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Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
IMO havin header AND footers is totally useless in an ebook. You should have just one, let's call it a header.
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The way oeb-page-head and oeb-page-foot are defined, the header could be used to display the chapter title (and/or book title, author, etc.), and the footer could be used for footnotes (just as a convention).
A head or foot element should only be visible/active if its container element is visibe in the (let's call it) main screen. If you put a footnote with the "display: oeb-page-foot" inside the paragraph it applies to, the footnote will be active only when the paragraph is displayed, and the footnote could be delivered as a pop-up, or through a "click here for footer" button, or whatever.
Quote:
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I think the header would be most useful with a combination of content: for example: The title and author and the current chapter/section I don't think headers as specified by the book creator are particularly useful. They serve a more useful purpose as navigation/memory aids.
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I agree, that's how I define the headers in my ePUBs, but the creator can still define what is to go into the header, the exact wording of the "chapter title" (sometimes it's good to have it abbreviated), whether to include other information, such as date, author, part, location (I mean, of the chapter, not of the book), the bold/italic/you name it formatting, etc.
Also, the header could have navigational information that is not actually the title of anything, just the topic of the current text passage. I've just read a paper book that has this information in the margin, an author may want to add this to an ebook too, and the oeb-page-head is an obvious mechanism, if it worked.