Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
I wouldn't expect a user to rotate a desktop monitor or a laptop computer, though. ePUB is not only for handheld readers.
What would you (as an ebook creator) do with a large landscape picture? There are two basic possibilities:
1. Leave it in its natural landscape orientation. Most readers will be using a portrait reader, and will therefore not see the picture in full size, but "reduced" to have the image width fit the screen width. Some users will be able to change the orientation by rotating the device, that's fine.
2. Pre-rotate the image to make it "fit" in a portrait screen. Again, most readers will be using a portrait reader and see a rotated picture, they can easily rotate the device and see the picture as intended, some of them will have to disable the auto-rotation in their devices, though, or they will just see a smaller portrait picture in a landscape screen. Users with non-portable devices can't rotate the screen.
I would favour a variant where the natural orientation of the image is also specified in a CSS property, EXIF tag or whatever, and the reading software will handle it appropriate.
|
You are thinking that people would rotate the screen either manually or automatically to see the picture in the best format. I do not think so for manual devices (most of them). I think people would rotate their device to see a landscape picture but would only leave a portrait picture alone. They would not know if it would be any bigger even if they went through the steps to rotate it and some eBook Readers don't even have the option to rotate the view of an ePUB in the first place.
On a computer the screen is already landscape so all they have to do is resize the window to see the picture bigger. However you are right that a rotated picture would not do as well on a computer. Do you really think that ePUB is a major format for people to read on a screen? I only proof on a computer, I do my reading on a mobile device.
Dale