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Originally Posted by Hitch
The only way forward that I see is to SIGNIFICANTLY clean up the HTML and the CSS, so that all the unnecessary cruft that is usually exported is eliminated, and conforming the html elements that don't need their own names, etc.
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It seems easier to re-do it completely in Sigil and keep control over the source code - some of the styling choices in Indesign do not translate into html and css but rather it creates a png to show in the background - so any small changes in elements' locations (which will undoubtedly happen if I get to cleaning up the html and css) will misalign with the background.
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I realize that this next comment will (likely) be unhelpful--but I wouldn't do this book in FXL, either. If you've used images for the myriad formulae, then it's unnecessary. It's only necessary for math/science textbooks, when you are using formulae, or MathML, etc., rather than images. Once you have images--why use FXL?
I'm sure you'll respond that that's what the client wants; we deal with this all the time. I usually take a pdf of the book and put it on their smartphone, and then ask them exactly how many people are going to want to read this tome of magnificence, one pinch-zoom/pan/scan at a time, and that typically cures them of such an idea.
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It's not only 'what the client wants'. With textbooks the main goal I guess is to be able to carry around only a tablet/iPad (and not smartphone) and have all the textbooks there not several different books. For teaching purposes it would still be "page 388" or exercise 778 - and each student would see it exactly the same, regardless of their reader format. For which usually pdf-s would suffice I guess. FXL epub is in some ways
very similar to pdfs if you don't use any fancy features.
As for the rant - it's interesting that where web started going more responsive and dynamic, conforming to the device capabilities, then for fxl epub it's the exact opposite - going to fixed layout, rigid, non-dynamic.