Problems with fixed-layout epub in Adobe Digital Editions

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

Hi all. I am having a problem with some fixed layout epubs exported from Indesign when they are opened in Adobe Digital Editions. These are displaying fine (in fact v good) in Apple Books and Kindle Previewer but for some reason in ADE, when the reader advances the page, the new page usually (not always, but usually) doesn’t display, and won’t until you click a three of four times on where it should be. 

This is the same with both fixed layouts that contain images (eg facsimiles of historical documents) and fixed layouts generated from text (eg poetry). I tried png as well as jpeg in the “conversion settings” tab in Indesign export dialogue but it doesn’t seem to help. ADE is used in the catalogue booksellers look at, so we have no choice but to make the file work with it.

Happy to edit the epub in sigil if anyone knows what edit is needed! Any advice very very much appreciated. Thanks!

(ps ADE is also ignoring the TOC and not showing the front cover in the library, but these are relatively minor issues!)

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

UPDATE: this is only a problem in Adobe digital editons for MAC - on Windows ADE the file works fine, and the TOC displays too (though it still ignores the cover image)

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @CATHERINE23932742a7zz,

Thanks for sharing these details. Since the issue seems to appear only on macOS, could you please confirm the version of InDesign you're using? It would also be helpful if you could share a screenshot showing how the EPUB displays in Adobe Digital Editions on Mac compared to how it looks on Windows, so we can visually compare the behavior.

Looking forward to hearing back.

Abhishek

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

Abhishek! HI! Thanks! Yes!

I'm currently on cc and my indesign version is 20.5.

It's kind of hard to show the problem in screenshots becasue the problem is what's not there, but here goes:

So like,  you open the ebook, the first page displays,

but if you click through to subsequent pages it is mostly just blank (occasionally a single page will load, but 95% don't)

But then if you click a few times on the blank space (it doesn't seem to be a consistent number of times, sometimes three, sometimes four, sometimes more) the page appears! If you do not click it never appears!

Once it appears it looks normal though

Sometines it gets stuck and won't let you chnage the page also! It is very strange behaviour and any hep appreciated

(I did figure out to get the TOC to work btw that was a different problem, but the invisible pages I can't seem to fix)

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

Oh man I posted this once but it seems to have got lost? Thanks for the offer of help!

To respond:

I am using adobe cc, Indesign version 20.5

The issue is hard to show becasue it is what you don't see, but here goes. If you open the ebook, page one displays fine

(as you can see I got the TOC working. btw). But then you click through to subserquent pages, and 95% of the time they are not visible, it is just blank

but then if youy click several times (sometimes once is enough, sometimes it needs more?) the page appears and looks normal

On PC it looks the same as this, it is just that the pages are visible there! it is very confounding, any advice very much appreciated! Thanks so much!

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

oh wait whoops i attached the wrong first image, that is not page one, this is page one. but same diff.

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

Also worth saying - the only other thing I did was I opened the files in sigil and unobfuscated the fonts so that Kindle will display them properly otherwise it does weird things to fixed layout designs...

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

Hi @Abhishek Rao just bumping htis any advice much appreciated 

[BobLevine]

Adobe Digital Editions is, quite frankly, garbage. It is not up to the task and I'm surprised Adobe continues to make it available. It hasn't been updated in years.

If you're on a Mac, use Books or for all platforms, try Thorium Reader.

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

The problem here is these ARC files need to be downloadable in Edelweiss for booksellers and Edelweiss makes the files available in... you guessed it, .acsm downloads for ADE! Alas and alack, I would def not be using ADE by choice 

[BobLevine]

Sorry to hear that. Good luck with this.

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

THANKS it is a nightmare 

[BobLevine]

Those screenshots look like plain text. Why are you using Fixed Layout EPUB for this?

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

OH long story - the text has a number of... special effects (blank pages, sudden appearance of giant text, text goes upside down, insertion of images, text in boxes etc). For the final I will do a full layout which fits these into a reflowable epub, but it is gonna be a lot of work, and the author is still making final revisions, so adjusting it would be a pain, so for the ARC i made an executive decision to just keep her layout from her PDF and export it as fixed // i also have several other fixed epus (poetry/facsimiles of historical documents) so even if i did the work to make this one reflowable I would still need to solve the problem

[CATHERINE23932742a7zz]

text has a lot fo special effects! Giant text, upside down text, text in boxes, blank pages, whole page images etc. For the final I will fnd ways to make it reflowable but thats a lot of work and the author is still revising so for the ARC i just basically imported than exported her pdf. But I also have books of eg poetry and historical facsimile that need to be fixed so even if I worked through making this one reflowable, I would still have this problem. 

[BobLevine]

Again, then...good luck, you're going to need it.