Thread: Creating multiple ebook formats from same source files!
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Old 07-19-2009, 08:28 AM   #48
nrapallo
GuteBook/Mobi2IMP Creator
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Location: Toronto, Canada
Device: REB1200 EBW1150 Device: T1 NSTG iLiad_v2 NC Device: Asus_TF Next1 WPDN
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
I completely understand that, Nick. I guess what I'm saying is that, desirable though it would be, in reality it's probably impractical to have completely "generic" HTML for multiple book formats. Final device-specific "tweaks" immediately before building the book will always be necessary to deal with the quirks of particular devices. I regard those basically as a part of the build process for a device.
You know, Harry, it just feels wrong NOT being able to use one (the same) source .html, but you are right that, given today's fragmented/disperse marketplace, each device's quirks will make it near impossible to achieve this goal.

So along your lines above in bold, I'm starting to think that the only solution to using one .html to make many different ebook formats may lie in perfecting the .mobi file creation and then feed that to calibre and/or Mobi2IMP. Using the SAME .html causes a lot of logistic problems with different preferences among the various ebook formats. Compromise is nice, but it should be only tolerated when it achieves a better all-around ebook!

However, it may be best to first develop a test suite of .html files (a standard per se) that we could ALL try to convert to the various ebook formats so as to yield similar looking results. Then we truly will be able to confirm if using one .html file for many ebook formats has a future...

I have an old testbed of sort that allovertheglobe prepared years ago. It tried to match features in HTML 3.2 to my device's strengths and weaknesses. While using it "as is" may be less than advisible, given our migration to HTML 4.0 and XHTML 1.1, it may be worth a shot to use it as a starting framework.

I now see a lot of separate threads in this area converging i.e. (and I paraphrase ) tricks&tips for .epub, ebook formats/layout, CSS anyone?, etc...
Perhaps, now is the time to compile a working defacto standard .html and put it through its paces...
toward a common (.html) best practices when creating ebooks...
then when can get creative/artistic once we have a good foundation.

Any thoughts, given that you wrote THE standard here for ebook creation?
Last edited by nrapallo; 07-19-2009 at 08:32 AM.
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