@Katsunami post #70: I think we are in agreement about most of these issues; I only try to explain what I observe in commercial epubs, I certainly don't condone it
I meant generetated, not created, in most production lines there is not enough time to create epubs from scratch. It's not really necessary either if you are very careful about the styling of the text you export to the epub, and even more careful about inspecting the results. You need hand-crafted CSS though, I haven't seen any tool that can generate something sensible. That hand-crafted CSS can of course be reused.
As for layout design and digital media I believe you are right, people are way too concerned with conserving the paper layout, and consequently do silly things when creating epubs. This is part of the problem, along with a lack of research of best practices (or even knowing that there
are best practices). My philosophy is also to leave as much as possible unspecified, and let the renderer sort it out.
I bought an epub a few weeks ago which left me pleasantly surprised, because it was sensibly formatted from the vendor. That is the first one of maybe 300 epubs I've bought over the years. Formatting in commercial epubs otherwise usually fall between bad and horrible.
I believe we're a bit off-topic here, however. To bring us back on-topic I think our conclusion is that many
do have a need to touch-up commercial ebooks