designing epubs for ipad? (my thoughts)

[hapax legomenon]

Hi, there,

I am producing epub files. I think I have a handle on how to do so for e-ink readers.

But I'm wondering how the reader applications for the iphone will affect how we should design our epub files.

Some random wonderings:

1)is there an epub reader for PC which lets you test 1024x768? Do you think ibooks will have an emulator for the PC?

2)will people tend to use the default reading application ibooks or will they download several (Stanza, Delicious Library, etc).

3)even though the resolution is allegedly 1024x768, I've been told that this is actually not particularly high for that screen size. Will this affect the choice of embedded fonts or font size?

4)will the guidelines for graphics change?
http://www.zorba.us/?page_id=676
I foresee problems when trying to produce ebooks for both the Kindle 2 and the ipad. I guess the lesson learned here is that 63K will still be the upper maximum, with images scaled up or down and using css to declare a maximum width in percentage for the img element.

5)I wonder if anybody has any thought about whether people will do a significant amount of reading in landscape mode.

6)I also have to wonder whether this sort of reading device will again bring books for the Safari browser (via subscriptions or through hybrid solutions such as Ibis http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/0...nd-bookserver/ or Bookworm). Then again, I have to wonder about multimedia support for Safari (since flash doesn't appear to be in the picture).

7)Again, the different real estate specs might make some features practical which were only possible-but-awkward in the smaller eink device. Any thoughts about that?

8)I have to wonder what will the impact be on reading blogs and RSS feeds. Will this device increase the proportion of reading that is done on bookish things or bloggy things? (i.e., will rss reader and ebook reader be 2 distinct apps, or will ibooks try to bring both kinds of reading together).

9)the thing I really want to know is: if you're reading epub files, what will happen when you click a URL? (and what how much multitasking or application switching can the ipad actually do) http://www.informationweek.com/blog/...PCKHWATMY32JVN

10)some have speculated about annotations software. Will the ibook be doing that? Can a developer do a plugin that adds that functionality to ibook?

Your thoughts and speculations would be appreciated.

[Kolenka]

I can add my own comments to the questions I can. Specific questions about iBooks is probably gonna be hard to come by until the iPad launches (Apple was very sparse on information).

1) You can always use Calibre or the like and set the viewing size. I don't see this as being a huge deal at this point. As long as the ePub is not using px numbers for sizes, we should be okay with font sizes/etc. The real issue here is that most readers are 160-200 DPI, and this is only 130dpi. Images and fonts will appear larger on the lower-DPI screens when we use strict pixel measurements.

2) Apple made no mention about side-loading existing ePubs, or ADE, and I'm assuming they will be using their own DRM (if any, since as a sandbox, it's locked down without any for the most part). Even if they are using ADE or no DRM, there is still the huge question about side-loading. I'm expecting this to be a fractured experience as everyone still has Stanza, Kindle for iPad, and iBooks all on the same device. It's gonna get ugly.

3) See my comments in #1 about this. With a lower-than-normal DPI, pixel values will get ballooned up, but non-pixel values should suit fine and allow some control over scaling.

4) I don't really think so. 63K is still the limit for MOBI, and so if you target the Kindle, you are stuck with it.

5) No idea. Depends on how the text is handled when switching to landscape.

6) *shrug* I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is using WebKit to assist with rendering though.

7) Like what? For ePub there isn't a whole lot you can do that really reflects screen size unless we talk about images with text and fine details in them.

8) I'd imagine they would be kept separate for now. I can see convergence happening, but with the way a lot of sites use RSS/atom feeds right now, it's hard to merge the two. Just look at Calibre to see how messy it can get without custom formatted articles for the devices in question.

9) No clue.

10) Plugins are pretty much out on the iPhone/iPad for other software, due to the security sandbox Apple is using (there have to be APIs to get out of the sandbox, like there are for contacts, photos, etc). Odds are the iBooks app won't support annotations.

[edembowski]

I don't see any reason why you would want to make a device dependent document with a device independent file format. ePub is not device specific. While it is a good idea to test you ePub at various resolutions and with different readers, I don't think you should try to make something iPad specific using ePub.

- Ed

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Kolenka

4) I don't really think so. 63K is still the limit for MOBI, and so if you target the Kindle, you are stuck with it.

