How to remove TOC completely using Sigil

[Ned]

I have an epub book I created with Sigil, complete with TOC made using Generate Table of Contents command under Tools.
Works fine, and uploaded to KDP for Kindle book with no problem.

I now want to use it to generate a Paperback using KDP, but KDP renders the printed contents list inaccurately for items over 99 - it's a book of poems, and in the KDP proof TOC, items 100 and above are indented by six or seven spaces and spoil the look.

As an alternative, I thought I would remove the TOC altogether and replace with an unlinked list of poems, but must have missed something.

I edited out all the contents of the TOC using Code/HTML view, pasted in a text List of Poems and changed the name TOC to List of Poems.
But KDP is now rejecting it - Error - while not telling me what is wrong.

I did notice I still have a file toc.ncx there, which it will not let me remove.

Can anyone please spot what else I need to do to remove all trace of the TOC and its links?

Thank you.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by Ned

I did notice I still have a file toc.ncx there, which it will not let me remove.

According to the EPUB2 specs, an NCX is mandatory and can't be removed.

[KevinH]

If this is epub2, then your html TOC is probably still set as the toc in your opf guide. In Sigil's BookBrowser, if you hover the mouse over your html toc file, what "semantics" are set?

The NCX is required in epub2. You control what gets put there by your use of h1, h2 , h3 tags throughout your epub.

[jhowell]

Formatting for a print book has different concerns than for an ebook. I suggest that you convert your EPUB to a word processor format such as DOCX and use a page oriented program like MS Word to produce a print ready PDF for publishing.

[Ned]

Thanks for looking guys.

Yes I know that I shouldn't start from here, but this is where I'm at and KDP has given me a great result with the one small hiccup on how it presents TOC entries over 99. So while I know to approach future ones differently, I can't face redoing this one.

I was perhaps looking for something that doesn't exist - a flag or marker to set that nullifies the TOC system so I can have my own list of contents in text at the back.
I thought it would be easiest to just remove the TOC but no such luck.

KevinH, if I hover over toc.html, it shows me toc.html [nav] - is that semantics?

[KevinH]

Are you making an epub3 or an epub2? The semantics set for for an epub2 html table of contents is typically the string "toc". The string "nav" is used in epub3.

If you are making an epub3, thn the NCX file is optional and can be removed. The NAV is a xhtml replacement that needs a particular structure so it is machine readable like the old xml NCX was.

Again in Sigil, your choice of where you elect to put heading tags (h1, h2, h3, ...) determines the entries in the NAV when you create it but you are free to edit those entries.

So I am still not sure exactly what the issue is other than Kindle's limit of 99 entries in a machine readable NAV or NCX but surely there is a hierarchy or natural structure of some sort that can represent what you want in less than 99 entries.

[Ned]

Kevin, it's actually an epub 3 which I made by accident, and it won't let me convert to epub 2. Doesn't need to be epub3 at all, I set it wrong when I first started.

Sadly I'm stuck with 100.
Each of my poem titles is H1, and I have 100 of those, hence the TOC goes over 99.
I could change it to 99, but have my cover already with 100 on it

So the printed TOC reads:
98sPoem98
99sPoem99
100sssssssPoem100
Where s = a space character

The KDP software doesn't handle converting it to print properly and puts the extra indents in, which is why I thought of removing it altogether and putting in a simple Index of Poems in text.

It won't let me delete the toc.ncx file

Just so I get it clear, given where I'm starting from, is there actually no way to remove the TOC and its associated bits and pieces and leave a working file?

[Turtle91]

There is a Sigil plug-in to convert to ePub 2.

If you must stick with epub3 one possibility is to create your ncx (xhtml) toc with all of your links in there - no limit - and have your nav link to main items:

Cover
Dedication
List of Poems (ncx file)
Acknowledgements
Authors Note
Copyright

[KevinH]

In epub3 with recent Sigil versions you should be able to use BookBrowser to delete the toc.ncx file but on an epub 3 that file's function has been replaced with a specially structured xhtml file usually called nav.xhtml (but sometimes toc.xhtml) that has been identified by semantics as the file to be machine read by the reader.

If I were you, I would use Sigil's Epub3 tools to delete the ncx, then create a pure xhtml toc (not meant to be machine readable but human readable) using the Create HTML Table of Contents menu.

Edit that table of contents to create your list for the human reader.

