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German 2006 Reform Hyphenation not working properly once exported to epub

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
September 28, 2023
2 replies
951 views

Hello everyone!

I am currently working on a reflowable epub for a client and I'm having a very frustrating issue with the hyphenation of the 2006 Reform German on Indesign. On my document, the text hyphenates fine, but once exported to a reflowable epub the hyphenation is completely wrong.

I've been trying to troubleshoot this for a while now. Here is what I've tried:

- checked language settings (all proper)

- made sure Paragraph Styles and Character Styles are not conflicting (they aren't)

- made sure all export tags are in place (they are)

- tried a different font (same issue)

- tried different composers (no difference)

The problem seems to be in the export, but I cannot figure out what 😞

Thank you so much for any help in advance!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer camilac27832844

There is also the swiss army knife of InDesign fixes: export to IDML, open that file, save as new INDD file. That purges generations of editing trash and other clutter and often fixes glitches by rewriting the structure anew. Otherwise, Zeno away. 🙂

I did also try that and unfortunately did not work either.
However after Zenoing my day away, I have now finally isolated the problem and (of course) it is the minor things that create the biggest issues: the problem lied within a few unimportant settings of the Objects Styles!

It took me a full Sunday of work to figure this out ahaha. And if it wasn't for the help of all of you who knows how long would it take. Thank you all so much!!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

What dictinary did you choose in the preferences? I strongly recommend Duden for all German flairs. Avoid Huspell.

C

camilac27832844Author

Inspiring

This was a good tip! Thank you! My dictionary was somehow set to English US. I've changed it to German 2006 Reform Duden, but the problem persists... Thank you anyhow, at least now there might be one less conflict in the file.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Are you aware, that each language has its own dictionary preferencies?

The language from Paragraph or Chraracter Styles chooses the dictionary you did choose for that text,

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Once exported, just about everything in an EPUB beyond the sequence of the letters in the text is controlled by the chosen reader.

InDesign has no control over that document; its hyphenation feature is entirely internal.

I can only suggest that a reader aware of the source language could do what you seek. It is usual practice to not hyphenate in e-books for this reason, but I guess that's not really an option with German. 🙂

C

camilac27832844Author

Inspiring

I've worked on reflowable epubs before and usually have no issue with the hyphenation.
I have tried to create a new file with a section of the original, and the problem is then gone. But it is a long epub and doing that with the whole project would very time consuming, which is why I was hoping to somehow fix the issue in the original file.

Thank you so much for your help tho! If all else fails I'll just get rid of the hyphenation and hopefully that's ok with the client.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

You might try other readers, just to see. The other thing that occurred to me is that language issues are controlled by the <lang> setting of the content; if you did not tag all styles in the document with the correct language tag, the reader may be doing its best but with the wrong rulebook.

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