Does the Kindle really have a 63k image limit? 63k was the size limit for ancient Palm implementations of the Mobi reader, due to their 8-bit segmented memory architecture. All later implementations of Mobi Reader, to the best of my knowledge, did away with this restriction long ago.

[Kolenka]

I was running into it back with the first-gen Kindle myself. My understanding was that the limit came into play because the Palm file format MOBI still uses 64KB 'blocks', and that it wasn't guaranteed that any MOBI reader would ever support reading image files from multiple blocks.

64KB is the limit imposed by 16-bit memory addressing, but even with segmenting, an 8-bit CPU with 16-bit memory addresses can only address 64KB at one time, so making that the limit for a blob of data in a Palm DB doesn't make a whole lot of sense. My understanding is that even the first pilot used a 68k-based chip which would have been a 32-bit processor.

[HarryT]

Fair enough. The Windows desktop Mobi reader and CyBook Gen3 versions of it certainly have no problem with >64k images, hence my assumption that the restriction had been removed for all modern versions of it.

[Kolenka]

Well, at this point, I can't say if the Kindle falls into that group or not... you'd be a better judge than me now.

When I hit it during conversion, it was a built-in limitation of the official MOBI convertor AFAIK. That was easily 2 years ago though.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Kolenka

Well, at this point, I can't say if the Kindle falls into that group or not... you'd be a better judge than me now.

When I hit it during conversion, it was a built-in limitation of the official MOBI convertor AFAIK. That was easily 2 years ago though.

Oh yes, you've right about that - Mobi Creator does indeed restrict images to 63k for backward compatibility. But there are now other Mobi creation tools available which don't (such as tompe's "mobihtml" package), and the resulting images work fine, and look a lot better. It's especially useful for things like maps in books, where you want to see fine detail.

[nikkie]

I think the only big new points designing books for the iPad would be as follows:

* Now you can use movies
* Color pictures
* Layout is much more flexible (room to play!)
* Your font colors will almost certainly be changed. I can't imagine reading black text on white background for hours - I always switch to Stanza where my default is grey on black.


In specific answer to your questions:

1)is there an epub reader for PC which lets you test 1024x768? Do you think ibooks will have an emulator for the PC?

You can set Adobe Digital Editions to be this size. There is an emulator for the iPad. It won't run on the pc, and I'm not sure how well it work work as an ePub tester. Seems convoluted.

2)will people tend to use the default reading application ibooks or will they download several (Stanza, Delicious Library, etc).

Depends on the configurations possible in iBook. It looked to me like there was no color configuration settings in iBook; and if so I will definitely be using Stanza.

3)even though the resolution is allegedly 1024x768, I've been told that this is actually not particularly high for that screen size. Will this affect the choice of embedded fonts or font size?

No more than it would on the Que or the MacBook. It's not bad for a 10" screen, most people are just complaining that it isn't widescreen. It's also not as awesome as some of the recent mobile devices released, but compared to regular computer LCDs it's a fairly typical ppi.

4)will the guidelines for graphics change?
http://www.zorba.us/?page_id=676
I foresee problems when trying to produce ebooks for both the Kindle 2 and the ipad. I guess the lesson learned here is that 63K will still be the upper maximum, with images scaled up or down and using css to declare a maximum width in percentage for the img element.

Yes, I'm sure they will. Eventually. I wouldn't rock any boats for a while though.

5)I wonder if anybody has any thought about whether people will do a significant amount of reading in landscape mode.

An interesting question, but not something a creator of ePubs should be too worried about. Landscape mode will probably (hopefully) involve two columns in future versions of the software. Since ePub is reflowable, other than to take care of your images, who cares?

6)I also have to wonder whether this sort of reading device will again bring books for the Safari browser (via subscriptions or through hybrid solutions such as Ibis http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/0...nd-bookserver/ or Bookworm). Then again, I have to wonder about multimedia support for Safari (since flash doesn't appear to be in the picture).

It seems likely, though the lack of plugins will be a huge problem. Flash will not be supported at release.

7)Again, the different real estate specs might make some features practical which were only possible-but-awkward in the smaller eink device. Any thoughts about that?

Very yes! I can imagine people attempting to use a lot more fancy layouts. Should be interesting to see how they render.

8)I have to wonder what will the impact be on reading blogs and RSS feeds. Will this device increase the proportion of reading that is done on bookish things or bloggy things? (i.e., will rss reader and ebook reader be 2 distinct apps, or will ibooks try to bring both kinds of reading together).

