Adobe DE 1.5 Beta

[Peter Sorotokin]

Hadrien,

Now for a very different issue: in our epub books on Feedbooks we usually have links pointing to some other epub files. At the beginning of the file, we link to other books from the same author, and at the end of the book we link to recommendations.
If you click on one of those links, it'll open the browser, download, and then open the file in DE. It would be a much better process if it somehow detected that this link is for DE, and that it should add the new download to DE's library.

Yes, it occurred to us before that this would be a useful feature. Here is what I think:

I would not want to doanload a book if I already have it. Also, an inter-book link may point to a specific section of a target book. So I think we need more information than simply a book download link. Ideally, there should be a reference file inside epub container that would describe target book metadata, so you could match it in your library if it is there, download link(s), so that it can be downloaded if it is not, and a reference to a specific section of the book (if needed). A quotation from the target book would be nice as well, so that we can attempt navigation even if user has different edition by just searching for the text.

It would be nice to define that on IDPF level. BTW, is Feedbooks.com a member?

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Peter Sorotokin

I would not want to doanload a book if I already have it. Also, an inter-book link may point to a specific section of a target book. So I think we need more information than simply a book download link. Ideally, there should be a reference file inside epub container that would describe target book metadata, so you could match it in your library if it is there, download link(s), so that it can be downloaded if it is not, and a reference to a specific section of the book (if needed). A quotation from the target book would be nice as well, so that we can attempt navigation even if user has different edition by just searching for the text.

It would be nice to define that on IDPF level. BTW, is Feedbooks.com a member?

That's a more complex approach but I can clearly see why it would be useful too. Such a system would be very useful for essays for example, where you usually have a lot of references to other books.
In our case it would be pretty easy to add such metadata, and a download link, but most of the time people will have to re-think the way they write essays if such a system is adopted. Pretty much like the semantic web, but for e-books. The most important part will be to add such possibilities in the tools that people use to produce content, and make this as easy as possible.

Feedbooks.com is not a member of IDPF yet, although we fully support this initiative.

[Hadrien]

Well... This multi-flow thing gave me a headache but I've found a good way to solve this...

My elegant MVC solution to generate epub files isn't very elegant anymore, but it should work as long as it's not Proust !

[Peter Sorotokin]

Hadrien,

A hint for you: to turn off automatic multi-column flow for titlepage (and anywhere you don't want it) you can set the IDPF-blessed oeb-column-number CSS property to 1 on the body element. This works only in beta, not in 1.0. The good thing is that it is 100% standard, no need for XPGT.

Peter

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Peter Sorotokin

Hadrien,

A hint for you: to turn off automatic multi-column flow for titlepage (and anywhere you don't want it) you can set the IDPF-blessed oeb-column-number CSS property to 1 on the body element. This works only in beta, not in 1.0. The good thing is that it is 100% standard, no need for XPGT.

Peter

OK, that's a pretty nice tip, and now that I need multiple body elements (because I have multiple flows), I can use different CSS stylesheets easily. Would it impact the performance in a positive way if I limited the CSS stylesheet as much as I can (multiple stylesheets with few elements, instead of a single one for the main content) ?

[Peter Sorotokin]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

OK, that's a pretty nice tip, and now that I need multiple body elements (because I have multiple flows), I can use different CSS stylesheets easily. Would it impact the performance in a positive way if I limited the CSS stylesheet as much as I can (multiple stylesheets with few elements, instead of a single one for the main content) ?

The smaller the stylesheet the better, but the main rule of thumb (for the current version of our software, we expect this to get better at some point) is to avoid any selectors, except these:

• tag
• .class
• tag.class

Peter

[Hadrien]

I've just played a bit with our new multi-flow files and DE 1.5 beta: it works much better now.

I loaded a few "multi-flow monsters" like Moby Dick or War and Peace and changing the size of the window or selecting another font size worked very smoothly.

I still get the warning on books such as Ulysses or Within a budding grove: dividing these books into 2 or 3 flows (they only have 2 or 3 page breaks), is not enough.

[-Thomas-]

Originally Posted by Adam B.

Still no Linux version...

On this page there is a link to a Digital Editions .exe file which runs just fine on WINE for me.