Manually zipping creates broken ePub-files?

[interestingspecimen]

Hi all,

I'm using ADE for the purpose of testing how my ePub-files are rendered in different programs. For doing this, I manually tweak the contents of ePub-files, compress them, rename them and throw them into ADE and Stanza.

Up till now I didn't succeed even once in creating an ePub-file that ADE renders correctly. I first thought the little modifications in the contents broke the file, but the simple process of renaming an .epub to .zip, uncompressing, re-compressing (without modifications) and then renaming back to .epub produces files that ADE can't read: "The document appears to have minor errors that might cause it to be displayed incorrectly". For compressing I used the default method on the Mac, and WinRAR on a PC. Both methods didn't work for ADE, but they did for Stanza.

Somehow manually zipping created files that are slightly different from the original ePub-files, but not so radically different that they break in all readers; just ADE, it seems. Does anyone know what's the cause of this, and how I can resolve this?

[Guest · Accepted solution]

The most common cause here is that you compressed the mimetype file.  By spec it must be first in the file and must be uncompressed.

I'm not sure how to do this using GUI tools from but you can find an explanation on the IDPF forums

[interestingspecimen]

Thanks a lot, that's very useful! Using the command line you have full control over how your zip archive gets built, so now ADE renders my hand-made ePub-files correctly. 🙂

[Guest]

You can also use Oxygen XML Editor or Oxygen XML Author to edit EPUB files without having to unarchive them. I recently posted this article on InstantInDesign.com:

http://www.instantindesign.com/index.php?view=412