EPub Output Questions

We recently upgraded to FM 12, and I am playing around with the ePub output function. I have two questions:
1. We use track text edits to show our audience recent changes to our publications. When I publish to ePub, it essentially accepts all of our edits (we lose the visibility - i.e. different colors/strikethrough). Any thoughts on how to keep our tracked edits showing in the ePub?
2. We are having issues with anchored frames. One anchored frame contains an image (a jpeg, I believe), and it is not carrying over into the ePub (i.e. it is blank where the anchored frame/image should be). The other anchored frame we have contains a flowchart with hypertext markers linking to various URLs. None of the links are carrying over into the ePub. Thoughts?
Any help is always greatly appreciated!

2. Anything different about the JPG that you're using? From what application was it created (or is it a camera image) and what are it's specifics?
I also don't think that image maps are supported in ePub, especially jumps to URLs or external files (as there's no guarantee that an eReader device can access those). You could try to create simple numbered callouts on a test graphic and then add a list of numbered hyperlinks after the image to see what ePub will support.
You might want to have a look at some of Scot Prentice's (Leximation) presentations on ePubs and their limitations. You can find the links to his papers and presentations at: Leximation: About Scott Prentice

Similar Messages

Best-practice for use of object styles to manage image text wrap issues when aiming at both print and EPUB output?

I have a work-flow question about object styles, text-wrap, and preparing a long document with lots of images for dual print/EPUB output in InDesign CC 2014.
I am sort of experienced with InDesign but new to EPUB export. I have hundreds of pages and hundreds of images so I'd like to make my EPUB learning curve, in particular, less painful.
Let me talk you through what I'm planning and you tell me if it's stupid.
It's kind of a storybook-look I'm going for. Single column of text (6" by 9" page) with lots of small-to-medium images on the page (one or two images per page), and the text flowing around, sometimes right, sometimes left. Sometimes around the bounding box, sometimes following the edges of the images. So in each case I'm looking to tweak image size and placement and wrap settings so that the image is as close to the relevant text as possible and the layout isn't all wonky. Lovely print page the goal. Lots of fussy trade-offs and deciding what looks best. Inevitably, this will entail local overrides of paragraph styles. So what I want to do, I guess, is get the images as closely placed as possible, before I do any of that overriding. Then I divide my production line.
1) I set aside the uniformly-styled doc for later EPUB export. (This is wise, right? Start for EPUB export with a doc with pristine styles?)
2) With the EPUB-bound version set aside, I finish preparing the print side, making all my little tweaks. So many pages, so many images. So many little nudges. If I go back and nudge something at the beginning everything shifts a little. It's broken up into lots of separate stories, but still ... there is no way to make this non-tedious. But what is best practice? I'm basically just doing it by hand, eyeballing it and dropping an inline anchor to some close bit of text in case of some storm, i.e. if there's a major text change my image will still be almost where it belongs. Try to get the early bits right so that I don't have to go back and change them and then mess up stuff later. Object styles don't really help me with that. Do they? I haven't found a good use for them at this stage (Obviously if I had to draw a pink line around each image, or whatever, I'd use object styles for that.)
Now let me shift back to EPUB. Clearly I need object styles to prepare for export. I'm planning to make a left float style and a right float style and a couple of others for other cases. And I'm basically going to go through the whole doc selecting each image and styling it in whatever way seems likeliest. At this point I will change the inline anchors to above line or custom, since I'm told EPUB doesn't like the inline ones.
I guess maybe it comes down to this. I realize I have to use object styles for images for EPUB, but for print, manual placement - to make it look just right - and an inline anchor seems best? I sort of feel like if I'm going to bother to use object styles for EPUB I should also use them for print, but maybe that's just not necessary? It feels inefficient to make so many inline anchors and then trade them for a custom thing just for EPUB. But two different outputs means two different workflows. Sometimes you just have to do it twice.
Does this make sense? What am I missing, before I waste dozens of hours doing it wrong?

I've moved your question to the InDesign EPUB forum for best results.

HT4168 Pages export to ePub - unwanted question marks

When I export a Pages doc to ePub, a question mark appears at the end of every line. How can I avoid that? If I take the Export to ePub doc from Apple and export it, no problem. If I add some lines of my own at the end and then re-export, question marks appear at the end of the lines I have added. It's driving me nuts! Any advice would be appreciated.

How did you buy Pages?
Which MacOs system do you have on your computer?
What is the exact message you get?
Which version of Pages do you have?
Please answer all questions and if you don't know how ask again.

