Epub revision - alignment with broadly-adopted Web standards

Nate the great · 04-08-2010, 07:26 PM

Quote:

Incomplete alignment with broadly-adopted Web standards. EPUB 2.0.1 is built on numerous horizontal industry standards. However, these building-block standards, and the Web browsers that implement them, are rapidly evolving and the versions of these standards utilized in 2006 when EPUB 2.0 was formulated are no longer current. Since most distributed Reading Systems utilize Web browsers to present content to end users, and many standalone Reading Systems utilize Web browser rendering technologies in their implementations, it is desirable to improve alignment with Web standards as implemented by modern browsers.

Any thoughts?

frabjous · 04-08-2010, 08:21 PM

Better support for CSS 2.1 would definitely be a plus.

In particular, support of things like the letter-spacing property would really be useful, so I wouldn't have to resort to the kinds of workarounds discussed in this thread.

DawnFalcon · 04-08-2010, 09:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frabjous

Better support for CSS 2.1 would definitely be a plus.

Or ePub could switch to an XML-based styling language which could actually be properly implemented, and would suit working with rectangles far better. Just saying...

Either that, or simply adopt a browser rendering engine wholesale. I'm sure Mozilla would be perfectly willing to cooperate...

Nate the great · 04-08-2010, 09:38 PM

There were a couple off topic threads in this thread and I removed them.

Please folks, let's keep this small subset of threads on topic.

charleski · 04-08-2010, 10:38 PM

While I'd certainly like to see fuller support of CSS2 and eventually support for CSS3 (or XSL-FO), I think the most important thing is that epub avoid the mess that has been made of browser 'standards' over the past decade, with web designers having to resort to numerous tricks to get pages to render correctly in different types of browsers. While the vast bulk of the blame for that lies squarely at the feet of Microsoft, other browsers aren't completely guilt-free.

A 2.1 revision of the spec should aim at adding a few new elements of CSS to broaden support for important typographic features as frabjous mentioned, but should also aim to produce an exact and mandatory specification of the rendered output of each feature.

04-08-2010, 09:38 PM	#4
Nate the great Sir Penguin of Edinburgh Posts: 12,375 Karma: 23555235 Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: DC Metro area Device: Shake a stick plus 1	heads up There were a couple off topic threads in this thread and I removed them. Please folks, let's keep this small subset of threads on topic.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Epub Revision - Dictionaries!!	Nate the great	ePub	9	04-11-2010 01:33 PM
Epub Revision - annotation support	Nate the great	ePub	3	04-09-2010 11:12 PM
Epub Revision - relationship to approved national and international standards	Nate the great	ePub	0	04-08-2010 07:42 PM
Web Standards for E-books by Joe Clark (web article)	guyanonymous	General Discussions	2	03-18-2010 10:36 PM
Great article on ebook formatting and web standards (A List Apart)	Prospect	News	6	03-10-2010 01:14 AM

04-08-2010, 08:21 PM	#2
frabjous Wizard Posts: 1,213 Karma: 12890 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Amherst, Massachusetts, USA Device: Sony PRS-505	Better support for CSS 2.1 would definitely be a plus. In particular, support of things like the letter-spacing property would really be useful, so I wouldn't have to resort to the kinds of workarounds discussed in this thread.

04-08-2010, 10:38 PM	#5
charleski Wizard Posts: 1,196 Karma: 1281258 Join Date: Sep 2009 Device: PRS-505	While I'd certainly like to see fuller support of CSS2 and eventually support for CSS3 (or XSL-FO), I think the most important thing is that epub avoid the mess that has been made of browser 'standards' over the past decade, with web designers having to resort to numerous tricks to get pages to render correctly in different types of browsers. While the vast bulk of the blame for that lies squarely at the feet of Microsoft, other browsers aren't completely guilt-free. A 2.1 revision of the spec should aim at adding a few new elements of CSS to broaden support for important typographic features as frabjous mentioned, but should also aim to produce an exact and mandatory specification of the rendered output of each feature.