Kindle output

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Tim Frost
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Kindle output

Unread post by Tim Frost »

I have been testing the Mobi output, so far without success.

1. The Kindle compiler warned on a couple of web links which lacked "http://" at the start. They have clearly never worked and it would have been nice if the normal H&M build had warned me of this also!

2. The Kindle compiler also warned about a re-used nav point on three topics which appear as multiple TOC entries. I temporarily excluded one of each of them from the build, which made the warnings go away, but I noticed that all e-books are lumped together in the build options. We need these duplicates in the EXE ebook, but I would not mind if the duplicates had to be omitted from the Kindle edition. I also do not know yet how such warnings affect the output (see 3).

3. What could cause Kindle compiler errors: "E24011: TOC section scope is not included in the parent chapter:(mytopicname)", "E24001: The table of content could not be built". This resulted in failure to create the mobi output. I see nothing different about the topic from any other. It did contain a topic link to its parent, but removing that did not prevent the failure. Making a small edit to the topic and its parent, to force a re-save, made no difference either. It is a large manual (perhaps it will be too big for Kindle, in the end), and the problem topic is about half way through.

This is not urgent, as I imagine you are busy!
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Tim Green
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Re: Kindle output

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Tim,

Item 1) is really just basic HTML knowledge: Web links never work anywhere in HTML without specification of the protocol to be used. Lots of people assume that links without it are valid because they "work" in browsers when you enter them in the Address: bar. Actually, they don't work even there. The browser just adds the protocol prefix in the background when you leave it out.

Item 2) can be fixed by tagging the things you want to include in EXE eBooks with WebHelp instead of eBook. EWriter is a special case, and both WebHelp and EBook are always "true" for it when you publish it. This is because it is both an EBook and WebHelp. But as far as I am aware at the moment you should always exclude the TOC duplicates for both ePUB and Kindle/Mobi at the moment.

Alexander is going to check into 3) and comment ASAP.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Green
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Re: Kindle output

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Tim,

Update: Alexander asks for a demo project. We need one with which we can test issues 2) and 3). Please save it in single-file .hmxz format and mail it to support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we'll check it out. Thanks! :)
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Tim Frost
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Re: Kindle output

Unread post by Tim Frost »

I can get you a sample HMXZ, but you may not need it. I have discovered that both the warning and the error result simply from having multiple TOC entries for the same topic file. After clearing the first few warnings only errors were reported, and I fixed a few more, but it is extremely tedious because you only get one error message from the Kindle compiler on each build. And though I found some cases which were improved by not duplicating the topic, in others there is a genuine need to retain both, for example in a collection of 'error message' topics which need to be both in an 'errors' section and in the topics for the particular feature which raises them. Since I appear to be dropping back to v6, hopefully temporarily, anyway (see my other message), we will just keep the duplicate TOC entries for the present and abandon the experimental Kindle build for now. You should be able to reproduce the problem with a project that contains several multiple TOC entries: I had the initial impression that warnings occured when the duplicates were at the same level, one below the highest, and errors when the duplicates were lower in the levels or on different levels; but I cannot be sure of this. If you still need a sample project, please let me know.

Is there a possibility that multiple TOC entries for a topic file will be supported at some future date?
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Tim Green
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Re: Kindle output

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Tim,
Tim Frost wrote:Is there a possibility that multiple TOC entries for a topic file will be supported at some future date?
That is up to Amazon and also the people responsible for the ePUB specification. It has nothing to do with Help & Manual, unfortunately... :)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Frost
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Re: Kindle output

Unread post by Tim Frost »

In that case the statement in your help file needs to be changed: "There are just a few formatting and configuration changes that need to be made and these are handled automatically by Help & Manual."

Can I rephrase the question: is it possible that H&M may one day be changed to allow a document with a few duplicated TOC entries to be published for Kindle? Perhaps by automatically replicating the affected content?
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Re: Kindle output

Unread post by Tim Green »

Tim Frost wrote:Can I rephrase the question: is it possible that H&M may one day be changed to allow a document with a few duplicated TOC entries to be published for Kindle? Perhaps by automatically replicating the affected content?
Well, no, because that would be actively creating a broken document.... 8) The only meaningful possibility would be to completely leave out the duplicate TOC entries for the Kindle version, and you can already do that with build options.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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