Error code when validating ePub – not sure where else to go

[Newbie2014]

Ok, this is my last resort at this point. For a class in Digital Production, I had to do an ePub. It had to be coded by hand, etc. We were given the base text, but that was it.

I have validated every page. And yet, when I attempt to validate the ePub, I am getting an error that I simply cannot figure out. I’ve looked at examples and attempted to search on the web for the reason this might be happening, but it’s pretty much been an exersize in futility.

I know y’all are incredibly smart here, and I’m hoping that one of you can help me with this one error that is preventing me from validating this pain-in-the-ass project that’s taken me three weeks and a whole lot of chain-smoking to accomplish. I attempted to look for the chat room, but was unable to find it.

Thank you.

[__]

You forgot to describe the error or explain the problem in any significant way.

What are you validating?
how?
what is the result?
what does the offending code look like?
what have you been able to rule out?

You say this is a class — have you done any brainstorming with fellow students? have you spoken to the instructor?

[Newbie2014]

Sorry. I’m new at this. I’ll do my best to explain it.

My instructor gave us a stripped ebook and asked us to turn it into an ePub. We had to include several components.

What are you validating? – I’m attempting to validate an ePub. It’s the most basic way I can put it.
how? – using ePub validator – I used the W3C to validate each individual page (html) and they all passed.
what is the result? when I created the ePub and attempted to validate it, I get the following result:

ERROR OEBPS/content.opf line 35 position 16 item with id ‘ncx’ not found

from what I can determine in that, it’s my spine code

what does the offending code look like?
<spine toc=”ncx”> this is what it’s telling me is the problem
<itemref idref=”introduction”/>
<itemref idref=”one”/>
<itemref idref=”two”/>
<itemref idref=”three”/>
<itemref idref=”four”/>
<itemref idref=”appendix”/>
</spine>

what have you been able to rule out?

I’ve checked other opf files and contents, and they all look the same, and it doesn’t appear that anything is misspelled or labelled wrong. Of course i’ve been staring at it for three weeks, so I could be wrong.

It’s a continuing education class, so my fellow students aren’t very social with each other. And my instructor only checks his email between 9-5. My computer basically melted down, nuking all the work I had done for two & a half weeks, and I’ve been up since Sunday working on this. Class only meets once a week. My instructor gave me an extra day to do it, meaning today, and offered, begrudgingly, tomorrow as well, but I’d like to get this done without the extra extra day.

I hope that gave you what you need to know. I hope you can help me.

Thank you for answering.

[__]

I’m attempting to validate an ePub.

What version of the ePub spec are you trying to validate against? AFAICT, 3.01 is the most recent spec.

using ePub validator

I don’t know of an ePub validator that the w3c provides. Do you mean you wrote your content in HTML and validated that? or are you talking about this validator?

<spine toc=”ncx”>

The toc attribute names an item with the given idref (in this case, it’s looking for an idref=ncx, and is complaining because it can’t find one.

see here for more.

It would seem that the NCX feature is part of ePub 2, and is not required in ePub 3 (it exists only for backwards-compatibility), so if you’re validating against version 3, you should be able to simply leave the toc attribute out.

Don’t quote me on this, however; I don’t know a lot about ePubs.

[Author]

Posts