Quote:
Originally Posted by odedta
I believe that the only proper way to display footnotes in an electronic book is by pop-ups
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I believe that's a too emphatic statement. I'll give you this: as detailed in my earlier long post, popups are
one of the 4 potentially useful and legitimate ways of displaying footnotes in e-books. But the "only proper way"?
Definitely not. I agree with Hitch that reading
long footnotes in a popup window (even worse: bubble!) is not a pleasant experience. And, I definitely dislike the popup window overlaying much (sometimes
all) of the context to which the footnote is attached.
I'm for giving freedom of choice to the end user, to the reader of the book. Do you wish to see footnotes as popups? Fine: push this (book-specific) settings button. Do you wish to read them as endnotes? Here's the (book-specific) settings button for you. Or do you wish to see footnotes displayed
on demand at the
bottom (or top) of the screen? Our e-reader app offers you
that functionality as well. Or what about a split-screen? Here's the button to activate that reading mode.
That would be my ideal, truly smart and user-friendly e-reading software.
Quote:
Originally Posted by odedta
to that end I support ePub3 and build only ePub3 files.
There are plenty of readers out there that support this format, things tend to get standardized.
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Erm, you mean I should only deliver an EPUB 3 file to my current paying client, although for him, Amazon Kindle is the most important platform? See, he doesn't even really care about
EPUB per se.
I just wouldn't dare to deliver to my paying clients a product that I would know would
not get displayed properly (or at all) for a large quantity of
their paying clients (the readers of their books).
Also, could you please specify the "plenty of readers out there that support this format"?
All I know about is iBooks, but as mentioned in my foregoing post, iBooks is functionally such a dumb e-reader (and ugly to boot) that I find it impossible to read anything in it.
Psymon, once you're finished with that Thoreau anthology, please let me know, and I'll be happy to download (and purchase, if you prefer) a copy. It will be a pleasure for me to read Thoreau in your editions (and help catch any typos, for free), because it's clear from your webpage edition of
Walden that this is a labour of love for you, and you're producing these books with the utmost professional care. I love e-books done with such meticulous attention to detail; I strive to produce all of my e-books (paid or not) in the same spirit.