Issues with epub quality on the new 2023 update
I'm a book publisher. I downloaded the latest InDesign update last week. I created the files and saved them like in the previous software. However, the vendors are all rejecting the epub files stating they're not validating in their epub software. I had to go redownload the prior version of InDesign, and it works like a charm. The glitch seems to be in the new version of the InDesign software.
Fix for this issue is now available in the latest release of InDesign 2023 - that is, InDesign 18.1 version.
Please update to this version of InDesign to get the fix.
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Adobe InDesign team
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James Gifford—NitroPress commented
With the release of InDesign 18 / 2023, EPUB exports are embedding the tag '"lang="en-GB",' 'lang="en-US"' or similar in every single XHTML text line.
While this is both correct according to current EPUB standards and should be at most treated as a null or redundant tag by validators and readers, many publishing upload portals are issuing hard or fatal errors when encountering this tag, making it impossible to upload book files. This, despite reliable validators such as KDP/Kindle and epubcheck passing the tag without error or warning (as they should).
The only solution is to revert to ID 2022 or earlier for export, a huge hassle.
This tag should be removed immediately from the EPUB export model, and left out until the majority of publishing portals and validators have been updated to treat this tag as acceptable, even if null or redundant.
This is a critical issue and needs resolution immediately.
ETA: The actual error is that the tag value is somehow incorrect. Despite digging through layers of EPUB specification, I can't put a finger on a reliable reference to the format and tag values, but the really simple solution may be to review how these tags are formatted and formed and make sure they are compliant.
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Arjen Broeze commented
This is the InDesign beta I've used, downloaded from CC on 11/18/2022
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Arjen Broeze commented
Still see all the "lang=" tags everywhere. The only needed tag is "xml:lang=" in the body. Everywhere else it is unnecessary and causing issues when uploading to online book stores.
Example from Indesign 2023 (beta):
<body id="Roborights_ebook" lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US">
<div id="_idContainer001" class="Basic-Text-Frame">
<p class="Title" lang="en-US"><br /><br />RoboRights</p>
<p class="Title" lang="en-US"><br /><br />Django Mathijsen</p>
<p class="Title" lang="en-US"><span class="CharOverride-1" lang=""><br /><br /><br /><br /><img class="_idGenObjectAttribute-1" src="image/Zilverspoor.png" alt="" /></span></p>The same file exported as ePub in InDesign 2022:
<body id="Roborights_ebook" xml:lang="en-US">
<div id="_idContainer001" class="Basic-Text-Frame">
<p class="Title"><br /><br />RoboRights</p>
<p class="Title"><br /><br />Django Mathijsen</p>
<p class="Title"><span class="CharOverride-1"><br /><br /><br /><br /><img class="_idGenObjectAttribute-1" src="image/Zilverspoor.png" alt="" /></span></p> -
Jane Cornwell commented
Hi InDesign is not exporting correctly to EPUB. I am using the 2023 version & I 've wasted 10 working hours on this so far : (
JPEGS are not formatting correctly. -
Arjen Broeze commented
The problem is that in the 2023 version InDesign epub v2 exports contain a "lang=" tag in each paragraph. The 2022 version of InDesign only has this in the body tag.
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Fer commented
Since version 18, the export files for epub2 and epub3 are different than before. This leads to errors in the epubchecker. Now empty language tags appear everywhere in the xhtml files, like: lang="" . Even in spans. In version 17.4 and before this did not happen. The solution is to choose a language in Indesign in every style, but that is not ideal and never necessary. So something is wrong and changed in the export module.
Hope to get an answer soon.