Why does CS6 InDesign Book epub output generate and apply new graf and character style names in CSS?

I created an InDesign book composed of documents that had had no paragraph or character styles in the palettes until text was copied over from a single overall document. I worked absolutely as clean as I could.
I synchronized the book to that single overall document several times, including immediately before exporting the book to epub. My export settings disallowed any local formatting. Character styles were restricted to one named "Italic" for which the only format applied was Italic in the Font Style field, and one named "Small Caps" for which NO formatting was included in the character style.
There was, as far as I can see, no reason for any character or paragraph styles to export to anything but identically-named CSS entries. That is to say, any text with the character style "Italic" applied in the InDesign doc should have output with the same text with a span class entry of "Italic" around it.
I still ended up with p and span CSS entries with extra numbers appended to them:
span.Italic {
font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
span.Small-Caps-1 {
font-variant:normal;}
span.Italic-1 {
font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
span.Small-Caps-2 {
font-variant:normal;}
span.Italic-2 {font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
span.Small-Caps-3 {
font-variant:normal;}
span.Italic-3 {
font-style:italic;
font-weight:normal;}
and
p.x-SECTION-BREAK, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-1, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-2, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-3 and so on.
Why would the InDesign epub output engine choose to generate and apply new spans and paragraph-level styles, which multiply the complexity of editing the CSS directly? How can I prevent InDesign from doing this?

Perhaps I wasn't clear. When I wrote "an InDesign book composed of documents that had had no paragraph or character styles in the palettes until text was copied over from a single overall document" I meant to emphasize the part where I CLEARLY said "UNTIL text was copied over." The text I copied over had plenty of paragraph styles. I was trying to point out that each individual document had no PREVIOUSLY EXISTING character or paragraph styles that might have added complexity to the epub output. .
So, every paragraph in each document had a paragraph style attached, a total of maybe 20 different paragraph styles throughout the book. The only CHARACTER LEVEL styles I cared about exporting were Italic, for text that was set in italic, and Small Caps, for CAPITALIZED text that I wanted to be able to make smaller in the CSS, since I am not allowed to embed fonts and therefore have no other way of creating small caps in the xhtml files inside the epub.
So, given that I had two character styles applied to various bits of text throughout my InDesign book ("Italic" and "Small Caps"), I would like to know why there are multiple CSS entries generated: Italic, Italic-1, Italic-2, Small Caps, Small Caps-1, Small Caps-2, and so on.
Ditto paragraph styles. I had a paragraph style called "SECTION BREAK" in each document. Not only did paragraph style "SECTION BREAK" contain identical specs in each document--I know they did because I copied each from one single doc where they were being used identically--but I also synchronized the book repeatedly. So why would the xhtml docs and the CSS output need p.x-SECTION-BREAK-1, p.x-SECTION-BREAK-2, and p.x-SECTION-BREAK-3?

Hyperlinks in ePub output

Hi all,
currently Robohelp includes hyperlinks into the ePub output but when the user clicks them they produce errors (at least with Adobes own ePub reader ADE). Because the output files are contained in an archive it may not be possible to link to other topics at all but then why does RoboHelp include internal hyperlinks at all if they do not work?
It seems awkward to tag all paragraphs which contain hyperlinks with conditional build tags and then remove them from output just to avoid errors. Is there a more elegant solution?

After checking, I have to correct myself. Evidently it is rather a problem with language-specific characters (ä, ß) in file names. These topics cannot be viewed using the TOC either. If I insert a standard hyperlink to a topic that has no such character in its file name, then all is well. The problem is that these file names are generated automatically by Robohelp when a Word document is imported.
I might issue a request about this in the feature request form.
@Praful Jain:
1. RH9, older versions dont support ePub I think.
2. Correctly, these are topic within the project.
3. In case you are still interested please tell, but I think its a different problem now altogather as described above.

Section numbers inserted in TOC of epub output

I imported a word document into pages so I could convert to an ePub. All was going well, and then I did another test export as ePub. When I looked at the book on my iPad, I noticed that Section Numbers were now being inserted into the automatically generated table of contents as follows:
Section 1
Chapter title
Section 2
Chapter title
This was not happening earlier and I can't figure out what I did that might have triggered it.
What is causing this and how do I get rid of it? Help!
Thanks in advance.

Hi,
I followed your advice, and looked at a sample project - Employee Care. When I generated ePub output using this project, the output included a table of contents. However, when I specified a TOC in my project (see below), I still get the same message that the TOC file is missing. The project name doesn't contain any special characters.

