Problem of how ePub looks in Nook for PC

Try converting the Mobi file to epub in Calibre, and then let Nook convert the epub file. That should work.

If you wish to send me the epub, I can look inside to see what's happening. None of my epubs display that behavior on Nook for PC.

Send me a PM and we'll exchange contact info.

I suggest exploding/uncompressing the ePub file, and looking at the HTML and the CSS. I suspect something went wonky in the conversion.

I'm suspecting that the file may use the wrong break tags; that is, XML vs HTML, since I've seen that problem before.

The other problem can be related to the doc declaration in the HTML file post conversion.

Thanks, Kim. I responded. When (if) I figure it out, I'll post here so others can avoid the problem. This helps me, too, because I'm writing a tutorial on using Sigil in much the same way you've used it.

Here's a link to that thread.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266712

The tutorial is a work in progress, and I posted it here to get comments.

Kim's problem is a combination of trying to use the Enter key for vertical spacing in his narrative and inconsistencies among e-readers about how they deal with that.

His book has poems, each line of which starts on a new line. He wants stanzas to be separated by a blank line. So Kim used the Enter key to force a blank line after each stanza.

Adding to the problem is that the iPad, Calibre's reader, and Sigil's reader all allow one extra blank line to be encoded this way. You don't get two, though, but Kim didn't care about that. All of which could lure you into thinking you're doing it right if you don't try it on multiple platforms.

The Nook for PC program and Adobe Digital Editions do not recognize the extra blank line. I don't have a real Nook to try it on.

(I tried to test the epub on Kobo for PC, but the program and the Kobo device seem to offer no easy way to sideload epub files.}

Epub books are compressed collections of html and css in an organized architecture. Html, by design, eats white space. Sequences of <p> tags don't necessarily do what you want them to do, depending, of course, on how the html is rendered.

There are two ways to fix Kim's problem. One involves going into the css of each html file (or the linked stylesheet if the html files do not use embedded css), coding a new style to be for the first line of each stanza with appropriate top and bottom margins. This could have been done in the source narrative (Word, whatever), but Kim started with raw text.

The other way is to put a non-breaking space character into the blank line that separates stanzas.

These solutions involve a modicum of understanding of html and css. If you plan to hand-code your own epub or use Sigil, you need to learn that subset. Others here have recommended that. Add my voice to that recommendation.

Medievalist has also recommended in another thread, I think, that you try your epub on all available devices. This episode reinforces that recommendation.

I could provide down-and-dirty details of what to do to Kim's epub file to fix it, but only if folks indicate an interest in knowing.

Doctor Shifty said:

It might also help others to know that Nook for PC on Al's computer read the epub file and separated the stanzas, but Nook for PC won't do it on my computer.

Click to expand...

More specifically, it did work with the epub you sent me that Calibre generated but not with the hand-coded one. Apparently Calibre inserts the non-breaking spaces when it converts from other formats.

I'm having a similar issue (thought I'd stay on this thread than open new one, hope I'm not hijacking.)

I have an eBook with pics and text that is designed to scroll down vertically: text, then pic, then text, then pic etc. The pics are 600 pixels wide. In Nook for PC it gives me a double page side by side layout and doesn't resize images to fit, but keeps them their original size. Making the pic from one page overlap the middle and partially go over other pic or text on the opposite page.

However if I make the window smaller it goes to single page scroll down and looks OK, and if I make the window larger it all fits OK in double page. Is this normal?