Getting table borders to work with calibre - Amazon's .mobi format (from InDesign):

[SoftwareManiac]

Using Amazon's Kindle PlugIn (KPI) v.92 a single-cell Note paragraph has a nice border!

Not sure you all can help me, but I am using some other tools to generate tables in .mobi format that you all support.

I can't seem to get tables to render correctly and I think my understanding of how .mobi supports tables is incomplete. Using InDesigns Export to EPUB feature and calibre to conver the .epub file to .mobi generates a similar table but without any borders!

In fact, any table I attempt using these tools never seems to be able to create any borders.

<table id="table-5" class="Note-Table">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="Note-Body"><span class="BOLD-1">Note: </span>This is a note that should stand out and reside in a single table cell with a gray background. Hopefully this will have some sort of standoff from normal text. Usually a caption does not follow a Note Table.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

In the template.css I made some simple changes (bolded) that should work, but instead the .mobi file does display the dark gray text color and the changed top and bottom margins (from 0 to 1em) as expected. The border style definitions are simply ignored (border:1 so it is very hard to visually detect that the multicolumn text is actually a table. I've tried all sorts of thing like changing the border-width and style as well as using a single border definition of border: 1px solid black; and yet nothing seems to work!

table.Note-Table {
border-collapse : collapse;
border-style : solid;
border-width : 2px;
border-color : #000000;
margin-top : 1em;
margin-bottom : 1em;
}

p.Note-Body {
font-family : Arial, sans-serif;
font-weight : normal;
font-style : normal;
font-size : 0.71em;
text-decoration : none;
font-variant : normal;
line-height : 1.2;
text-align : left;
color : #202020;
text-indent : 0px;
margin : 1em;
}

I have reviewed the v1.8 Kindle Guidelines and there appears to be no <table>, <td>, or any other definition specified so I am "guessing" how to create the HTML and corresponding CSS to work. My goal is to somehow come up with the right CSS code that allows me to put borders around the table and cells. I realize that using calibre to convert from .epub to .mobi may be at risk, but I think the conversion is pretty straightforward. Other feedback I've gotten from other forums indicate that .mobi is such an old format that I'll never get tables to look good -- I don't believe that since I have already proven that KPI produces tables with borders that look great!

Do you all have any suggestions as to what table CSS settings can give me a table border?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by SoftwareManiac

Do you all have any suggestions as to what table CSS settings can give me a table border?

Kovid posted in February of this year that as far as he knew, mobi doesn't support table borders. Are you sure you are seeing borders on mobi tables?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...34&postcount=2

[SoftwareManiac]

Yes, in fact, I took the Amazon Kindle Indesign plugin .mobi file from one of my InDesign documents and used calibre to convert it back to .epub. I got something like this:

<table border="3" class=.calibre33> text ...

The .calibre33 style definition has no special border info, just the inline <table> tag you see above. I can post either a screen capture or the .mobi file that the KPI v.92 produces if you'd tell me where to send it.

So, by your comment, it appears that calibre drops any border style definitions during a .mobi conversion, correct?

thanks,
Ken

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by SoftwareManiac

So, by your comment, it appears that calibre drops any border style definitions during a .mobi conversion, correct?

I don't use mobi and have no information about it, other than I've seen numerous threads on tables and mobi. All the info I've seen until now has been that mobi doesn't support table borders. Your post is the first I've seen saying the opposite. I can't tell you much more than that. Mobileread has a Wiki on mobi format, but there's not much info there.
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/MOBI#Format_limitations

Can you open the mobi to see how the border is defined?

[kovidgoyal]

MOBI does not support table borders as far as I know and as per the MOBI pocket documentation

http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...ile=tables.htm

[Starson17]

From the original post, where it said the border was on a single cell table, I suspected it was just a framed paragraph he was seeing, not a bordered table. That's why I asked if he was sure he had a table border. MOBI supports framed paragraphs, as per Kovid's link.

[Grey Ram]

Hi

I don't use InDesign, but I have produced a table with borders by hand editing html and using Mobipocket Creator with the following code

<table border="1" align="center">
<tr align="center">
<th rowspan="2">
<small><i>Número<br/>de la<br/>estrella</i></small>
</th>
<th colspan="2">
<small><i>1a coordenada</i></small>
</th>
<th colspan="2">
<small><i>2a coordenda</i></small>
</th>
</tr>
<tr align="center">
<th>
<small><i>observada</i>
...

The resulting table looks like the attached image.

I have tried using css with Mobipocket Creator, but the support is not very good and the support for tables is even worse. Anyway, I hope you find this helpful.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Grey Ram

I have produced a table with borders by hand editing html and using Mobipocket Creator with the following code

Do you see any difference with the border attribute set to more than 1? Does the border disappear if you remove the border attribute?

[Grey Ram]

Do you see any difference with the border attribute set to more than 1? Does the border disappear if you remove the border attribute?

Hi again

I've been doing some testing. The border disappears if I set border="0" or if I remove it, the width does increase with other values; see the image for border="4"

But it is kind of flakey, kindle previewer choked on the chapter with the table once, and I had to restart my kindle too during my tests (probably has to do with rewriting the same file over and over, but I'm not sure).

EDIT: one more note, with border="4" Kindle for Mac displays double thin lines instead of a thick solid one, and at border="5" the table disappears altogether. It shows ok on the Kindle though.

cheers

[SoftwareManiac]

Thank you. Yes, perhaps it is the CSS that is broken. I can go in and patch the <tables> to include a border attribute -- not a good way to go, but I'll let you all know. Hopefully a new version of calibre can fix that? ;-)

[kovidgoyal]

The border attribute is no substitute of CSS table borders. border basically controls only the presence or absence of a border.

[SoftwareManiac]

Ok - so based on my initial post. I use InDesign's EPUB Export feature to produce an .epub. Uncompressing the .epub I adjusted the CSS definitions to include what should have produced a table border:

border-style : solid;
border-width : 2px;

I tried all sorts of other CSS border definition combinations. None of them worked. Thanks to Grey's comments I did the unthinkable and added the border="1" to all the <table> occurrences in my HTML source document tag and re-compressed into a new .epub file. I ran it back through calibre to convert to .mobi and voila! It worked. Every table now has a border (including each cell). If I am missing a statement that I should put into my .css definition instead please let me know (I tried the "border : 1px solid black" and other variations), please let me know.

This is a kludge, but at least it makes tables look like tables again!

[SoftwareManiac]

Thank you guys! You all fixed it in 0.8.6. Next week I am definitely donating a wad of loot to the cause. I am extremely happy!

Software Maniac
author of Indesign to Kindle
Seattle, WA