Exporting to ePub: title does not stay centered

When I export documents to ePub, the centered title displays in iBooks in the left justification; however, my centered chapter titles remain unchanged. What can I do to keep the main title centered when exporting?

It is more likely that your centered title is being displayed in the "Full Justification" mode. If your "Body" paragraph style does not use the "Justification" mode, simply turn off the "Full Justification" setting for the iBooks app. (Another way to verify this is to open the ePUB package and view the "cover.xhtml" file in your browser to see how it was really exported by Pages.)

It appears that, for some unexplained reason, this setting causes the "cover.xhtml" file text to display in the "Full Justification" mode "unconditionally" while text in the various "chapter-#.xhtml" files are displayed "conditionally" (i.e., if formatted using the "Justified" format and if the iBooks option is turned on). Images, shapes, etc.are not affected--only text. In addition, files created by other ePUB apps which do not use Apple's "cover.xhtml" naming convention for title page text are also not affected by this problem.

Request you use the "Feedback" option to report this "bug." Since iBooks does not seem to have a designated feedback page, I have been reporting the fault via the Pages feedback resource but am not sure whether or not they are forwarding reports to the appropriate people responsible. (I.e., believe the problem could be fixed by either changing the Pages ePUB export naming convention or the manner in which iBooks displays the "cover" named file.)

I've tried changing the paragraph style of the main title to the chapter name style, but it still reverts to the left justification...

Alternative workaround: You can insert a "Section Break" as the very first entry on the first page of your document. This will push your title page text to page two in your project. Now drop an image which has been cropped to fit you document page at the correct aspect ratio to your new first page in your project. Make sure it a floating image so that it completely files the document page without running into margin problems. When you export the modified file, set the export module to export the first page as a cover (thumbnail) item and ignore the message regarding the use of floating images.

If all went well, the first page of your document will be exported as a cover thumbnail and automatically be used as the "cover art" for your ePUB file in applications like iTunes and readers like iBooks. That is, the first page will be converted to a PNG file entitled "cover-image.png" and placed in the "OPS > images" folder in the ePUB package. Further, the "cover.xhtml" file will not be created and your title page (second page in your project) will now be contained in the "chapter-1.xhtml" file in the "OPS" folder and now display correctly in iBooks since you have circumvented the default "cover.xhtml" file naming convention. Unfortunately, the "full page" cover image will not be available for viewing within the ePUB book in iBooks--only for viewing as an icon within the graphic interface and/or when selecting/opening the "book" for reading in iBooks.

FOLLOW-UP:

Since the suggestions above are, at best, inconsistent and some users want to actually use justified chapter text, I've come up with a solution that works 100% of the time but has its own limitations. In this case, try placing your title page, centered text in a rectangular (or other) shape which is centered on a "Title" style line.

In this case, Pages, will create a PNG image file of the shape object the same as it does for line shapes used for chapter sub-divisions, frames, etc. Since images are not effected by the unconditional "Full Justification" display problem currently associated with text in the "cover.xhtml"/"Title Page" file, the only major concern with this workaround is to ensure the text is of a satisfactory display size since it cannot re-scaled (other than for iPhone use) as fonts can be re-sized.





While I am still not satisfied with the spacing, you can see from the iPhone and iPad screen captures that this approach does, in fact, preserve the centering even with the iBooks "Full Justification" option turned on.

For what it's worth...