Converted ebook from AO3 is very unstable

[ztgasdf]

Device:

• Kobo Clara HD
• Software version: 4.34.20097 (cd4e1bb2c2, 9/15/22)

Issues:

• Current chapter reads as "Untitled Chapter", and the chapter title is not shown on top.
• Switching chapters using the table of contents resets the progress, sending you back to page 1 upon re-opening.
• Page count resets when selecting a new chapter
• When selecting the Preface chapter, the header/footer info is gone along with any set margins. Moving past it, it will load the Preface chapter again now with the header/footer information.

How to reproduce:

• Download EPUB from https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296460/chapters/12226634 (Download button is on the top right.)
• Convert and copy to e-reader.
• Load and navigate to Preface using table of contents; manually switch to new chapters and then re-opening, etc.

Additional notes:
This does not occur to any other ebooks, only ones downloaded from Archive of our Own.

[elin1023]

I agree, I'm also facing this issue. I'm using the Kobo Libra 2.

[a62632]

This was solved whenever AO3 updated how they generated epub downloads. It was a problem with the xhtml pages having spaces in their file names. Not sure when the change happened exactly, at least 2024 and on, but they now use underscores instead of spaces.

If you have an old epub that doesn't exist anymore on AO3 to redownload an updated version, you can edit the epub to add underscores to the xhtml names and update the links in the opf/toc to match, then convert to kepub and they will work.*

EDIT:
*If you use Calibre you can use the KoboUtilities plugin to update the ToC for the problem AO3 files on your device when it is plugged in to your computer, it should fix and match the opf/toc links for you.

[pgaskin]

That's good to know. I'll add a workaround for EPUB content documents with spaces in the name at some point since it's technically valid although discouraged, which makes it a kepub-specific problem.