error uploading to Amazon

rosehips · Jul 26, 2012

Hi,
I just got done formatting my book for Kindle. I started with a Word document, put it through Notepad, formatted it in JEdit, and saved it as an .html. When I try to upload, I get an error. When I look at the html file online, there is no problem. When I save in jEdit, there is no problem. When I try to open the html document in Word, it won't do it. It says DTD is prohibited, line 2, column 9.

Help, please!

Thanks in advance.

Alexys · Jul 27, 2012

Well, what's at line 2, column 9? Chances are that you have a tag in there that isn't legal for whatever version of HTML the document purports to be (or possibly doesn't even exist). Your web browser would pass it because they're designed to be forgiving of bad HTML, and jEdit would pass it because it's just a syntax highlighter and not a full parser.

qwerty · Jul 27, 2012

You don't need to put it thro notepad or JEdit. Just save it from WORD as web page filtered and upload that file.

rosehips · Jul 27, 2012

Alexys said:
Well, what's at line 2, column 9? Chances are that you have a tag in there that isn't legal for whatever version of HTML the document purports to be (or possibly doesn't even exist). Your web browser would pass it because they're designed to be forgiving of bad HTML, and jEdit would pass it because it's just a syntax highlighter and not a full parser.

I have no idea. I just copy and paste from Guido Henkel's guide. Here's the first few lines from the top of the doc:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
  <head>
    <style type="text/css">
      html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0; padding: 0em; }
           p
{
  text-indent: 1.5em;
  margin-bottom: 0.2em;
}
p.chapter
{
  text-indent: 0.1em;
  font-weight: bold;
  font-size: 1.5em; 
  page-break-before: always;
  margin-top: 5em;
  margin-bottom: 2em;
}

Thank you so much for responding!

rosehips · Jul 27, 2012

qwerty said:
You don't need to put it thro notepad or JEdit. Just save it from WORD as web page filtered and upload that file.

Hi Qwerty,
If I can't get it to work I'll do that. I just like having a nice clean doc, and in the past it's worked fine. Thanks for responding!

Alexys · Jul 27, 2012

Well, you're missing the enclosing top-level element that the XHTML standard prescribes for documents. Try adding the following line just before <head>:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

(I'm assuming your document is in English; if it isn't, you might need a different two-letter code if you want to be strictly correct.) You'll need the corresponding closing tag </html> at the end of the document, if it isn't there already.

It's hard to tell whether this is the actual problem, though. Amazon and Word may even be having different problems with the document (and someone at Microsoft needs to learn how to write better error messages).

rosehips · Jul 27, 2012

Alexys, thank you! I will try this and come back and edit to let you know how it turned out. I'm so grateful for the help!

ETA: I can now open it in Word. I'll see if Amazon will take it next.

ETA2: Alexys, you are my hero. It worked! I'm like Golem when he finally got the ring back, minus the lava canyon.

Maryn · Jul 27, 2012

Oh, we all love a happy ending. Glad you got what you needed. Whew, huh?

Maryn, pleased for you

Matera the Mad · Jul 28, 2012

Why do people always confuse Gollum with the Jewish legend of the Golem?

error uploading to Amazon

rosehips

Mr. Boo is watching you.

Alexys

Took a wrong turn at the Pleiades

qwerty

exiled Brit

rosehips

Mr. Boo is watching you.

rosehips

Mr. Boo is watching you.

Alexys

Took a wrong turn at the Pleiades

rosehips

Mr. Boo is watching you.

Maryn

At Sea

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint