why does epub in ipad ibooks insert blank pages?

[idiotprogrammer]

I have been working on my first smashwords ebook. I read the style guide fairly thoroughly and know my way around MS Word.

But I can't quite figure out how you control new pages.

I have different stories -- none of which have the text "Chapter" in the heading.

My goal is that after every new component, the next component should begin with a new ebook page.

Title
TOC
Preface
Story 1
Story 2
(etc)

*********************************************
ATTEMPT #1
Initially, I followed this rule at the end of every component.

P
P
P
centered ***
P
P
P
Text in Chapter Heading
(where chapter heading style had checked the "Page Break Before" option in Paragraph options.

RESULT: Things worked out perfectly in Adobe DE, Kindle Touch, BN Nook, but in ipad ibooks, there was an additional blank page separating each component. That is bad because I don't want ipad to have unnecessary blank pages.

****************************
ATTEMPT #2

I undid the "Page Break Before" option in the Chapter Heading style. Here was the result.

RESULT: Basically this ebook renders fine in all devices except for ipad's ibooks. TOC is on same page as Title and Preface. None of the "chapters" begin at the top of the page.....
******************************************

So I have two unpalatable choices here. Can anyone suggest a way to do component breaks without adding blank pages on the ipad?

[Nathaniel Phillips]

I believe epub removes page breaks. I don't think there is a way to use them. Different ebook readers have different page sizes and font sizes (and the user can adjust the font size as well) so there is no such thing as a "page" in epub. I don't think there is anything that you can do that will result in a page break in epub.

[idiotprogrammer]

Update: After reading the troubleshooting section here www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#trouble (reprinted below) , I see that Meatgrinder automatically adds a page break before any custom style based on Heading. So I edited my custom Chapter Heading style so that it was based on NORMAL instead of HEADING style.

The result: ibooks displays everything correctly. Nook and Kindle basically render everything ok, although there is a random page on the Nook.



***********************My .epub, has unintended page breaks (often in front matter and near chapters). Why?
Open up your Word .doc source file, and check the paragraph styling of the paragraphs following the page breaks. The most common cause of unintended page breaks is when you over-use one of Word's Heading styles, because Meatgrinder will auto-insert preceding page breaks before each instance of a paragraph that uses the Heading style. It will also auto-insert a preceding page break if you're using a custom paragraph style that is based upon a Heading style. Step 7 in the Style Guide shows how to view and manage your paragraph styles. When you open up the paragraph styles menu, then click modify, at the top of the screen under "properties" you can view whether or not your custom style is based on a Header. It's safest to base your custom styles on Normal. Final tip: As we suggest in the Style Guide, using the Header style sparingly, usually only for chapter or section headings.

[idiotprogrammer]

Nathaniel, each NCX component will receive a brand new page. In ebooks, a page is when the next content appears at the top of the page (usually with a heading of some sort).

Unfortunately, Smashwords/meatgrinder/MS Word is a very opaque and buggy way to do this. The directions are not easy. In the HTML there is lot of control for page breaks, widows, orphans, etc. With smashwords, we are trying to make a program produce a binary file which contains these same instructions -- except we are not actually seeing what meatgrinder or MS Word is doing.