Note preview disabled?

[franklekens]

I've noticed that in some books containing annotation -- e.g. the Penguin edition of Tristram Shandy that I just bought -- the note preview doesn't work. Tapping a note always takes me to the notes page. It doesn't matter whether I download the book from the Kobo shop (as I've done) or sideload it via Calibre: both versions display this behaviour.

Have the publishers done something (either consciously or inadvertently) to disable the preview function in the notes?
I'm a little disappointed, because the preview makes it easier to quickly gauge whether the note (and Tristram Shandy is riddled with it!) contains information I actually want to interrupt my reading for or just some historical minutiae that I don't want to bother with for the moment.

(I guess that's one way in which the paper edition of this book will be superiour to the digital version. Not to mention the various typographical hijinks, of course. :-)

[davidfor]

The first thing is that it sounds like you are reading an epub rather than a kepub. The kepub reader can display footnotes in a popup. The epub reader cannot.

But, the treatment of a link as a footnote is a bit of a guess. It depends on how the link is coded, how the destination is coded and there relative location. This means that not all links that are intended to be footnotes will be picked up as such. There have been discussions on the details that have been worked out here. I can never remember exactly what the rules are.

[mathil]

@franklekens said that it happens with a book downloaded from the Kobo store (as opposed to sideloaded), so that must have been a kepub copy. I've had the same thing happen with a few of my sideloaded kepubs (converted via plugin when sent with Calibre) and I've always attributed it to issues with the code of that specific book.

[davidfor]

Well, @franklekens actually said it happened with both. But, I did miss the bit about the store.

It is probably the code in the book. But, without a copy of the actual book, there is no way to be sure.

[franklekens]

I've opened it in Sigil and got a whole list of warnings saying "
Cannot perform HTML updates since the file is not well formed:". So something is wrong...

Here's a paragraph from the first chapter (in the html structure, not the first chapter of the book). I think it already contains a footnote.


<p class="EB03BodyTextIndented" id="the00194">SIR,</p>
<p class="EB01BodyTextLineSpace" id="the00195">Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner<sup class="EBsup"><a href="chapter002_notes.xhtml#en-ch02-002-2" id="ent-ch02-002-2">2</a></sup> of the kingdom, and in a retired thatch’d house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health,<sup class="EBsup"><a href="chapter002_notes.xhtml#en-ch02-003-3" id="ent-ch02-003-3">3</a></sup> and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.</p>

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by franklekens

I've opened it in Sigil and got a whole list of warnings saying "
Cannot perform HTML updates since the file is not well formed:". So something is wrong...

Here's a paragraph from the first chapter (in the html structure, not the first chapter of the book). I think it already contains a footnote.


<p class="EB03BodyTextIndented" id="the00194">SIR,</p>
<p class="EB01BodyTextLineSpace" id="the00195">Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner<sup class="EBsup"><a href="chapter002_notes.xhtml#en-ch02-002-2" id="ent-ch02-002-2">2</a></sup> of the kingdom, and in a retired thatch’d house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health,<sup class="EBsup"><a href="chapter002_notes.xhtml#en-ch02-003-3" id="ent-ch02-003-3">3</a></sup> and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.</p>

If #en-ch02-003-3 does not point directly to an element, the popup footnotes won't work. You can also force it to appear as a footnote with epub:type="footnote" on the link.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by franklekens

I've opened it in Sigil and got a whole list of warnings saying "
Cannot perform HTML updates since the file is not well formed:". So something is wrong...

Here's a paragraph from the first chapter (in the html structure, not the first chapter of the book). I think it already contains a footnote.


<p class="EB03BodyTextIndented" id="the00194">SIR,</p>
<p class="EB01BodyTextLineSpace" id="the00195">Never poor Wight of a Dedicator had less hopes from his Dedication, than I have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner<sup class="EBsup"><a href="chapter002_notes.xhtml#en-ch02-002-2" id="ent-ch02-002-2">2</a></sup> of the kingdom, and in a retired thatch’d house, where I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health,<sup class="EBsup"><a href="chapter002_notes.xhtml#en-ch02-003-3" id="ent-ch02-003-3">3</a></sup> and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.</p>

The destination is probably more important than the link. As @geek1011 said, it needs to be an element, it can't be to large and it needs to be after the link. And probably some other rules I don't remember.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The destination is probably more important than the link. As @geek1011 said, it needs to be an element, it can't be to large and it needs to be after the link. And probably some other rules I don't remember.

To be automatically detected as a footnote, it must point directly to an element with under 5000 chars (but at least 9), and it must be after the current position in the spine (I'm not sure what happens if it's not in the spine).