Quote:
Originally Posted by 1v4n0
Hello, what do you think is the best way to render tables on epub/azw3 ebooks? I usually turn them into html tables,
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Yes, that's your best bet. It will:
- Follow all user preferences
- Be readable by Text-to-Speech
- Copy/Pastable
- Searchable
- [...]
But because of very huge font sizes + skinny devices (cell phones), you should minimize how many columns across your tables are (~5+ columns is about the soft limit, depending on data).
You may have to display your data in a very different way:
1. "Transposing" or "verticalizing" the tables:
Change a wide 3x13 table and flipping it to a tall 13x3.
See example I posted in 2013, where I also went into more detail on HTML tables:
"Tables in an EPUB?".
2. Converting from a table into actual text:
For example, this table:
Code:
------------------------------
First | Last | Votes
------------------------------
A1 | A2 | A3
B1 | B2 | B3
------------------------------
could be converted to text as:
3. Split into X amount of skinnier tables:
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1v4n0
I guess turning them into images would make them more cross-compatible, but it would also make the books heavier.
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Images of tables can't be spoken via Text-to-Speech. And depending on the resolution of your images, they may not age well at all. (With higher DPI/resolution devices, some of those old tables-as-images became ant-sized.)
If you want to read more of the pros/cons of all different methods of displaying tables, there's also the discussion in
"How to Control Fonts in SVG Images of Charts and Tables?".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Turtle91
image "weight" can be minimized by choosing the correct format (.gif, .png, .jpg).
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And if you do have to save the table as an image... use PNG (Indexed if you want really small filesize).
Do not use that crappy JPG. :P