I've wondered about this too. I'd really like to see some mind-melding of ePub and RSS. Maybe just a "See the RSS feed for this topic here (link)".

9)the thing I really want to know is: if you're reading epub files, what will happen when you click a URL? (and what how much multitasking or application switching can the ipad actually do) http://www.informationweek.com/blog/...PCKHWATMY32JVN

Well I can tell you what happens now on the iPhone: if the link is within doc, you go to that section of the doc. Otherwise, depending on the application rendering your text, you are either asked what to do (open in a browser? read within this app in a new pane?) or taken automatically to the browser. It is possible to put links in regular websites which also take you back to the app you came from after whatever you read in the link - the Kindle app does a good job of this now. This is really a pretty seamless experience so long as there is a url to take you back to the app.

10)some have speculated about annotations software. Will the ibook be doing that? Can a developer do a plugin that adds that functionality to ibook?

No idea what plugin functionality will be available, but since there are no plugins for any other app on the iPhone, I would suspect not. That doesn't mean annotation will be impossible though - the B&N app, Kindle app, and Stanza all support annotation. If Apple leaves it out of theirs, it would be pretty lame.

[hapax legomenon]

Nikkie and others:

Thanks for your thoughts.

Wow, it never occurred to me that books would use colored fonts. And how obviously true!

I think the Ipad may spell a revolution in magazine publishing rather than book publishing. (i.e., group publishing, attractive covers with navigation bars, etc). 800x600 works for essays and novels, but 1024x768 opens up possibilities for lots of things.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is multitouch? Who makes the action triggers for them? (does the content creator do this?) For hyperlinks in ibooks, will the user merely need to touch on the relevant words? Or is it less direct?

(Maybe if you have used safari/stanza on the iphone/itouch, that may provide guidance).

The ipad seems promising for graphic-based novels --although it's clear that will require a special application. It sounds like we are facing a torrent of proprietary readers; maybe someday we will long for the monotony of the PDF reader.

My guess is that users will grow tired of switching between readers and opt for the one which supports the biggest variety. I'd like to think that epub will be the format of the future, but I doubt that NYT or Newsweek (for example) would like that.

[nikkie]

Originally Posted by hapax legomenon

Pardon my ignorance, but what is multitouch? Who makes the action triggers for them? (does the content creator do this?) For hyperlinks in ibooks, will the user merely need to touch on the relevant words? Or is it less direct?

Multitouch just means that when you use multiple fingers on the screen at the same time, you can use the positions of those touches to decide what action the screen will take. For example, you can use your thumb and forefinger to "pinch or spread" an image to enlarge or shrink it.

The "action triggers", so to speak, are created by whoever wrote the app you're reading in. For example, Lexcycle decided that in Stanza, sliding a finger down the center will lower the brightness, and from right to left will turn the page. In other apps on the iPhone these gestures do different things. I haven't seen any use of real multi-touch in eBook apps, only single touch (one finger, not two+).

On the iPhone, you open a link by touching it. That's it.

My guess is that users will grow tired of switching between readers and opt for the one which supports the biggest variety. I'd like to think that epub will be the format of the future, but I doubt that NYT or Newsweek (for example) would like that.

I'm definitely tired of switching readers. I would stick with Stanza, but each bookstore uses its own DRM. This means I have to open B&N books in the B&N app, Kindle books in the Kindle app, and Apple books in the Apple app.

I don't know why any newspapers would have a problem with ePub. It's a very versatile format.

[JSWolf]

Don't forget ADE compatible adept DRMed eBooks should be opened in the txtr app. And with the txtr app, you can also do away with Stanza.

[charleski]

To accommodate landscape viewing you might want to include a page template, which is based on XSL:FO. Of course, this is an Adobe extension, so the chances of Apple including support for it in their ePub viewer are dubious. I suspect that Apple will implement their own, incompatible extension to handle multi-column support merely in order to retain control, but would love to be proved wrong.

[Kolenka]

There are ways to handle multi-column support in ePub without Adobe's extension.

I would wager that Apple's renderer would use WebKit and may actually try to implement the OEB extensions.

[charleski]

There's the oeb-column-number attribute, though that only really allows you to chose between allowing the device to decide or forcing it to render in 1 column.

Note the little rant at the end of Adobe's doc - the Paged Media Module for CSS3 is still in Working Draft status and hasn't been touched since 2007.