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standardebooks / p-g-wodehouse_something-new

Epub source for the Standard Ebooks edition of Something New, by P. G. Wodehouse
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-g-wodehouse/something-new
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No TOC on Kindle? #1

Closed tallforasmurf closed 7 years ago

tallforasmurf commented 7 years ago

Altho I see a toc.xhtml, when I open it in Kindle the "table of contents" entry in the "Go" menu is grayed out. Paging forward from the cover is just half-title, colophon, then chapter 1.

Don't know if that's a problem?

Edit: this is Kindle for Mac, not a "real" kindle!

acabal commented 7 years ago

Hi there,

  1. What Kindle device and software version are you using?

  2. Which file did you download from Standard Ebooks?

  3. How did you get the file on to Kindle?

tallforasmurf commented 7 years ago

Opened https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-g-wodehouse/something-new/ in Firefox. Clicked on the azw3 link; Firefox helpfully offers to "open with Kindle (default app)" and it does. Kindle for Mac v 1.20.3 (47097) (the latest version, updated recently from the App Store) then opens the file to page 1. I use left-arrow to back up to the cover and note, hmph, no TOC? and pull down "Go" menu to observe that the "Table of Contents" menu choice is grayed out.

acabal commented 7 years ago

Thanks. Does this occur with other Standard Ebooks azw3 files?

tallforasmurf commented 7 years ago

I just tried Collins, The Woman in White and Thackeray, Vanity Fair, and yes, neither has access to a TOC.

acabal commented 7 years ago

In that case I think you should try using the compatible .epub file instead. You can try emailing it to yourself and hopefully Amazon will do some sort of half-decent job at converting it.

Amazon has different renders for different versions of their app on different platforms and thus it's nearly impossible to make one Kindle file that works the same way on every Kindle. Right now our azw3 files work best on the Kindle eInk devices and not necessarily the various Kindle apps Amazon has vomited out.

The best answer would be to switch to better ereading software, as Kindle is garbage and actively anti-ebook-developer. But I understand people buy in to their ecosystem so that's not always possible.

tallforasmurf commented 7 years ago

I downloaded Calibre v3.8 and opened the epub file. It also has no TOC, goes from Title page, colophon, chapter 1. (Also no cover image that I can see but I'm not familiar with Calibre's UI so maybe there's a "cover" button I didn't click.)

acabal commented 7 years ago

There's no ToC inline with the text; the idea is you use your ereading software's ToC functionality to access it, thus it's not necessary to be inline.

tallforasmurf commented 7 years ago

Correct, Calibre has an "open the TOC" button which does show the chapters as roman numerals and jumps the them on clicking.

Hah! Looking at the Kindle UI, it also has a similar TOC button which opens a TOC as a separate list.

What confused me was that all the other books I have on my Kindle (99% from Amazon) have actual TOC pages which fall between the title page and the text. I am accustomed to using the Go menu to jump to the TOC as a page and from there to a chapter/story. Prior to this I had never clicked the button in the left tool-bar. However having seen how Calibre did it, I thought to have a look at the Kindle and there that was.

So there IS a TOC, and correctly presented, using the special TOC user interface widget. It remains the case that the Table of Contents menu item in the Go menu is grayed out.

Aaaaanyway, I will close this. Just be aware of these two different user interfaces to the TOC.

acabal commented 7 years ago

Glad to hear you got it sorted out. Thanks!