Last night KindlePreviewer made me cry...

[neufsix]

Hi !

For months, I've been testing my mobi files on my kindle 4. Everything was fine. Being a linux user, it was the only way I could test my new kf8 books.

Unfortunately, a friend gave me an old pc running windows XP and I decided to be humble and test what KindlePreviewer would make of my files. That was my mistake.

I've been crying since yesterday evening... Kindle for Ipad was bad but Kindle for iPhone was worst... They won't properly show a simple definition list...

Last night KindlePreviewer made me cry...

[DiapDealer]

Lists are notorious for rendering differently on different devices/apps. Kindle apps are notorious for rendering everything differently than Kindle devices do.

[neufsix]

So what should I you use for plays or poetry?

[DiapDealer]

Whatever you want. Just get used to it not looking the exact way you envisioned it looking on every device/app.

Oh, and stock up on tissues! We're still in the relative Dark Ages of electronically presenting anything that strays from straight-up, reflowable text. If special formatting considerations are critical (or you're determined to recreate exactly an electronic version of a physical script), PDF or one of the fixed-layout formats is probably your best bet.

Maybe someone will have more specific advice, because I assure you, you're not the first person to be beating their heads against the Play/Poetry presentation problem. But the best advice is probably going to be to prepare for disappointment, I'm afraid.

[neufsix]

Sorry ! I should rephrase that. What should I use specifically for Kindle for iOS in order to format plays or poetry? I'm mainly happy with my the results I get with the other Kindle versions.

Thanks.

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by neufsix

Sorry ! I should rephrase that. What should I use specifically for Kindle for iOS in order to format plays or poetry? I'm mainly happy with my the results I get with the other Kindle versions.

Thanks.

I don't have any suggestions for the specific formatting, but I do have a more general tip.

Kindle for iOS is MOBI7, but it tries to interpret a few bits of basic CSS such as colors, whereas the others don't. But for the most part, it's really, really dumb, with almost no CSS support.

Depending on how bad it is, you may want to construct a separate copy of certain portions for MOBI7 and use media queries to determine which one to show. For example:

<style type="text/css">
@media amzn-kf8 {
    .mobi7only {
        display: none;
    }
    .kf8only {
        display: block;
    }
}
@media amzn-mobi {
    .mobi7only {
        display: block;
    }
    .kf8only {
        display: none;
    }
}
</style>
<div class="mobi7only">...MOBI version...</div>
<div class="kf8only">...KF8 version...</div>

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

I don't have any suggestions for the specific formatting, but I do have a more general tip.

Kindle for iOS is MOBI7, but it tries to interpret a few bits of basic CSS such as colors, whereas the others don't. But for the most part, it's really, really dumb, with almost no CSS support.

Sorry, but that's not true. Mobi has no - zero - support for CSS. It just plain doesn't support it. The conversion tools (Kindlegen, Calibre) will do the best they can to convert CSS into the HTML tag attributes that Mobi uses, but puttting CSS into an actual Mobi file will get you nowhere.

[DiapDealer]

But just to be clear, Harry: the css technique described above is a perfectly valid way of getting Kindlegen to build the joint mobi/kf8 from slightly different sources (albeit in one document) for select sections. But you're right. It has nothing to do with a device/app parsing the CSS and deciding which portion of html to "show." It's about telling kindlegen which code to include in which portion of the joint mobi/kf8 (and which portions to leave out).

Just didn't want anyone to think the CSS technique described was invalid. The media queries are build directives, rather than display directives. The code intended for KF8 won't even be included in the mobi portion of the joint file--and vice-versa.

[HarryT]

Absolutely, no question about that. Just wanted to clarify that Mobi itself does _not_ support CSS in any form whatsoever.

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, but that's not true. Mobi has no - zero - support for CSS. It just plain doesn't support it. The conversion tools (Kindlegen, Calibre) will do the best they can to convert CSS into the HTML tag attributes that Mobi uses, but puttting CSS into an actual Mobi file will get you nowhere.

I'm not talking about in the raw MOBI file—nobody sane modifies those. I'm talking about CSS in the source content. Kindlegen translates more CSS than most of the ePaper readers reliably handle. The iOS version of Kindle then interprets the resulting HTML tags where some of the other readers would ignore them.

For example, in iOS, you can have font colors other than black and white. You can set background colors (which are handled to varying degrees in different ePaper readers). And so on.