Preserve "exactly" line spacing in epub output.

In my Pages document, there are many inline equations (from Mathtype). I like having the line spacing set to "exactly" so the line spacing remains constant, even between lines with equations that 'overlap' the lines around it.
Is there a way to preserve this option when I export my Pages document to Epub? Right now, the line spacing is single-spaced in the Epub output.

In my Pages document, there are many inline equations (from Mathtype). I like having the line spacing set to "exactly" so the line spacing remains constant, even between lines with equations that 'overlap' the lines around it. Is there a way to preserve this option when I export my Pages document to Epub? Right now, the line spacing is single-spaced in the Epub output.
No, if you use the ePub document model. Yes, if you mix document models.
ePub is a document markup model where you are expected to encode character information in ISO10646/Unicode and encode the logical organisation (structure) the define the parts of your document. However, ePub has no support for font embedding and without font embedding it is meaningless to talk of fixed line length, fixed line spacing, and fixed glyph spacing and sizing.
If you set up your equations in whatever originating application you prefer and save into a fixed geometry format such as Adobe PDF, then the fixed geometry file can be handled like a graphic in ePub, HTML and other document markup models. Be aware that Adobe PDF encodes the glyphs but not the characters whereas ePub and HTML encode the characters but not the glyphs which may impact search support, depending on what you are trying to do. Also, check you mathematical fonts in the Apple Character Palette to be certain that the glyphs map to meaningful characters in ISO10646/Unicode so that the glyph identifiers can be used to synthesise character semantics. A whole lot of mathematical fonts are constructed to draw mathematical glyphs from say English characters so that there is no relationship at all between information processing and image presentation. In this respect, OpenType is simply a rebranding of TrueType whereby system software displays an OpenType icon if a TrueType font file has the DSIG table - there is no guarantee whatsoever that the relationship of characters to glyphs is of this world (lots and lots of laughs to Heidelberg and its management of the Linotype Library here). See below from the ePub Specification.
/hh
http://www.idpf.org/doclibrary/epub/OPS_2.0.1draft.htm
3.4: Embedded Fonts
To provide authors with control over the appearance of the text, OPS supports the CSS2 font-face at-rule (@font-face). See section 15.3.1 of the CSS2 Recommendation. The following font descriptors must be supported:
font-family
font-style
font-variant
font-weight
font-size
src
For portability, authors must not use any other descriptors. Font files must carry all information needed for rendering Unicode characters. Fonts must not provide mappings for Unicode characters that would change the semantics of the text (e.g. mapping the letter "A" to a biohazard symbol). Content creators must not assume that any particular font format is supported. Fonts could be included in multiple formats by using a list of files for the src descriptor; the first supported format should be used. At least one file in OpenType format should always be included in the list. It is advisable for a Reading System to support the OpenType font format, but this is not a conformance requirement; a reading system may support no embedded font formats at all. Content creators should use comma-separated lists for font-family properties to specify fallback font choices.
Content creators must always honor usage restrictions that are encoded in OpenType fonts (and many other font formats). Fonts that are marked "no embedding" must not be included in OPS Publications.
Any font files included in an OPS Publication must be included in the OPF manifest with appropriate media type (application/vnd.ms-opentype for OpenType fonts).

Creating TOC for ePub output

I am exploring the ePub output in RH9, using Adobe Digital Editions to view the output. When I generate the output, I get a message that the TOC file is missing (see below). The solution that I found involves creating an NCX file for the table of contents - however, the instructions are geared toward creating a book for a Kindle. I've tried adapting the instructions for a RH file, but haven't had any luck. Anyone know how to do this?
Thanks.

Hi,
I followed your advice, and looked at a sample project - Employee Care. When I generated ePub output using this project, the output included a table of contents. However, when I specified a TOC in my project (see below), I still get the same message that the TOC file is missing. The project name doesn't contain any special characters.

CS6 Epub Output and Duplicating Images

Situation: A book with a single image that is used repeatedly--once on every chapter opener. Call it, say, "ChapterOpenerImage.jpg". On epub output, each instance of the image seems to get its own file created and placed in the epub images folder: ChapterOpenerImage_fmt1.jpg, ChapterOpenerImage_fmt2.jpg, etc; and obviously each gets its own href on the chapter opener.
May I ask why this is necessary, and if it can be overridden? I'd like to be able to drop a different version of "ChapterOpenerImage.jpg" into the epub images folder and have it update everywhere, without having to either duplicate it and rename it as many times as necessary, or without having to go into the code and use reg-ex searches to make all the hrefs uniform.
Thanks for any help!

