EPUB3: Ready or not?

[SBT]

Mrmikel's initial reply is correct. To rephrase the succinct points:

• Central to EPUB is flowability; the ability of the reader to break lines to fit the text to different screen and text sizes.
• Central to poetry is (near) absolute control over placement of text.

Two diametrically opposing aims...

EPUB3 does allow fixed layout (i.e. absolute control), but it is not what the format is intended for. For that we have PDF.

[AlPe]

As a digitally self-published poet struggling with formatting issues, who skipped EPUB because of its unpredictable layouts

Define "formatting issue" and we can talk about them. As mentioned by other, the concept of reflowable eBook implies (sort-of) that the author/publisher/typographer is willing to surrender a certain degree of "power" to the reader.

Side story. Nearly one year ago, I did some consulting for a small but quite famous Italian publisher who lives in a narrow market (prose) niche. They insisted that the "look-and-feel" of their eBooks should be exactly the same of their printed books. After a long, very detailed discussion of what can be done and what not, they kept insisting on it, to the point I suggested them to produce (relatively inexpensive) PDFs --- preferably in various formats: 5", 6" and 9" screens, A4 --- giving up all the "advantages" of reflowable ebooks. AFAIK, they are still making their minds up.

Anyway, w.r.t. to the "is EPUB 3 ready?" question. The DR is right on this: EPUB 3 support is scarce right now. By that, I mean "support for the new features introduced by EPUB 3"; otherwise, pretty much any EPUB 2 reading system is capable of reading what I call "an EPUB 2 ebook in an EPUB 3 container", that is, text + images + toc.ncx.
Even worse, even iBooks --- which is the only market-significant platform capable of render (some) EPUB 3 --- is not fully EPUB 3 compliant: for example, no MediaOverlay support for reflowable eBooks, MathML support is good for basic stuff but not for advanced stuff (surprised?), some rendition options are supported only through Apple-specific extensions (instead of standard declarations), etc.

On the other had, IMHO, the "is EPUB 3 dead on start?" question is more open to debate. There are two big issues here: 1) aside for the FXL craziness, EPUB 3 is mainly incremental w.r.t. EPUB 2 (the semantic vocabulary is ridiculously tiny and it is essentially ignored by reading systems, support for things like parallel texts is not even taken into consideration, not to mention the annotation stuff, etc.); 2) the "commercial dynamics" behind IDPF are clear: a bunch of non-Amazon (and non-Apple) publishers/vendors, who are more into marketing than into technology, with all the problems already mentioned above (everyone implements as much of EPUB 3 as it thinks good for its business, little investments, very little attention for "real eBook" features, etc.).

[DiapDealer]

Poetry often depends heavily on visual structure where other narrative forms just don't (not as integrally anyway): change the font-size for a straight-forward narrative and the words-per-line just re-adjust to accommodate. Do the same for a poem, and it often visually (and unsatisfactorily) "breaks sh!t." A "Standard" is probably never going to be able to compensate for the fact that all screen- and font-sizes are simply not capable of displaying verse in its optimal visual representation (unless the font is made so tiny as to be virtually unreadable).

The choices are pretty clear: relinquish rigid control over the visual structure of poetry, or accept the fact that structure-dependent poetry is probably not a good candidate for digital conversion -- at least not if the goal is consistency across a range of devices/screen sizes.

[AlPe]

That's exacly why I asked for the "formatting issues" cited above. In my experience, "classic poetry" can be rendered decently even on 6" eReaders with a reasonable font.

Clearly, if one wants to reproduce exotic typographical effects, she is going to have hard times.

[DiapDealer]

Yes, that's been my experience as well. Make sure the poetry looks OK on a 6" screen with a midrange font-size, and take some minimal steps so it will degrade gracefully (practically at least, if not aesthetically) on smaller screens/larger fonts ... and move on.

[pstjmack]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yes, that's been my experience as well. Make sure the poetry looks OK on a 6" screen with a midrange font-size, and take some minimal steps so it will degrade gracefully (practically at least, if not aesthetically) on smaller screens/larger fonts ... and move on.

Amen to that. And the problem does appear to be more of consistent implementation of the standard in the reader software. Mantano, for instance renders Project Gutenberg's poetry epubs beautifully, while the results in FBReader are dreadful.

[DiapDealer]

I honestly wouldn't give a second thought as to how FBReader renders anything. The vast majority of your target audience will be using a reader that uses Adobe's RMSDK engine--just like Mantano does.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by SBT

Central to poetry is (near) absolute control over placement of text.

Well, that's only central to some kind of "modern" poetry. Classical poetry does not care so much about layout, just separate lines and stanzas, which is quite feasible (though rather cumbersome) with current ePub.

The only thing I'm missing (for poetry) is the kind of line alignment where long lines are wrapped and have the second part (often just a few words) right-aligned, preferably with a bracket. Well, that and line numbers, maybe.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm not really seeing much in the way of advantages/disadvantages (regarding formatting/reflow) between Kindle/ePub now that KF8 is full swing. It seems pretty much a wash to me in that department. Could you elaborate?

I'm seeing a huge disadvantage for KF8. It's the line height. It's too big to be comfortable to read. You cannot lower the line height without changing the metrics of the font used. So unless you have a font that's set to display a decent line height, the reading experience is not going to be all that good.

[DiapDealer]

I really should have seen you coming a mile away with that one. I must be slipping.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I really should have seen you coming a mile away with that one. I must be slipping.

It's something lots of people have been asking Amazon to fix with KF8 and yet Amazon just ignores this.

Most KF8 are just ePub converted to KF8. I've not yet seen a KF8 eBook (or even read about about one) that uses KF8 features that ePub doesn't have.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So unless you have a font that's set to display a decent line height, the reading experience is not going to be all that good.

Says the man who doesn't own a Kindle and seems to have a personal vendetta against Amazon. You keep focusing on minor cosmetic issues and overlook actual shortcomings, for example, no hyphenation support.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've not yet seen a KF8 eBook (or even read about about one) that uses KF8 features that ePub doesn't have.

That's because many ebook designers are most likely not aware of the HTML5/CSS3 features that KF8 supports. For example, in KF8 files, it's possible to add shadow effects to fonts and to rotate text freely, however, it takes a creative designer to do something interesting with these new features. I'm pretty sure that over time we'll see KF8 books that take full advantage of these new features in a creative way.

[DaleDe]

Actually the fixed format design of KF8 has many capabilities not on any other reader, particularly for children's books. None of those features are in ePub.

Dale

[mrmikel]

It is easier to change things in either Amazon's or Apple's limited ecosystem.

Standards based formats do have their drawbacks this way.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Says the man who doesn't own a Kindle and seems to have a personal vendetta against Amazon. You keep focusing on minor cosmetic issues and overlook actual shortcomings, for example, no hyphenation support.

I don't have to own a Kindle to know what's not nice. Heck, Kobo has a similar issue with line height except, you can override that in CSS which you cannot do with a Kindle. I've seen my share of Kindle's in person and I used a Kindle Touch to make my modified Charis SIL so it works well with KF8. Charis SIL unmodified is not a good fit for KF8. Actually, most fonts aren't a good fit without modification.

That's because many ebook designers are most likely not aware of the HTML5/CSS3 features that KF8 supports. For example, in KF8 files, it's possible to add shadow effects to fonts and to rotate text freely, however, it takes a creative designer to do something interesting with these new features. I'm pretty sure that over time we'll see KF8 books that take full advantage of these new features in a creative way.

Doubtful. It would mean creating yet another eBook which I doubt most publishers will do. It's easier to use the ePub as the source and be done with it.