Is there an upper limit to individual xhtml files in the e-pub?

[JP Bregnballe]

I have a large document in InDesign with translated poems in a bilingual setup. The original language german is placed in on the left page in individual nonthreaded textframes and the danish translation is placed on the right page in individual nonthreaded textframes.

I have the possibility to split my E-pub-document to more than 260 individual XHTML pages following each individual poem and its individual translation. And it gives me the division between the poems that I want.

My question is:

Is there an upper limit to individual xhtml files in the e-pub?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I don't think there's any meaningful limit — that is, if there is some functional or code limit it's probably on the order of 16, 32 or 64 thousand. I would guess that at some large number of content files (2-300) there might be loading, indexing and response time costs, but on the other hand, I believe one of the reasons to split large documents into multiple internal files is to speed loading, chunk by chunk, rather than having to load or open one massive file. (A lot of this, again, would depend on each reader's content-handling code.)

It sounds, however, if you are attempting this in a fixed-page layout. FXL is obsolete and problematic in many ways. If you want fixed pages, digital images of your ID/print layout, use PDF. If you want an EPUB (or Kindle) book, use reflowable. There isn't really any good third option.

[JP Bregnballe]

Thank you for your answer. I am working in E-pub, and I use reflowable, but I need "pagebreaks" for each poem because I am creating a bilingual poembook.
So I would prefer to split pages.
I will just have to try, and have different users test it.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I really don't think a few hundred — or several hundred — component files are any issue at all. Just maybe a greater potential for export "breakage" over one to ten files, but nothing worth shaping a project over. Splitting pages is a perfectly valid technique.

Although there are other possibilities, including using a paragraph before each heading that has a large amount of space below (999px, for example); that forces the next paragraph (heading) to a new virtual page. The space just "vanishes" in the virtual pagination, and the effect is the same. If you are using any kind of an "ender" device after each poem, that would be the paragraph to give this space. Easy enough to try.