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Indesign epub export to kindle - footnotes and hyperlink code conversion to Kindle Format

New Here ,
Apr 08, 2024 Apr 08, 2024

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Hi, I'm having problems exporting a book to kindle from an epub. I had to setup the footnotes as hyperlinks because indesign doesn't let me reference 3 footnotes in the body text to the same end footnote. But Kindle wants them in a different HTML format. Without having to redo all 300+ of them does anyone have any clever workarounds? I would be so very VERY grateful if so!

 

<!––FOOTNOTES AS HYPERLINKS IN EXISTING FILE:-->
<a href="Sample_file_to_test_for_epub-1.xhtml#_idTextAnchor040"><span class="Hyperlink---Footnotes _idGenCharOverride-4" lang="">1</span></a>
...
<li class="Footnotes-Numbered" lang="en-GB"><span class="Italic" lang=""><a id="_idTextAnchor040"></a>Title of footnote</span>Footnote body text here.</span></li>

<!––WHAT KINDLE ASKS FOR INSTEAD:-->
<p>This footnote example uses the aside element with the epub:type attribute and bi-directional hyperlinks.<sup><a id="source" href="#ft-1-1" epub:type="noteref">1</a></sup></p>
...
<aside id="ft-1-1" epub:type="footnote">
<p><a epub:type="noteref" href="#source">1.</a> This is the footnote text, which should be placed at the end of the chapter or book.</p>
</aside>

<!––OR-->
<p>This footnote example uses bi-directional hyperlinks only. <sup><a href=>footnotes.html#fn1" id="r1">[2]</a></sup></p>
...
<p id="fn1"><a href="chapter01.html#r1">2.</a> This is the footnote text, which should be placed at the end of the chapter or book.</p>

<!––OR-->
<p>This example describes an <a id="fn1"/>event that happened.</p>
...
<p><a href="chapter01.html#fn1">event that happened</a> This is the endnote text, which provides a reference for the details of the event.</p>

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Community Expert ,
Apr 08, 2024 Apr 08, 2024

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Obviously, this is well off into the most complex areas of EPUB export. I am not sure a good solution can be found easily, or at all.

 

Footnotes in EPUB/Kindle are problematic anyway because of the necessity for virtual handling  — since there are no pages, there are no footers, and thus footnotes (and endnotes) sort of have to live out on the fringes and be called up by actual reader/app tricks. Even simple foot and end notes pose hurdles. The desire to have multiple notes link to the same text is... something from print pages that really doesn't fit well in e-books. Links don't like sharing sources, and I don't know of any solution that gives adequate functionality without something a lot like code-hacking to achieve it.

 

The problem with hacking at exported EPUB code — something I strongly deprecate, as in "never do it" — is that EPUB is highly dependent on the reader used, and hardly any two render pages the same way. It's already hard enough to get an EPUB book to work across a variety of readers, much less work and render well. Hacking at the link code is unlikely to work on all readers, maybe not even on most.

 

And then Kindle is all that on steroids. While the format and readers are far more compatible and stable, it's not without its own limitations, and documentation is sketchy and quickly outdated. Kindle does many things "under the hood" that are not documented and cannot be controlled by the author/designer. And even if you get something like this link hack to work, an undocumented change in the next version of the reader might break it.

 

We can carry on to see if there's a workable option here, but the real solution is to back up, "color within the lines" and not use this multi-link feature.


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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