azw3 vs KFX to ePub

[Ebookus]

I have a book purchased from Amazon, is there any difference (with the final ePub) when you convert it from a .AZW3 file vs .KFX file?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

I have a book purchased from Amazon, is there any difference (with the final ePub) when you convert it from a .AZW3 file vs .KFX file?

You do not want the KFX. You want the KF8. You can then use the KindleUnpack plugin to shift the KF8 to ePub. Then load the ePub into the editor and use the epubcheck plugin to check for errors and fix them.

You can also remove any unused CSS, add in a cover if you want/need, and edit the code if you want.

[jhowell]

Yes there are differences. Which one is better for you will depend on your preferences.

KF8 (azw3) more closely matches the HTML/CSS formatting originally supplied by the publisher to Amazon. KFX is highly processed and the resulting formatting can be noticeably different.

KFX format taken from a Kindle app has image resolution and quality that more closely matches that supplied by the publisher. KF8 images are generally reduced in quality as compared with KFX. (However KFX taken from an e-ink Kindle device will have even worse quality than KF8.)

In some cases KF8 can have an associated AZW6 file that has higher quality images, close in quality to those available with KFX. An image merging plugin is available for calibre that can substitute those images into a KF8 file resulting in both HTML/CSS fidelity and good image quality.

[Ebookus]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You do not want the KFX. You want the KF8. You can then use the KindleUnpack plugin to shift the KF8 to ePub. Then load the ePub into the editor and use the epubcheck plugin to check for errors and fix them.

You can also remove any unused CSS, add in a cover if you want/need, and edit the code if you want.

Thanks for your quick reply, I have followed your advice regarding KindleUnpack and that seems to have worked great.

I am curious as to what errors would occur and what benefit one gets from deleting unused CSS, besides un-bloating the code.

Originally Posted by jhowell

KFX format taken from a Kindle app has image resolution and quality that more closely matches that supplied by the publisher. KF8 images are generally reduced in quality as compared with KFX. (However KFX taken from an e-ink Kindle device will have even worse quality than KF8.)

In some cases KF8 can have an associated AZW6 file that has higher quality images, close in quality to those available with KFX. An image merging plugin is available for calibre that can substitute those images into a KF8 file resulting in both HTML/CSS fidelity and good image quality.

This is a text-only ebook so no issue with images this time. Regarding the AZW6, is there any difference between downloading the KF8 file from the website (download and transfer via USB) vs transferring it from a kindle keyboard?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

Thanks for your quick reply, I have followed your advice regarding KindleUnpack and that seems to have worked great.

I am curious as to what errors would occur and what benefit one gets from deleting unused CSS, besides un-bloating the code.

If you are reading using Adobe Digital Editions/RMSDK (the underlying code for ADE) and the CSS has an error, the entire CSS is tossed out. If you remove unused CSS, you could be maybe removing something that has an error.

This is a text-only ebook so no issue with images this time. Regarding the AZW6, is there any difference between downloading the KF8 file from the website (download and transfer via USB) vs transferring it from a kindle keyboard?

You only have to worry about images if the eBook is supposed to have hi-resolution images. If the eBook does have hi-resolution images and is available as an ePub, buy the ePub and you will get the correct image sizes. Amazon plays games with graphics in eBooks.

[Ebookus]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You only have to worry about images if the eBook is supposed to have hi-resolution images. If the eBook does have hi-resolution images and is available as an ePub, buy the ePub and you will get the correct image sizes. Amazon plays games with graphics in eBooks.

I was thinking more about other books that do have images, I have a large Amazon collection already so won't be buying the same ePubs again, however for newer purchases I am relying more on getting ePubs.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

Thanks for your quick reply, I have followed your advice regarding KindleUnpack and that seems to have worked great.

I am curious as to what errors would occur and what benefit one gets from deleting unused CSS, besides un-bloating the code.

Oddly. I've seen very few CSS errors in ebooks downloaded from Amazon and processed by KindleUnpack. For the most part, despite Jon's endless comments, most of the errors that ADE will dump the stylesheet for are items such as missing ;'s at the end of a line in the middle of a class. It does a decent job of treating unsupported items as no-ops.

The benefits are mostly just un-bloating the code though since an epub is a .zip container, you have to do major surgery to see a noticeable change in the size of the epub.

