ePub3 TOC question

[graycyn]

Just finished up an ePub2 book and decided to test the ePub3-itizer plugin for Sigil. It worked!

But now I have questions! I previously had a Contents page in the front section of the book, which linked to all the chapters. NOW in the epub3, I have that PLUS a new nav.xhtml at the very end of my book!

It seems silly to have BOTH! But I'm just a beginner at this so I'm consulting younger and better minds and all that.

My questions are:

Can I move the nav.xhtml file to the front matter of the book and style it or is it best left strictly alone at the end of the book where it is now?

Does the nav.xhtml header *have* to say Table of Contents or can I change it to just *Contents* like the actual book had?

Also, for books that just have chapter numbers, is it possible to restyle the nav.xhtml as an unordered list or will that mess up navigation?

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by graycyn

Can I move the nav.xhtml file to the front matter of the book and style it or is it best left strictly alone at the end of the book where it is now?

You can move it to the front.

Originally Posted by graycyn

Does the nav.xhtml header *have* to say Table of Contents or can I change it to just *Contents* like the actual book had?

Yes, why not? You can also change the text, as long as the links work.

Originally Posted by graycyn

Also, for books that just have chapter numbers, is it possible to restyle the nav.xhtml as an unordered list or will that mess up navigation?

Not sure from the top of my head, so I won't answer this one.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by graycyn

Can I move the nav.xhtml file to the front matter of the book and style it or is it best left strictly alone at the end of the book where it is now?

You can move it anywhere you want, but since ePub3-itizer adds a linear="no" attribute, users can't select it in epub3-compliant apps anyway. Theoretically you could also style it, however, many epub3 apps will ignore nav.xhtml styles.

Originally Posted by graycyn

Does the nav.xhtml header *have* to say Table of Contents or can I change it to just *Contents* like the actual book had?

You can change it to any text you like.

Originally Posted by graycyn

Also, for books that just have chapter numbers, is it possible to restyle the nav.xhtml as an unordered list or will that mess up navigation?

No. You'll need to use ordered lists. (You could use CSS pseudo elements (e.g. :before and counter-increment) to add numbers to TOC entries in TOC.xhtml.)

You might want to consider leaving nav.xhtml alone and style TOC.xhtml instead.

BTW, there are hardly any advantages in converting epub2 books to epub3 books, unless you want to take advantage of epub3-only features (e.g. scripting, MathML, HTML5/CSS3 etc.).

[graycyn]

Thanks for both your replies! I haven't decided whether I'll stick with ePub2 or go with ePub3.

I don't especially need any epub3 capabilities for the books, but as the books I'm doing are currently copyrighted, and therefore strictly for myself so I can continue to read them as my eyes get older, I figured it *might* be better to go with the newer format. And I'm probably wrong and will shortly be finding out why, LOL!

Because I plan to test the epub3 on all my e-ink readers, and a goodly number of Android e-reader apps to see what happens. Curiosity if nothing else.


Just yesterday by extreme chance found the rights owner for a book I'm actually nearly finished with, hope to offer it to him when I'm done, just in case he might want to make it available to the world. No telling, but one always hopes, especially when print copies aren't exactly thick on the ground.









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