This was actually an issue (bug?) that was introduced in CS6. If you unchecked "Preserve Appearance from Layout" on the Image tab of the Epub export dialog box in CS5.5 you would get one image that was linked multiple times. Now in CS6, unchecking that box doesn't seem to make a difference.
I use Find & Replace in Dreamweaver or Text Wrangler's (free) Multi-File Search to find the grep expression ChapterOpenerImage_fmt\d*.jpg and replace it with ChapterOpenerImage.jpg.
You will also need to clean up the content.opf file but they will all be together so it's easy to do that.
Hope they fix it. I think they will since it was correct in CS5.5.

Retaining Space-Before in CSS on Epub Output

When I output an InDesign CS6 document as an epub, it seems that the CSS that gets generated for any given paragraph will contain specs that reflect that paragraph's indents and space below (margin-bottom, margin-left, and margin-right)--but not space above, or margin-top in CSS. Is this something that can be changed as an export option, no matter what the reasoning was in not including space-above as a default export option?
And as a related question, are CSS outputs customizable in other ways? Can I get the output to not place the overrides for what I take to be semantic tags (body, div, dl, dt, dd, etc.) at the top of the CSS? I mean, is it feasible to allow the individual paragraph styles control all spacing and indents? Maybe this is a ridiculous question: I have LOTS of experience with InDesign, not so much with HTML!

The "space above" problem is solved if you apply the 8.0.1 update to InDesign CS6.
You can create a separate CSS file which you can "attach" in the EPUB Export dialog box, which "zeros out" values which InDesign may include in its CSS file. Any additional CSS file can override items in the InDesign-generated CSS.

Is there a way to simplify the EPUB output in the latest updates?

With the updates adding "more control over CSS," I find that there's a CSS file generated for every document in the book.
It used to be that there was one style.css file for the entire EPUB, and that made it easy for me to change ... to ... when streamlining the eBook.
But now, in one document, ... is bold, in another document the same class means italic. This change has turned a 30 second process into 60 minutes, since I have to check each document one at a time to do the correct replacement.
Is there a way to revert to the previous behavior? Or to make the output consistent so that the overrides are the same in all files?
Or, even better ... if a span of text is marked as [Font Family] Italic, why can't InDesign just output ... with no spans and no CharOverride styles at all?

This is a good tip.
When I first encountered this new behavior, I did add a new character style called "Italic" and one called "Bold." I set each to the corresponding tags of em and strong. Aside from the oddity of and this does seem to present a significant improvement.
However, the character styles are obviously not applied when I place a story that has bold and italic in it or when I change to italics on the fly (using keyboard shortcuts). Am I correct in understanding that I need to go back through all documents to replace italics with "Character Style: Italic" and bold with "Character Style: Bold" throughout the book?
Also, I'm good with changing this process for books going forward, but I'm wondering what the simplest way to update past books will be. (They only change in response to errata, and that will happen semiannually at most.)

