question mark display on TOC on kindle3

[okidogi]

Hi,

I'm using a recent version of Calibre to convert the non-English rss feed to generate the book. It works well for the content of the book, but it displays "???" on the TOC on kindle3, on calibre ebook viewer, the TOC are well displayed.

I'm wondering if some of you also encounter this problem. Thanks.
btw. I'm also using --debug to see what happens, but I see no problems there, all the html files works good.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by okidogi

Hi,

I'm using a recent version of Calibre to convert the non-English rss feed to generate the book. It works well for the content of the book, but it displays "???" on the TOC on kindle3, on calibre ebook viewer, the TOC are well displayed.

The Kindle uses a font for its TOC that is very limited. It can't display the characters used in your ebook's TOC. I believe you need to restrict the characters in the TOC to only those that can be displayed by your Kindle, or change/modify the characters, or possibly change the font used by the Kindle in the TOC (I suspect this isn't possible, but don't really know. I don't have a Kindle.)

There may be no solution. Some additional searching will give you more info. Sorry I can't help more.

[okidogi]

Hi Starson,

Well, I used to use an older version of Calibre and it works quite well for TOC. I've no idea now it's showing "???" in TOC because of the kindle software auto-update or because of my upgrading of Calibre to version 0.7.18.

Originally Posted by Starson17

The Kindle uses a font for its TOC that is very limited. It can't display the characters used in your ebook's TOC. I believe you need to restrict the characters in the TOC to only those that can be displayed by your Kindle, or change/modify the characters, or possibly change the font used by the Kindle in the TOC (I suspect this isn't possible, but don't really know. I don't have a Kindle.)

There may be no solution. Some additional searching will give you more info. Sorry I can't help more.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by okidogi

Hi Starson,

Well, I used to use an older version of Calibre and it works quite well for TOC. I've no idea now it's showing "???" in TOC because of the kindle software auto-update or because of my upgrading of Calibre to version 0.7.18.

If you can find an older ebook that displayed correctly, test that on your Kindle and see if it can display the characters you need. I've read several posts saying that the TOC font used in Kindles have trouble with certain non-English characters. I doubt your problem is related to upgrading calibre.

[okidogi]

That's a good idea. I'll give it a try. A minor question: what's the difference between showing some regular "???" in the TOC and showing some squares if you don't set kindle decoding system to utf-8. It seems they are using some different mechanism in TOC and content.

Originally Posted by Starson17

If you can find an older ebook that displayed correctly, test that on your Kindle and see if it can display the characters you need. I've read several posts saying that the TOC font used in Kindles have trouble with certain non-English characters. I doubt your problem is related to upgrading calibre.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by okidogi

That's a good idea. I'll give it a try. A minor question: what's the difference between showing some regular "???" in the TOC and showing some squares if you don't set kindle decoding system to utf-8. It seems they are using some different mechanism in TOC and content.

I don't know. I've seen several threads relating to this issue (or a similar one) - the Kindle TOC won't display a non-English title/author and I'm just recalling what I read in those threads. I've never actually seen the problem. I vaguely recall that the TOC wasn't using the unicode declaration, but we'll need someone who knows this issue to step in. I don't think it's a recipe issue.

[okidogi]

Hi,
I tried the mobi book generated by a previous version of calibre, the TOC is good, no question mark. So I think probably it's the problem of Calibre, or my environment settings (I changed laptop...) or something else...

Originally Posted by Starson17

I don't know. I've seen several threads relating to this issue (or a similar one) - the Kindle TOC won't display a non-English title/author and I'm just recalling what I read in those threads. I've never actually seen the problem. I vaguely recall that the TOC wasn't using the unicode declaration, but we'll need someone who knows this issue to step in. I don't think it's a recipe issue.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by okidogi

Hi,
I tried the mobi book generated by a previous version of calibre, the TOC is good, no question mark. So I think probably it's the problem of Calibre, or my environment settings (I changed laptop...) or something else...

Was that mobi book generated by the same recipe that's failing now? If so, compare the two. If not, try using the same character encoding, the same characters, etc. in the recipe as worked for the other book.

[okidogi]

Yes, they are generated by the same recipe. And the same problems happens to the other recipes, both using utf-8 encoding. All the recipes generated "???" TOC that before worked well.

The first calibre I got from my other laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 and install from it's source. The newer version installed from Ubuntu8.10. Do you think there might be some problems because of the version?

Originally Posted by Starson17

Was that mobi book generated by the same recipe that's failing now? If so, compare the two. If not, try using the same character encoding, the same characters, etc. in the recipe as worked for the other book.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by okidogi

Yes, they are generated by the same recipe. And the same problems happens to the other recipes, both using utf-8 encoding. All the recipes generated "???" TOC that before worked well.

The first calibre I got from my other laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 and install from it's source. The newer version installed from Ubuntu8.10. Do you think there might be some problems because of the version?

I don't know, but you have one ebook that works, and one that doesn't, both from the same recipe. I suppose I'd be comparing the two, modifying a copy of the non-working one to bring it closer to the working one to find out what's going on. I doubt that it's a version problem, but I can't rule it out. Generally, version changes have very little (or no) effect on recipes, but it's possible there was some change. You can always install the older version and test the recipe with that version. Older versions of calibre are available at the source site.

[okidogi]

I download the latest version and it works quite good for TOC, so I think it might be a bug in version 0.7.18.

Thanks for ur help.

Originally Posted by Starson17

I don't know, but you have one ebook that works, and one that doesn't, both from the same recipe. I suppose I'd be comparing the two, modifying a copy of the non-working one to bring it closer to the working one to find out what's going on. I doubt that it's a version problem, but I can't rule it out. Generally, version changes have very little (or no) effect on recipes, but it's possible there was some change. You can always install the older version and test the recipe with that version. Older versions of calibre are available at the source site.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by okidogi

I download the latest version and it works quite good for TOC, so I think it might be a bug in version 0.7.18.

Thanks for ur help.

Thank you for telling me this.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by okidogi

I download the latest version and it works quite good for TOC, so I think it might be a bug in version 0.7.18.

Thanks for ur help.

One thing to remember... 0.7.18 is about 60 versions from what is currently available. It's often worthwhile to get to a current version, and see if the problem still exists before asking for help.

[okidogi]

Calibre is moving really fast ;-)

I agree that's the case. But for ubuntu users, the easiest way to get calibre is through the dpkg, where all the dependencies are fixed. I think probably it's better that calibre provide a source by itself so that the users could always get updated.

Originally Posted by PeterT

One thing to remember... 0.7.18 is about 60 versions from what is currently available. It's often worthwhile to get to a current version, and see if the problem still exists before asking for help.

[PeterT]

Um... it's just as easy to follow the install instructions on http://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux

Binary install

calibre has a binary install that includes private versions of all its dependencies. It runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Intel compatible machines. To install or upgrade, simply copy paste the following command into a terminal and press Enter:

sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer').read(); main()"