But that still leaves the limit of 99 for Kindles. The only way to fix that is to organize the nav to have less than 100 entries. You can do that be creating some useful structure in your document for the poems and making those structure entries h1, and reducing the others to lower headings.

Isn't there some natural structure you can use for the poem collection? Could you organize them by poet, or time, or into subject matter groupings, or style groupings, or even metre groupings? Then create new HTML chapters for each of those groupings, give them h1 headings, and replace individual poem headings to some lower heading or use a paragraph and style based heading. Each of those new chapter groupings could start with links to all of the poems that fit that category (ie provide a short table of contents).

The recreate the toc, and use the TOC Editor to hide any lower heading entries.

The user then sees your html toc and can access any poem by a short click while the nav is then used to navigate to the major grouping chapters which should be far fewer than the 99 limit.

There are example saved searches in Sigil to mass demote or promote headings to make this easier.

My 2 cents...

BTW if you are uncomfortable with epub3, there is a Sigil plugin that will allow you to create a epub2 from it (from Doitsu I think).

[Ned]

Thank you. That's very helpful.
I'll look at restructuring.

[Ned]

Final update for those who helped:

I created a new empty epub2 in Sigil, copied the css from the original, then spent half an hour copy and pasting the html pages from my original to the new one.
Then added an Index of Poems as a text page at the end of the book.
Did NOT tell it to Generate a TOC.
Saved and uploaded to KDP which accepted it and the proof reads exactly as it should do.
So the paperback should be fine now.

Thanks again all

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Ned

Final update for those who helped:

I created a new empty epub2 in Sigil, copied the css from the original, then spent half an hour copy and pasting the html pages from my original to the new one.

An EPUB is pretty much a "ZIP" file + a few little extras.

So you could have unzipped your book:

1. Take your .epub + rename to .zip:

- Example.Book.epub
- Example.Book.zip

Then unzip it using whatever you use for ZIP files.

Inside, you'd see folders with your HTML+CSS files:

- ../Text/Chapter01.xhtml
- ../Text/Chapter02.xhtml
- ../Styles/style.css

* * *

In Sigil, you'd then be able to:

1. Create new EPUB2 book.

2. File > Add Existing Files.

3. Go to the folder where you unzipped the book, and find your HTML files. Add them.

Then you wouldn't have had to manually copy/paste everything over.

[Ned]

Thank you Tex, that's good to know. I'd never have guessed it was so easy.
I knew epub was zip, but assumed some secret jiggery pokery inside linked it all together.
Would have saved me some work

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Ned

Final update for those who helped:

I created a new empty epub2 in Sigil, copied the css from the original, then spent half an hour copy and pasting the html pages from my original to the new one.
Then added an Index of Poems as a text page at the end of the book.
Did NOT tell it to Generate a TOC.
Saved and uploaded to KDP which accepted it and the proof reads exactly as it should do.
So the paperback should be fine now.

Thanks again all

Wow, not sure where to start.

1. Why didn't you just use the ePUB2 plugin, instead of doing all that work?
2. Once that was done, why not simply either:
3. Take the ePUB, convert it to a Word doc, and work from there, or
4. Delete the toc.html file, entirely?
5. Or...about 5 other things that would have been faster/easier?

And I want to say--not to be harsh here, but I've had innumerable customers try to make a print layout from an ePUB file, to save money. I'm all for them saving money, but the results are almost always wrong, because eBooks don't use PUSH pages--pages that PUSH content to the correct layout page, if naught else. (Blanks, for example, after a dedication or ack page, that "moves" the next page to the correct side of the book.)

For example, whilst the title page will of course be on a recto (right-hand) page, is the TOC? Is the first page a recto page, or not? It seems that it's almost always on a left-hand page, in the world of converted files (from ePUB, I mean).

What about justification and hyphenation? Is it turned on and working? Or for poems, is it turned OFF? I'm inferring that all your poems, your couplets, etc. are left-aligned, is that right?

I'm sorry, but...honestly, you could have more easily converted the ePUB3 to ePUB2 to Word and worked from there, or...hell. You seem to have taken the long way 'round, brother.

Hitch

[Notjohn]

You speak almost as if you were converting the epub to paperback format, but "Amazon" is blocking you. Which makes me wonder: you aren't trying to build that paperback with Kindle Create, are you?