Complier output question

I've been working on a java assignment that requires me to write a command line program which will read data from a text file, store the data in a vector and then save the vector to another file in a serialized form. I have written this program using the Kawa complier software.
I have, what I believe to be, a working program; it complies without reporting any errors, but when I try to run the program, I get the following message in the complier output window.
'Exception in thread "main"'
Can someone tell me what this means?
Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I found a solution for it after posting the question. Another problem has come up now though.
As I stated, the program is supposed to read the data from a text file, store it in a vector, and output it to another file in serialized form.
The input file consists of many records of computers and peripherals. Each record uses four lines of the input file, and is displayed like this:
Description (String)
Price (float)
VAT Price (float)
Quantity (integer),
Now I think the output file is supposed to look the same as the input file, but the one my program generates doesn't. My program code is as follows:
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.lang.*;
class TextToVector
     public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException
          try
          Vector v = new Vector(); //creates the vector
          String inFile = new String ("C:/My Documents/V3/Data/stocklist.txt ");     //Informs the program of the name, type & location of the source file
          FileOutputStream outFileStream = new FileOutputStream("C:/My Documents/V3/outfile.dat ");     //Instructs the program where to create the output file, what type of file it should be & what to name it
          //the command paths used in these lines can be modified to read/send a file from/to
          //where ever the user wants, the user must also set these identical paths in
          //the "Interpreter Options" for this to work correctly
          ObjectOutputStream objOutStream = new ObjectOutputStream(outFileStream);
          objOutStream.writeObject(v);     //writes the object to the vector
          objOutStream.flush();                     //purges the objOutStream
          outFileStream.close();                     //closes the objOutStream
          catch (IOException e)
          System.out.println("Exception Writing File ");
          System.exit(1);
public Vector readRecord(String inFile, Vector v) throws IOException
          String inString = new String(" ");
          String D = " ";
     float P = 0.0f;
     float V = 0.0f;
     int Q = 0;
          int count=0;
          BufferedReader buffReader = null;     //enures the BufferedReader is empty before beginning to read the source file
          buffReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader (inFile));     //used to read & record each line of the source file
try
     while((inString = buffReader.readLine()) !=null)
     count++;
     if(count==1)
     inString = buffReader.readLine();
     D = inString;
     if(count==2)
     inString = buffReader.readLine();
     P = (Float.valueOf(inString)).floatValue();
     if(count==3)
     inString = buffReader.readLine();
     V = (Float.valueOf(inString)).floatValue();
          if(count==4)
     inString = buffReader.readLine();
     Q = (Integer.valueOf(inString)).intValue();
     if(count==5)
     //System.out.println("Description " + D + " Price " + P + " VATPrice " + V + " Quantity " + Q);
     StockItem record = new StockItem(D,P,V,Q);
     v.add (record);
     count=0;
buffReader.close();
return v;
catch(IOException e)
System.out.println(e.toString());
return v;
class StockItem implements Serializable
     private String D;
private float P;
private float V;
private int Q;
     StockItem()
     D = " ";
     P = 0.0f;
     V = 0.0f;
     Q = 0;
     StockItem(String Description, float Price, float VATPrice, int Quantity)
     D = Description;
     P = Price;
     V = VATPrice;
     Q = Quantity;
     public String getDescription()
return D;
public float getPriceValue()
return P;
public float getVATPriceValue()
return V;
public int getQuantityValue()
return Q;
Can anyone see anything wrong with this? I'd appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.

Air Output Question

I've been playing around with the free trial of RH8 and I
have some questions regarding the Air output:
1. If I add a comment, is there a way I can edit it? I tried,
but so far haven't been able to do so (I would think that I would
in case there's a typo or something).
2. Also, is there a way to show which topic a comment applies
to. Say I decide to set my comments to "Show All," is there a way
to see what topics each comment applies to?

Hi Moranis,
To answer your queries.
1. Edit is not there. Currently you can add and delete
comments.
2. You can sort the comments by topic after you do show all.
sharona27lily,
Let me answer your queries.
Comments by different users are managed on a shared network
location. End user whoever is giving comments on the AIR output
doesn't need anything else. In fact RH8 is needed for producing AIR
output. Commenting will be done without RH8.
Let me know if you have more queries.
Vivek.
Adobe Systems.

Tomcat output question

hi all
i think this is a simple (and quite stupid) question, but i don't know ho to solve my problem
i work on two computer (windows 2k), one where i have tomcat installed not like a service, the other with tomcat installed like a service.
when i write some servlet or jsp page i use to debug it through System.out.println() method to get the output. when i work on the 1st machine i can read the output directly by the prompt, but the problem arrives on the other machine, when no prompt is opened running tomcat.
is there a way (log file and so on) to get my application's output running under tomcat? the version is 4.1.18
thanx a lot
sandro

Hi. the solution is quite simple.
Go to your TomcatHome (where you installed it) and look for a folder called log. To check your System.out.println stuff on your tomcat as windows service just take a look to an archive called stdout.txt or something similar (can't remember the exact name)
DFF

DOM output question

Hi all,
I have the following question about writing a DOM (Document) out to a stream. But first.. a bit of background on the framework...
I have the following classes:
Listener.class -> sends InputStream to -> Parser.class
Parser.class -> sends DOM (Document) to -> Formatter.class
What I then want is the
Formatter.class -> send a stream -> Writer.class
Writer.class to do its funky stuff.
The problem I am having is trying to work out what input/output stream combination to use and what XML helpers to do it.
I am using Java 1.4 and Xerxes2 classes only...
So the question is:
1. What should the Formatter.class pass to the Writer.class?
2. What should I use to create the stream?
Ideally I want an InputStream passed to the Writer.class
Cheers,
Alex.

I don't quite follow your framework, but then I didn't try too hard because if you want to get data from a DOM into a file or some other output, you use a javax.xml.transform.Transformer. Approximately like this:Transformer t = TransformerFactory.newTransformer();
t.transform(new DOMSource(someNode), new StreamResult(someWriter));

EPub Output Questions

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for