Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
Arguments [debate] that epub files do not look good due to how an individual decided to code the formatting seems specious at best, and downright wrongheaded in its assumptions. I don't see this as an excuse for the lousy-looking files that seem to be so prevalent in epubs.
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In what way is this specious or wrongheaded ? On the contrary, it is a fact that epub can support much more complex styles than any other format, including lrf / lrx. Therefore it is eminently possible to make a really good-looking epub book if you bother to learn how to do it properly, and therefore it is important to lay the blame where it belongs when publishers are charging full price for such shoddy workmanship. If you have any doubt, take a look at any of jellby's books, for example
this one (to take an example at random), or in fact this version of "
Three Men in a Boat" which I made. Any of those books are well-made with proper code and styles and require absolutely no intervention to make them readable.
The reason people are complaining (and rightly so) about the epubs from the sony store is because the PUBLISHERS have not bothered to learn how to make proper epub files. There is nothing wrong-headed or specious about that, it is just a fact. The *only* elements which are currently common to all epubs displayed on sony devices is the absence of fully-justified text, and the page numbers displayed in the margin. Every other detail is defined using a css style rule and therefore is either a deliberate choice on the part of the person who formatted the book to begin with, or the result of the incompetence of the person who formatted the book to begin with.
As I said before, there is absolutely no excuse for this, particularly from professional publishers charging full-price for their books, and I encourage everyone to write and express their dissatisfaction to the publisher whenever they get one of these poorly-made books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wetdogeared
Not without any "tweaking", which is a bit daunting when you know nothing about CSS and you're looking at over 5,000 lines of CSS coding, and know next to nothing about XHTML and TOC's and whatever else is involved.  |
A classic example of bad code. There is no reason to have 5000 lines of CSS rules for a novel !