I do some basic editing on my ebooks (removing absolute measurements, color codes for black or white text, setting the basic paragraph style to my preferences, etc.) but few require major surgery though one recent example had individual stylesheets for each paragraph that set the viewport size and nothing else while inline styles were used for all other styling. Deleting the mass of stylesheets and using Sigil's inline style converter worked rather well for that ebook.

Originally Posted by Ebookus

This is a text-only ebook so no issue with images this time. Regarding the AZW6, is there any difference between downloading the KF8 file from the website (download and transfer via USB) vs transferring it from a kindle keyboard?

I'm fairly certain that neither of those two methods will download the AZW6 file.

[JSWolf]

How would one get an AZW6 file for an eBook with large images? Would it need to be downloaded as KFX to the Kindle?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Oddly. I've seen very few CSS errors in ebooks downloaded from Amazon and processed by KindleUnpack. For the most part, despite Jon's endless comments, most of the errors that ADE will dump the stylesheet for are items such as missing ;'s at the end of a line in the middle of a class. It does a decent job of treating unsupported items as no-ops.

The benefits are mostly just un-bloating the code though since an epub is a .zip container, you have to do major surgery to see a noticeable change in the size of the epub.

I do some basic editing on my ebooks (removing absolute measurements, color codes for black or white text, setting the basic paragraph style to my preferences, etc.) but few require major surgery though one recent example had individual stylesheets for each paragraph that set the viewport size and nothing else while inline styles were used for all other styling. Deleting the mass of stylesheets and using Sigil's inline style converter worked rather well for that ebook.

I've been editing some eBook recently that has a proper CSS but for indents has inline styles. Very stupid and very annoying. Would Sigil's inline style converter create new classes because of these indents or would they be added to the correct class?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How would one get an AZW6 file for an eBook with large images? Would it need to be downloaded as KFX to the Kindle?

I get them from using K4Android. Not all ebooks have them even one that advertised as having hi-res maps. I ended up downloading the hi-res maps from the author's site (4 of them at ~15MB each). A great reason for sending that book to my Kobo as a kepub.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've been editing some eBook recently that has a proper CSS but for indents has inline styles. Very stupid and very annoying. Would Sigil's inline style converter create new classes because of these indents or would they be added to the correct class?

Sigil's inline style converter would add them as a rule in the created stylesheet. If you already have a style for the indent, you could simply use a find and replace in either Sigil or calibre's ebook editor. My main use for the inline converter is those idiots who created ebooks with nothing but inline styles.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sigil's inline style converter would add them as a rule in the created stylesheet. If you already have a style for the indent, you could simply use a find and replace in either Sigil or calibre's ebook editor. My main use for the inline converter is those idiots who created ebooks with nothing but inline styles.

Then I guess my way of editing the eBooks is best as it doesn't create extra classes. For example, I used Diaps Editing Toolbag to change <p class="para" style="text-indent: 5%;"> to <p>. It was very simple to do. But it should never have had to be done.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then I guess my way of editing the eBooks is best as it doesn't create extra classes. For example, I used Diaps Editing Toolbag to change <p class="para" style="text-indent: 5%;"> to <p>. It was very simple to do. But it should never have had to be done.

And when the entire ebook has nothing but inline styles (that is the situation the inline converter is intended for) do you generate a new class for every style in the ebook? Personally, I use the appropriate tool for the task and don't try to use a single tool for every task. For your example, if that was the only inline style in the ebook, I would use search and replace.

As for never having to be done? If the original ebook works and looks decent, the number of people who will dig under the covers to criticize the contents is pretty small. I've noticed that you also criticize the big publisher's who have a default stylesheet for including classes that are not used in the current ebook. After all, it might add a few bytes to the file size.

One person I chat with works with ebooks for a living. Their default corporate stylesheet requires that all paragraphs have a class attached. That just makes it easier for someone else to take a look at the book and not have to dig into the stylesheet to see if a paragraph should be indented. So not the <p> you love but <p class="noindent"> and <p class="indent">. After all, the zip file compression reduces the increase in file size to negligible when using repeated strings.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

Regarding the AZW6, is there any difference between downloading the KF8 file from the website (download and transfer via USB) vs transferring it from a kindle keyboard?

Downloading from the website can yield different results from what Amazon delivers directly to Kindle devices. For a device that old I suspect that they will be identical but I am not certain about that. Neither is going to give you AZW6.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How would one get an AZW6 file for an eBook with large images? Would it need to be downloaded as KFX to the Kindle?

No. AZW6 only comes as an add on to KF8. KFX is another thing entirely.