Quote:
Originally Posted by xristy
There are a number of Kindle math books - from Dover, for example, that appear to have been converted from scans to Kindle/mobi.
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Mind linking to an example?
Quote:
Originally Posted by xristy
I am wondering what sort of commercial software is used to produce such eBooks. In other words how do companies that produce eBooks for a living generate these sort of eBooks from "legacy" texts.
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As was stated, most of this is made by hand. If it is built from an actual SCAN, the only way you can do it is extremely labor intensive snapshots (as Hitch mentioned).
I showed how I recreate A FEW (and I stress
A FEW) formulas in books:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=223254
In that thread, Toxaris also pointed to this site which is not as customizable as my method, but is a lot less labor intensive:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...99&postcount=5
If the conversion company is deriving the book from an actual SOURCE document, the conversion would be infinitely easier.... but still a complete pain.
The current state of the EPUB/MOBI market is not designed well for extremely complex mathematical books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by xristy
There are not so many ePubs - and I haven't yet seen any Dover eBooks other than Kindle from Amazon.
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EPUB would be able to handle this easier than Amazon. You would at least be able to use SVG or MathML... but again, if you are working from SCANS, you have to manually recreate all those algorithms.
MathML is not supported on many devices at all, and only a few readers can use it (See MathJax:
http://www.mathjax.org/resources/epub-readers/) and good luck trying to sell that anywhere besides your own dedicated store.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toxaris
You can also create equations in SVG, but I am not aware if that is supported on the Kindle versions.
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Older Kindles can't handle SVG, and according to the Kindle Guidelines when you use SVG, you need to include an image fallback. See Section 8.4.2:
kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf
I think that sort of defeats a lot of the purpose, since you would have to double-up on every single formula in the book (SVG + PNG/JPG). With such an image heavy book, I think this would start cutting into those distribution fees that Amazon/other stores charge for really large books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
That isn't just true of Amazon, either; the big Algebra book that everybody goes on about, that Apple points to as the darling golden-haired child of iAuthor? Every single mathematical formulae in there is an image. Every single one. Book must have cost upwards of $20K to make, I'd guess, in (offshore) manhours alone.
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Mind posting a link to this sample?
I haven't messed around with such a complex book before, but I believe if you are a conversion house, and get the ACTUAL source documents from the publisher (lets say it was written in LaTeX), it would be a pain to transfer to EPUB, but nowhere near as horrendous as working backwards from a scan!
If the company actually wanted you to recreate a math book backwards from a scan... may the gods help you!!! It takes me forever just to handle a book with maybe 20 formulas... handling one with HUNDREDS?