Quote:
Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck
@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 
|
Ow, it was an explanation of why the markup is done that way. Hehe. In that case, you're preaching to the choir. (Don't worry, I do that too often as well.) I thought you were making a point to show why that markup was good or necessary. Sorry.
Quote:
|
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.
|
Indeed. Don't specify anything, or specify a default in such a way that the reader (device, that is) can overrule it.
Quote:
|
I bought an epub a few weeks ago which left me pleasantly surprised...
|
I've bought another WotC book yesterday using the Kobo coupon, published within the last few weeks.
I've just opened it up in Sigil, and as far as I can see, it's absolutely perfect in its coding and markup: nothing is locked down, no weird whitespacing or margins, justification, nice chapter heading graphics, dropcaps, good layout, good cover, maps, perfect TOC, front matter and adverts in the back are all there (yeah, I actually LIKE the front matter and adverts; I get new reading material from that): it truly is an e-book that is 1-to-1 comparable to the paper WotC books I have. This is how an e-book should be.
The only small omission is that it has no metadata in it, apart from the publisher, but I can live with that. I would be very, very happy if every e-book I bought was like that.
But they aren't, and so that is one of my main reason to remove DRM.