tables or svg?

[bobcdy]

I'm having a dickens of a time getting tables to look correct in ADE; they look fine in Sigil but go peculiar in some respects when viewed in ADE.

Perhaps as Valloric suggested I should use svg images in place of the tables. I'm having some difficulty with the svg although I have a program that does them ok.

Can anyone suggest an epub on MR that uses svg images in various settings that I can use as a source of info on their use?

[eping]

Of course tables.
1 svg is for vector graphics.
2 iPad doesn't support svg very well.

You can try my ePub Maker, it does well on tables.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by eping

Of course tables.
1 svg is for vector graphics.
2 iPad doesn't support svg at all.

You can try my ePub Maker, it does well on tables.

That Apple decides not to follow specification should never be a reason not to follow specification yourself. Please follow it and if there are enough complains Apple might reconsider their arrogance.

[bobcdy]

Toxaris,
Thanks for the reply. My problem is not with the markup in the tables, I think, but with ADE and its odd treatment of tables in epubs. Also, the option to increase font sizes (magnification) of the text in epubs causes problems with tables. I may go with tables, anyway, but I thought I'd just try svq.

Apparently, though, svg is not recommended for epubs. One epub available on the web that originally had svg has replaced those illustrations with jpg. It looks like svg is a dead issue with epubs.

[Fabe]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

That Apple decides not to follow specification should never be a reason not to follow specification yourself. Please follow it and if there are enough complains Apple might reconsider their arrogance.

I disagree. Currently, if you want a book to look good on the iPad, you must go along with Apple's implementation. To put a book out there that looks bad just to show Apple is a foolish move. It is far better to request modifications to their specs through iTunes Connect. - Fabe

[wannabee]

SVG looks OK in my ePubs on the iPad and ADE
Double tap it and it expands and you can have a look around. I plan to use it whenever I have a map to include.

Anyway back to the topic. My books that I'm doing have tables all over the shop and I've been playing with JPEGS and SVG and tables and I've come back to tables. Any more than 4 columns gets ridiculous because each TD hasn't enough room for content. There's a good example of what I've been doing in chapter 3. I'd be interested in any feedback.

[eping]

I think SVG is problematic till now, it's not recommended for
commercial epub at least.

wannabee,
I saw you took part in this thread,
"Epub on IPad: SVG-graphics don't show"
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&highlight=svg
But I can't see what's the concusion of that thread.

About SVG on iPad, I' wrote too hastily, so I altered "at all" to "very well".

I also found a comment of SVG by "frabjous" in another thread,
Support for SVGs is very inconsistent and immature on various reading platforms.
That means SVG is not reliable and recommended?

[wannabee]

There was no conclusion eping. So if I understand you mate, the SVG might be OK on my iPad but look like rubbish on another devise.
I'll start another thread with a subject that might draw more people in.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Fabe

I disagree. Currently, if you want a book to look good on the iPad, you must go along with Apple's implementation. To put a book out there that looks bad just to show Apple is a foolish move. It is far better to request modifications to their specs through iTunes Connect. - Fabe

I disagree. As long as you need to break the standard just because some company decides to ignore the standard, it is a wrong decision. If you adapt to non-standard, the company will feel that it is right in its decision and will continue to break standard. How long has it taken Microsoft to adapt to web-standards, it still isn't there.

What really bothers me, is the arrogance of a company that it feels that the standard is wrong and instead of trying to change the standard, it just breaks it and ignores it. Alas Apple has a tendency to do that, just like Microsoft. They just act like they invented the stuff.

If both the creators and readers willingly accept the breaking of the standard, they will not change their ways. If a book will not read as intended on the iPad, but it follows the standard, the creator of the book is not at fault. Apple is.

[Adjust]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

If both the creators and readers willingly accept the breaking of the standard, they will not change their ways. If a book will not read as intended on the iPad, but it follows the standard, the creator of the book is not at fault. Apple is.

I Agree, but also because it's ultimately the readers of the epub who decide, and vote with the rating system, then why would Apple care.

Someone buys an epub which looks horrible on the iPad. 9/10 times it's the end users only reading device (for the gen pop, not people here who have multiple devies) so they don't know, they just think it's suppose to look that way, maybe some of them will complain.

And of the ones who do complain, Do you really think the maker of the epub is going to follow them around and try to explain:
"Oh, it's because Apple aren't following the epub specs like their suppose to, blame Apple, waaa"

And the end users will say "If you knew about Apple not following the spec, then why didn't compensate for it and give me a properly formated epub which I can read on iPad?"

