks. I found code in the friend's mobi that allowed a good, dependable page break and I wanted to be able to add that to the html generated by inD. But then, maybe I could access that from inside InD. Hmmmm. Talking to myself, I know. I think, the way Anne-Marie talks about editing the code for epubs, I'm going to end up going to epub and converting anyway, then. You are wonderful for explaining this. But I've got SO much to learn. my head hurts. |
03-09-2012, 02:40 PM | #9 |
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By the way - how the devil do you subscribe to these things so you know someone's answered you?
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03-09-2012, 03:29 PM | #10 | ||
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03-10-2012, 01:52 PM | #11 | |
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03-11-2012, 01:29 PM | #12 |
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Thank you for your help. I knew that about double-returns. I've used them all my novel-writing life without a hitch, but in this arena, I have learned. But I'm glad you reminded me. That's why I created the icon - that has its own style. I just don't understand why the inD CSS felt it had to make a separate definition for each usage of the icon.
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03-11-2012, 01:33 PM | #13 | |
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I know that most of you already know these things. But there will be another person like me, floundering and looking for specific help - so I thought I should record here plainly what I had discovered. Last edited by barncat; 03-11-2012 at 01:36 PM. |
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03-11-2012, 10:11 PM | #14 |
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Yes, I use 7zip in exactly the same way when I want to make a minor change and preserve the layout. I can extract and then replace individual files that I edit somewhere else such as Notepad++.
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03-12-2012, 02:16 PM | #15 |
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You guys are very kind.
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