ePubs: hot and cold

The morning started off well. By lunchtime all was looking promising. A few hours later all avenues have seemingly been exhausted.

My hours of experimenting have, in fairness, not all been wasted. I have had many breakthroughs – all, I must add, thanks to Castro's EPUB book and good, old-fashioned tinkering – throughout the course of the day.

Breakthroughs:

• have cracked how to set up ID files correctly so that Export produces page breaks and TOC
• have cracked how to set up .indb file and link separate chapters into an ID book
• have cracked how (and where) to edit the metadata in ID and add author details etc prior to export
• have cracked how to get into the ePub (two ways: unzipping; and via Springy)
• have cracked how to edit content.opf metadata and include elements missing from ID export
• have cracked how to edit template.css file
• have cracked how to insert spacing before and after certain paragraphs for separation in page flow, just like in my ID layout file
• have cracked how to create "glyphs"/symbols in my ePub (at least half way)

This may seem like a lot. And it is, I am not arguing with my progress, but all of this has been for nought because of the fact that I have also encountered several (major) setbacks.

There are three "clusters" of problems that I am having:

• First, although I have managed to Export an ePub from ID, open it via Springy and edit both the CSS and XHTML files, after I close the Springy file (post editing) none of these changes show up when I then open the same file from Finder and launch it in Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). And even when I close ADE and re-open the same, edited ePub back in Springy the changes that I made are still intact – they just aren't registering when I try to see those changes (any of them) in ADE. Result = no working ePub
• Second, when I try the second route of Exporting a fresh ePub from ID and this time unzipping it in Terminal (a horrible, horrible program, BTW) this all works fine. I can then edit my CSS and XHTML as desired (using Dreamweaver – I forgot to mention this in my earlier post), the problems start when it comes to re-zipping. I followed the instructions on pp119–121 of EPUB: straight to the point to the letter, but two things don't happen: a) the second step of re-zipping (after the first step of zipping the mimetype file into a book.epub file) does not result in the folder containing just the book.epub file (as indicated in the book) b) and regardless of whether or not this is supposed to happen, the final book.epub file appears to zip as per instructions but the resulting ePub file does not open in ADE. Result = no working ePub.
• Third, when I tried the last way of re-zipping (after again, making a fresh ePub, unzipping in Terminal, editing CSS and XHTML etc), which involved selecting the final files – OEBPS folder, META-INF folder and mimetype file – in Finder and right-clicking to choose Compress 3 files into an archive.zip file, and then renaming as .epub, I get the same result as the second above, with ADE unable to read it. Result = no working ePub.

This is why I am at my wit's end with making ePubs. I have covered all of the bases, followed all of the instructions that I can possibly find and it just won't work! Why, oh why, do ePubs have to be so frustratingly complicated?