Originally Posted by GregS
kjk, anyone dealing with non-fiction works knows that layout is important, which is not the same as saying that it thereby has to be fixed on the "page".
EPUB has given us much, but it has moved slowly, glacially in fact -- why are the standards so poor on layout control (little CSS2 and no real CSS3)? While unique Ids and and paragraph referencing is left to the side -- and why is there no direct Docbook support, or more importantly direct TEI support!
The answer is simple, the "standards" never exceed the existing software base, rather they are determined by it in the most narrow way. Yet ioronically there is plenty of software (firefox for instance) that with minor tweaks could display, at least, any flavour of XML, it is not that the standards are confined to the realistic (which they should be), but that they are held back by the manifest goods.
I am fifty three now, I am not waiting any longer for American corporates to come up with the goods, they have had long enough.
If China comes up with flexible layout and blended with XML (applicable to TEI) and the Blio reader comes out -- I will abandon my small EPUB productions and go over to something with more foresight kin design.
I started putting electronic literature in cybersapce, back in the mid 1980s using bullentin boards and peer to peer transfers. All the current problems and some of the current solutions were forecast in the late 1980s, and for nearly twenty five years I have been waiting for things to come together.
I have not seen anything of CEBX yet -- but they would only have to get a few things better than the current offerings to be a winner -- plus coming from China is in everyway a bonus.
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