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by bobcdy

It looks like svg is a dead issue with epubs.

I may be very wrong, but it looks like svg has never been much of a starter with almost anyone, regardless of whatever good intentions.

Originally Posted by Fabe

Currently, if you want a book to look good on the iPad, you must go along with Apple's implementation.

OK, this is not a shot at anyone, this is meant to be a genuine pondering: how much of a share in our formatting concerns does iPad/Apple need to take?

For me, I guess it comes down to two specific questions:
1) what percentage of eBook (especially ePub) readers are doing their reading on an iPad?
and
2) when specific layout/coding decisions by Apple are in conflict with the closest we have to a standard (by which I mean ePub and ADE), to which is it wiser to give precedence?

I don't have an answer to either of those, so I'd be grateful to hear other people's opinions. My perception is that Apple tends to punch above its weight in terms of actual market share of eBook readers, being granted undue influence through its gadget-geek appeal. The fact that it seems to be becoming the proverbial 500 lb gorilla that does not play well with others gets up my nose, but as someone learning to format ePubs and trying to develop an efficient workflow I'm trying to get my feelings in perspective.

Any thoughts, please?

[pholy]

To begin, I must say that I don't have an iPad myself. Next, I don't have an answer for the first question, but I would like to add a supplemental question: Do all the iPad readers (how many are there?) suffer from the inconsistencies imposed on the iBooks reader?

In answer to the second question, I think that the iPad's iBooks reader is such a non-conformant beast that we will be forced to have an iBooks edition as well as an epub edition if we want the respective customers to have a favourable experience. This is based entirely on what I have read on Liz Castro's blog, so it probably should not be considered definitive. The main points are that iBooks allows both audio and video, but in non-standard ways, and that embedded fonts are only possible through very messy workarounds. See her blog and her book for more details.

Those are my thoughts...

[MacEachaidh]

Thanks, pholy.

So, is it fair to say Apple's ePub support (or should I restruct that to iBooks?) is a bit like Microsoft's first few stabs at supporting HTML? -- it was an open standard, so long as you did things Microsoft's way and wrote for Microsoft's non-compliant browser and accommodated Microsoft's proprietary modifications and extensions.

Ta for the link to Liz Castro's blog -- I hadn't encountered her before. It's a bit perilous for wide-eyed ones like me, who can't really tell which parts of what I'm reading are Apple-specific and which are more generally viable, but I guess that will become clearer with time. So, thanks.

[wannabee]

Looks like the discussion of this thread is becoming "Apple vs the ePub Standard".

I don't take the hard work everyone has put into the ePub standard lightly.

But . . . .

The standard is, after all, early nineties web stuff isn't it? When trying to create an eBook for the first time I thought "Oh! it's HTML & CSS. Then . . . Oh no! They are trying to read it with Commodore 64s"

Apple iPad is like the iPhone. It arrived and quickly showed how a single device could be much more than a what they used to be. Anyone who just needed a telephone didn't buy an iPhone

Look at how many companies have copied Apple's iPhone?

The iPad arrived and is much more than a reader. It's a full blown PC and has some eBook apps.

If you just want to read a book, that's fine, you can read it on your Sony and Kobo or Kindle but the new demographic that has iPads and soon to follow Android Pads will be expecting ebooks to be more exciting than real books. The vast majority of eBooks available at present are mainly novels and they are formatted as novels and are read as novels.

The new generation want the fireworks and can only get that from dedicated apps at present.

The books I'm doing look good in iBooks. Though on Adobe Digital Editions they look . . . oh well, plain.

I think the commercial players will push the ePub limits because there's money in it to do so and their audience will expect more than ePub can provide at present.

While ePub is a standard and little guys play by the standard rules you have to think that these behemoths didn't get where they are by playing by the rules.

A further comment: Apple have always innovated or used what others didn't see as valuable and implemented it while others scoffed. I still remember one manager arguing that real computers didn't need a mouse.

[DMSmillie]

Well, hardly "early 90s web stuff". There was hardly a Web then, let alone XML and CSS!

As far as standards go - like any other standard relating to digital information, the EPUB standard gradually changes and improves as the technology changes and improves.

Originally Posted by wannabee

While ePub is a standard and little guys play by the standard rules you have to think that these behemoths didn't get where they are by playing by the rules.

I'm just going to highlight a bit of web history, which is relevant here, I think:
History of the Web Standards Project