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Re: EPUB-Experiences making them?

for

From: L Snider
Date: Dec 5, 2014 7:28AM


Hi Alastair,

Thanks! The problem here is I am not starting with HTML, which from what I
read and hear makes things more complex. I can see that (X)HTML>ePub would
work quite well.

Calibre looks great, it seems to do a lot. However, it only does ePub 2.0
(and won't touch 3.0+ unless someone else does it and submits it)...My
understanding is that ePub 3.0 is more accessible?

Thanks for sharing those experiences, appreciate it!

Cheers

Lisa

On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 4:47 AM, Alastair Campbell < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Duff Johnson wrote:
>
> > Don't author tables, lists, paragraphs, etc that span pages. Unlike PDF,
> > EPUB has (so far as I am aware, happy to be corrected) no means of
> > associating semantic structures that span multiple pages.
> >
>
> I'm fairly sure that is not the case, although it depends on how you author
> it, and how you read it.
>
> I've authored all of one epub so far [1], and I started by creating a basic
> HTML website, with headings, paragraphs, images, links, and tables. The
> core format is based on XHTML, with many peculiarities. Once I'd packaged
> an epub, I used Calibre to finish it and create a .mobi version.
>
> I think some of the confusion comes from the tools, which vary in how they
> deal with things. For example, InDesign would (I assume) lead you to a more
> page-oriented approach, and iBooks author definitely does. InDesign allows
> for structure, iBooks author doesn't even do headings as far as I can tell.
>
> On the client side, I found some annoying differences between iBooks and
> Kindle apps, where iBooks skips alt text, and Kindle doesn't announce
> headings. Something I did in the CSS that works fine for websites seemed to
> fix the textsize in iBooks (but not Kindle).
>
> The core format (XHTML) obviously supports the basics, but the current
> user-agent support is all over the place, just from a bit of testing.
>
> The accessible epub book someone mentioned was helpful, but it was the
> basic "how do you package an epub" that is really fiddly. Calibre is very
> helpful if you've taken the hand-coding approach.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Alastair
>
> 1] http://www.nomensa.com/insights/improving-travel-website-accessibility
> > > >