File is non-linear -- what does that mean?

[Paula-59]

Hi:

When I ran a check on my epub in Calibri I get a message saying one of the files in the spine is "non-linear" and it asks if it should fix it. This particular file is giving me grief -- I can't get the page content to appear in the flow properly. It should be the second-to-last page of the book but keeps showing up last, even when the TOC has it second-to-last. I always select "fix what it can" and it does and then says there's no problems but the page still remains in the wrong place. What does the "non-linear in the spine" mean? (It says some readers won't read it or will read it in the wrong place -- but why??? It's an html file with no syntax errors.)

Thanks for any help!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Paula-59

Hi:

When I ran a check on my epub in Calibri I get a message saying one of the files in the spine is "non-linear" and it asks if it should fix it. This particular file is giving me grief -- I can't get the page content to appear in the flow properly. It should be the second-to-last page of the book but keeps showing up last, even when the TOC has it second-to-last. I always select "fix what it can" and it does and then says there's no problems but the page still remains in the wrong place. What does the "non-linear in the spine" mean? (It says some readers won't read it or will read it in the wrong place -- but why??? It's an html file with no syntax errors.)

Thanks for any help!

It means there is a file that is not part of the Flow.
eg thumbnail

[Paula-59]

theducks: thanks for replying!

[jackie_w]

@Paula, re: non-linear

If you open your epub in the calibre Editor, then open the .opf file (under Miscellaneous in the File Browser) you will probably see something similar to the following "matched pair" in the manifest and spine sections

<manifest>
...
<item href="text/myproblemfile.xhtml" id="someid" media-type="application/xhtml+xml"/>
...
</manifest>
<spine toc="toc">
...
<itemref idref="someid" linear="no"/>
...
</spine>

To stop the file with id "someid" being non-linear you can either change linear="no" to linear="yes" or delete linear="no" entirely (it should then automatically default to "yes")

Non-linear files will display at the end of the book. When reading the epub, the rest of your text files will appear in the order listed within the <spine> section. So to fix your problem you will need to make sure you have your <spine> in the correct order and your TOC in the matching order. Correcting it in TOC only is not enough.

ETA: In case you were wondering, the order your files are listed in the <manifest> section is not important.

[Paula-59]

jackie_w: thanks for your help!