Quote:
Originally Posted by exaltedwombat
But, as I said, if the medium is known and fixed, what's the point of working within the constraints of epub? There are better ways of completely controlling layout and appearance in that case.
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Or you know that the devices being used to read will
AT LEAST have X or Y capabilities (Readium or iBooks means that you can now create an EPUB that has more complex layouts, uses MathML, uses javascript, has some EPUB3 functionality, pop-up footnotes, etc. etc.)
MathML would be an extremely important requirement for many books. In the case of a complex math book, you can say something along the lines of: "This EPUB can only be read on any program that supports MathML". Sure, the amount of readers using programs that read MathML means that your potential market is
much smaller, but the possibilities of creating this currently using EPUB2 are close to nil (could potentially be produced with a massive amount of SVGs). (much smaller >>> nil)
With PDF, you will be forced back into the "page" layout. Although you will have more of the advantages of having fixed-format (MUCH more complex looking books, more advanced typography, etc. etc.).
EPUB has the advantage of working on any screen size (plus reflowability, changing fonts, changing colors, changing font-size, changing margins, etc. etc.), while creating a PDF for a specific device means, you will be limited to that "paper size"/resolution.
If you have any examples of reflowable PDFs which work well on small/large devices alike, please share... Also, if you have any EPUB2 examples of math books, please point them in my direction, I would LOVE to take them apart.
I would love to see great examples, and any explanations of workflows of how you got from A to B.
Side Note: Perhaps this company already has a large catalog of already built content (such as the original poster). The way the workflow is set up, they already have a massive amount of code that uses CSS to generate their numbered lists. It is up to the company to weigh the pros/cons of how much time/effort/money it would take to convert to EPUB2 (hard code numbers), or releasing it as is as EPUB2/3 geared towards programs which can handle more complex CSS (and severely limiting the potential market).
Another Side Note: Perhaps these books/documents are not going for sale at all, and perhaps are just there for convenience to users. For example: Here is the 2013 Guidelines as .doc, .odt, .epub, .mobi, .kf8, .pdf, .html, ...
Edit: I just thought of this potential solution. Since you already have well marked HTML, but are only missing the auto-generated #s. Would it be possible to have Sigil carry you most of the way? You can have Sigil auto-generate a toc.ncx, you can then come up with some sort of script to manually add in numbers to each navpoint. Code samples of everything could potentially help us iron out problems (a typical chapter, your HTML TOC, your CSS, the toc.ncx, ...)!