New Cover feature epub bug by Gauthier

BUG 1: Cover Layout

When opening the epubs in the calibre reader, depending on the aspect ratio of the calibre window, we can land on an blank page which precede the cover.
This seems to be an artifact of putting the cover on the same page as the copyright notice.

Readers behavior:

* Google Reader: keep the h4 and the cover on the same page

* Sony Reader: put a page break,

* Thorium reader: it depends on the aspect ratio, (but no blank page are inserted.)

* Kindle Reader for PC: Cover is present twice, copyright may be on the second instance or a third page depending on aspect ratio

* Kindle Online Reader: Reading of Send to Kindle documents seems now disabled.

* Calibre Reader: blank page bug.

Solution 1
If the cover and the copyright notice remain in the same xhtml file, inserting a page break, something like:
|p class="c" style="page-break-after: always"||img src="images/cover.jpg"
alt="cover"
id="icover" /|

Solve that calibre reader issue at the cost of a single page copyright.

Solution 2

Since the copyright notice is already on the cover, you could remove that h4 text or hide it or move it to finish.xhtml

BUG 2: Accessibility

Since the tile and author are missing from the epub text, to allow for correct screen reading, alt="cover" will not do.

You should instead use the actual cover text alt="actual title by author Category Copyright name" for proper assistive technology support.

Alternatively, add the title and author to info.xhtml

BUG 3 Reading Start status

Regarding the content.opf guide, it looks like reading start is not always obeyed.

Calibre: Open on blank page or cover, Start of book goes to Cover or blank page.

Thorium: open on Cover, Landmarks-> Info goes to Info as intended.

Sony: ignored, no start of book command, using first TOC item goes to info

Google Reader: open on info as intended.

Kindle Reader: Open on second copy of the cover, Go to:Beginning send to info, Go to:cover is greyed out.

BUG 4 Kindle Reader can't nav to cover, cover is there twice

Cover is still accessible trough prev/next page

According to kdp guidelines This is due to the lack of cover mention in the content.opf guide.
Solution: untested, just add it back.

Go to:Table of Content is also greyed out: That's normal, there is no html TOC. However the ToC button is working using the converted ncx.

@Gauthier

The EPUB generator has had covers generation for a while now. It's not new; the new covers are an expansion of that capability. However, of course I had to switch to the new support. Otherwise, nothing really has changed.

For accessibility, I added the story's title and author name to the info file. I also added the page-break-after to the style sheet for the cover image.

Everything else, not much I can do. Different reading software behaves differently and since the EPUB that the system builds are perfectly valid without any errors no matter what validation software you use, then it's not my problem. I can't cater and create workarounds for each software package.

Kindle issues are up to Amazon's EPUB to kindle conversion software, again, I have no control.

The EPUBs generated here have a guide element pointing to the info file and they have the cover mentioned in the opf file in a meta tag as per specs, any bugs in conversion or display rests in the hands of the reading software creators.

As for the double covers, the generator adds the supported cover, but some stories/books have a manually inserted cover submitted by the author. Those stories/books need manual removal of the old style covers from their html. That will be a slow process until we get to each story whose author submitted a cover for in past years.

Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

New Cover feature epub bug

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