ePub Corrections Check - Help.

[nboshart]

I'm working with the Association of Canadian Publishers and we're currently undergoing a large conversion project. We're seeing some errors with the final text displayed in ePub and I'm wondering if there's any easy way to check the text of an ebook to make sure that everything is appearing correctly.

Problems include typos, small caps not showing up correctly, tables and captions appearing as images and not text, etc.

Is there any way to search a document for these errors automatically? Any suggestions for tools or any ideas you may have would be great.

Thanks!
Nic

[JSWolf]

Did you check the source to see if these same issues are there? The conversion can only be as good as the source.

[nboshart]

I'm working with the assumption that the originals are correct. There's literally thousands of files, and while some publishers only have a few, some others have hundreds. It's a large project.

Also, the files come from multiple sources, some are print, some are digital sources, Pdfs, InDesign files, everywhere.

Is there any sort of compare docs programs? I'm looking for tips I can give to publishers to make it easier for them.

Thanks!

[pdurrant]

Typos could be typos, OCR errors or character set errors. Only the last do you have any chance of automating, but better to get it right from the source than catch it later.

Small caps not showing up could be

* OCR error
* coding error
* display software error

of which the last is most likely - Adobe Digital Editions doesn't display smallcaps when the correct font-variant:small-caps CSS attribute is used.
Use the correct coding and complain to Adobe.

tables and captions as images: sounds like OCR problems. Tables can be done in ePub, but need careful XHTML/CSS coding. Captions if in a display font may be captured as images to preserve the font. You can do it by embedding fonts in the ePub, but you'll need a specific licence for the fonts from the font foundaries to be able to embed them in commercial ebooks.


There only so much automation can do. Proof-reading remains essential for a good end product.

Do make sure your epubs pass epubcheck.

Originally Posted by nboshart

I'm working with the Association of Canadian Publishers and we're currently undergoing a large conversion project. We're seeing some errors with the final text displayed in ePub and I'm wondering if there's any easy way to check the text of an ebook to make sure that everything is appearing correctly.

Problems include typos, small caps not showing up correctly, tables and captions appearing as images and not text, etc.

Is there any way to search a document for these errors automatically? Any suggestions for tools or any ideas you may have would be great.

Thanks!
Nic