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Old 08-07-2013, 07:26 PM   #26
Hitch
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Posts: 11,503
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Device: K2, iPad, KFire, PPW, Voyage, NookColor. 2 Droid, Oasis, Boox Note2
Quote:
Originally Posted by ibu View Post
@Hitch
Ok, I'm a newbie with eReaders and didn't now how poor their CSS compatibility is. Thanks for correcting me.

Is there a large data table (like for internet brower CSS compatibility) for eReaders and CSS selectors, properties, values?
LOL! From your lips to God's ears, or as my Jewish friends say, "Aleyveh," which means the same thing, essentially. Sadly, no: this is a knowledge born of hard knocks, by finding out the hard way that Nook, for example, will hyphenate headers wherever it runs out of room--instead of at a syllable--unless you expressly tell it not to, while it's hyphenating paragraphical text just fine in the same book. (As will Goodreads' online ePUB-reader, FWIW).

Quote:
That would help to guide creators or cleaners of epubs, which CSS could be used without letting a lot users standing in the rain.
Yup. But...there's just, IME, no easy way to learn to make epubs or MOBI's. There just isn't. They're not cookies coming out of a cookie-cutter machine. Lo, I wish they were! It would make my life easier and more profitable. But they're just NOT. I mean, for fiction, sure, we could all try to do that; make them all look like Vanilla Word files...but where's the joy in that? The only way to learn to make them, and find out what works, what doesn't, is...try it. Hell, we've discovered stuff that should NOT work, simply by not knowing enough, when we tried it, to know it shouldn't. Then, hang out here, hang out at other places, and swap digital spit with other bookmakers, as in "hey, I tried this, but that didn't work, what did you do?" It's just a process. It's probably one of the last professions standing that still (essentially) has an apprenticeship. ;-)


Quote:
Not at all.
I have a deep respect to all book designer, typographs who work with dedication and expertise.
I like to see their suggestions for a book layout as a reader.
When I like it, will enjoy to read the book in the suggested layout.
Okay. I'm not really sure that your posts have quite made that clear.

Quote:
I'm not perfect in Regex, but I agree to you: it's extremly powerful to manipulate text.
Without any question.

But my point of view for this thread was different.

For a valid xml document RegEx is not the best. It's more elegant to use a tool, which interpretes the tree.
Well, that sounds really spiffy, but you're making a LOT of assumptions there, as I think either Diap or one of the other guys mentioned. And, honestly, I disagree with you; I think that for a valid XHTML document--not an XML-only document, mind you--that RegEx is the best that is currently available. As far as I know, there is no silver-bullet application that can analyze a digital tree and then adjust the CSS/HTML styling as it "should" be. The number of possible shoulds...it's an exponentially large number. Or at least, arithmetically large. And the issue is, the market for it is very small, really, as the guys here will (Sigil) would tell you. I don't know what the total downloads for Sigil are, or donations, but I wouldn't care to guess. Or for Jutoh, or AWP (Atlantis Word Processor). Whereas the number of books "self-published" at Amazon last year were, what, 700,000, all made from uploading Word and PDF files? Some 2million in 2 years? Of which, probably less than 10,000 were professionally produced, if that? Maybe 100,000, if I go hog-wild and include all the BPH books made in India?

So...somehow, I doubt that a tool like that will come into existence. Sounds fabulous, don't get me wrong...but I think I'll have to put that one on a wishlist to Santa, right up there with "Dear Santa, please deliver me some reasonable clients who don't want us to make 355 edits, 200+ of which are scene dividers, now with a fleuron that they didn't have yesterday, in a print book that we got today to have it ready to GO TO PRINT ON FRIDAY." (Yes, taken from a real client, on a real book, just today, a Wednesday, for those of you who will see this many moons later.)

So, Santa, that's what I want--a magic tool for trees and structure and CSS and HTML, and reasonable clients. Then I can die happy. Or at least, possibly retire, and stop haunting my fellow inmates here at MR.

Hitch
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