ePubHub, an open-source eBook assembly app for Windows

[awx]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I am surprised you don't just support H1, H2, H3 for chapter breaks.

Dale

It's a bad fit for XHtml and ePub.

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by awx

It's a bad fit for XHtml and ePub.

Please elaborate.

[awx]

Divs are a good fit for dividing sections of an Xhtml document. Heading tags are a good fit for producing headings.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by awx

It's a bad fit for XHtml and ePub.

Not according to the ePUB standard. These are accepted and encouraged methods of formatting and dividing data.

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by awx

Divs are a good fit for dividing sections of an Xhtml document. Heading tags are a good fit for producing headings.

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Not according to the ePUB standard. These are accepted and encouraged methods of formatting and dividing data.

I think we may have a misunderstanding here. Dale and I are saying that using a heading tag that signifies that the what follows after it is a new chapter is a good idea. All books have some sort of actual heading at the beginning of every chapter: a number, a chapter title, something in a larger, bolder font.

That's what the heading tags should be used for since that's what they were created for.

Even if you further separate chapters with div tags, you will still have such a heading text (in a heading element or not) at the beginning. So why not use that?

But your idea of wrapping every chapter in a special div... I have nothing against that. It adds more semantic information, so I say go for it.

[awx]

Originally Posted by Valloric

Dale and I are saying that using a heading tag that signifies that the what follows after it is a new chapter is a good idea.

And that's what I'm saying is a bad idea and not a good fit. It's making assumptions about structure based on presentation. That method might work sometimes, even most of the time, but it's inherently flawed.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by awx

And that's what I'm saying is a bad idea and not a good fit. It's making assumptions about structure based on presentation. That method might work sometimes, even most of the time, but it's inherently flawed.

Actually heading tags are semantic, not presentational. They don't imply a particular mode of presentation, unlike say the <b> and <i> tags. ANd given that they automatically support levels as opposed to divs I'd argue taht they are more semantic than divs

[awx]

OK, but they still don't imply chapter breaks.

[Jellby]

They imply the start of a chapter, or section, or subsection... The problem is there's nothing to imply the end of it (other than the start of the next). It's the same thing with the LaTeX \chapter, \section, etc. Using the <hX> tags when there is no part/chapter/section to start is misusing them.

Wrapping the whole chapter in a <div> can be useful, but in addition to using <h2> (say) for the heading, either inside or outside the <div>.

[awx]

Originally Posted by Jellby

They imply the start of a chapter, or section, or subsection... The problem is there's nothing to imply the end of it (other than the start of the next).

Also the absence of them does not preclude a chapter start. They just aren't suitable for this purpose.

I agree that authors should use them at the top of pages where appropriate but that's really up to them.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by awx

Also the absence of them does not preclude a chapter start. They just aren't suitable for this purpose.

I agree that authors should use them at the top of pages where appropriate but that's really up to them.

In 99% of the books I have read they do exactly that. They mark the beginning of a chapter and a chapter start is never presented without them. The ePUB standard expects them and CSS also works well with them. They are not just dressing for the top of the page. They are the structure for the ePUB format.

Dale

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Wrapping the whole chapter in a <div> can be useful, but in addition to using <h2> (say) for the heading, either inside or outside the <div>.

Exactly.

[awx]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The ePUB standard expects them and CSS also works well with them. They are not just dressing for the top of the page. They are the structure for the ePUB format.

I haven't seen anything that agrees with that. There is nothing in the Ncx or Opf files that in any way relates to the h tags.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by awx

I haven't seen anything that agrees with that. There is nothing in the Ncx or Opf files that in any way relates to the h tags.

It is not in those documents because it is assumed knowledged based all the way back to 4.0 HTML Look at: http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html40...l.html#h-7.5.5

where it says that: A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically.

That is pretty clear and it has never changed. You can do what you want, of course, but to say that something is not suitable when it is exactly what it is designed to do, seems like you think you have to redesign the whole thing from scratch.

Dale

[awx]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

where it says that: A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically.

You may want to scroll up just a bit in the document you linked to and read this:
"The DIV and SPAN elements, in conjunction with the id and class attributes, offer a generic mechanism for adding structure to documents."

Followed by:
"Suppose, for example, that we wanted to generate an HTML document based on a database of client information. Since HTML does not include elements that identify objects such as "client", "telephone number", "email address", etc., we use DIV and SPAN to achieve the desired structural and presentational effects."

This is definitely what I'm after.