Quote:
Originally Posted by Lexicon
You seem to be saying that the problem here is that different devices display the same CSS differently. I don't believe that is the real problem here, the real problem is that designers expect the same kind of control of layout and presentation that they have traditionally wielded over printed materials...
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Lexicon I am not suggesting that the vast majority of what is read should behave exactly as you propose. Indeed I am thrilled with epub as a much needed standard that acts exactly in this way. A few tools would deal with problems such as en-dashes, curly quotes and the rest. Widow and orphan control is no biggy and can be safely be left in the hands of display device software as it develops.
The real problem arises with non-fiction works where typographical elements are sometimes critical. It is a matter of horses for courses. Some works are simply better designed on a fixed page basis. PDF being based on a fixed media positioning language is proven in application.
It is early days, but I believe there is a way to generate; at the users end, from XML literature, mix and match stylesheets that produce PDF that fits the device being used, or indeed can produce epub type reflowed books.
This approach would be total overkill for most ebooks, epub and similar approaches work well, do their job, and are more than adequate. Plus they are relatively simple to create, which is important.
Think of the problem of producing a text, that requires a special type face (Ancient Sumerian), and has translated lines under each glyph that have to be kept in strict order regardless of the device being used. Add to this marginal notes, footnotes (which may be important to display on the same page at the time of reading and might occupy most of the page) and the simple CSS layout crumples. Even if CSS could do it, it would be a nightmare to create, and perhaps very slow to flow.
Reflowing text is a good thing, in general, but not always. I am proposing non-dynamic reflow that produced a fixed page ebook for different device display sizes. I am suggesting that it has a place, but not as a single universal standard, but as a potential special purpose standard.
Of course creating the tools and the stylesheet language capable of doing this is a long way off. As far as I can work out it is doable and the tools for constructing it are already developed, of course this is merely technical, design is critical if it were to be useful to book designers and users. This is for literature best marked up in something as complex as TEI, I emphasize "best marked up - not everything.