Anthology - Multiple authors

[titusbramble]

Hi

I want to create an anthology with short stories written by some of my friends. When i create the epub the authors are shown as they should, but since each author has his/her own chapter, i would like that authors name to be added to the meta name of that chapter.

With other words, each chapter should have different author showing at the top of the reader, where it usually show only same for all chapters.

Anyone that can advice what to do? Is it possible?

Anna

[Jellby]

That's not defined in the ePub standard. I mean, what appears at the "top of the reader" is reader-dependent. Most likely, it will just display the ePub author field, and that's the same for the whole book. You can specify the author in a <meta> tag for each chapter but most probably it will be ignored everywhere.

[Arios]

A quick (I'm hurry!) and maybe not pertinent trick: why not simply use the heading? So authors will be <h1>, title <h2>, etc. With a TOC at the beginning, the author field will necessarily be present.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Arios

why not simply use the heading? So authors will be <h1>, title <h2>, etc. With a TOC at the beginning, the author field will necessarily be present.

Because the author is not a hierarchical division higher than the title, unless the books is dividided by authors with possibly several stories by each author.

It would better be:

<h1><span class="author">Author</span>
Title</h1>

But I think what the OP wants is the author's name at the top of every page in the chapter.

[Arios]

But I think what the OP wants is the author's name at the top of every page in the chapter.

You're probably right, but I think to my trick in relation to what you wrote:

You can specify the author in a <meta> tag for each chapter but most probably it will be ignored everywhere.

What codes would you put in your <span class="author">?

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Arios

What codes would you put in your <span class="author">?

That depends on how you want the author name to look like in relation to the chapter title. For example:

h1 span.author{
  display: block; /* make sure it's in a separate line */
  font-size: 80%; /* smaller than the title */
  margin: 0.5em 0; /* some vertical separation */
}

[Notjohn]

I got my knuckles rapped for using <h1> etc for entries on the title page, so I created a parallel set of paragraph styles, p.large, p.medium, and p.small. They are, respectively, intended for the title, sub-title, and author/publisher lines.

[Arios]

Thanks for sharing jellby, maybe the op (Anna) will tell us if this works for her?

@ Notjohn

I got my knuckles rapped for using <h1> etc for entries on the title page...

Some people are so cruel!

Seriously, do these codes (p.large, etc.) have a semantic value like <h1>, <h2>, etc.> so, are you losing something in this trade off?

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Arios

Seriously, do these codes (p.large, etc.) have a semantic value like <h1>, <h2>, etc.> so, are you losing something in this trade off?

Not quite a semantic value (p.title, p.subtitle, p.author would have it), but at least they don't claim to be first-, second-, etc. level headings when they are not. They won't affect automatic TOC generation, and they won't interfere with styling the real chapter/book/section headings.

Using <h1> just because by default it's rendered large and bold and I want some large and bold text is poor coding, in my opinion.

[Arios]

Using <h1> just because by default it's rendered large and bold and I want some large and bold text is poor coding, in my opinion.

True!

And I hope you did not think I had that in mind: one of the biggest problem with authors (AFAIK!) is that the style, appearance comes before function. For me the appearance must be subordinate to the content, not the reverse!

[Notjohn]

(Perhaps it was Jellby who rapped my knuckles!)