Example of e-book with well-formatted math?

[SBT]

Originally Posted by rkomar

I remember this one rendering surprisingly well in a RMSDK-based application a few years ago. http://downloads.hindawi.com/journal...08/421650.epub. I vaguely recall looking at the HTML inside the epub, and getting the impression that I would never be able to produce something like that myself.

Thanks, Rkomar. That's definitely the best I've seen. Still displays well in Bluefire, falls flat in iBooks, presumably as it doesn't declare some apple.com.special.property.allow-other-fonts data field, and fails abjectly when converted with kindlegen, presumably because kindlegen doesn't know how to treat an <svg> tag properly
One heady moment I thought the math was displayed as HTML, but closer inspection showed that it's "just" embedded SVG with publisher fonts, i.e. using SVG to scale and position characters. Still, it's nicely done. I wonder how, with what tool? Somehow, it doesn't really look hand-crafted. I couldn't find any hint of any production software in the file, but found the use of an xhtml-math-svg xml namespace intriguing.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by SBT

Though most grateful for all the suggestions, I would like to return to the original question: Has anybody actually seen an epub2/KF8 book with half-decent math in it?
Given the many tools listed, it seems logical to assume many attempts have been made, but has a technically sucessfull math ebook ever made it to the shelves?

In short, NO, because there's quite simply no support for what's needed for the equations. Without exact control over horizontal/vertical positioning, how can anyone do equations? And if you can't do that...what's the point?

You have to use images at this time. There's no way around it. And even using ePUB3 doesn't solve the problem, unless you do a FIXED-FORMAT ePUB.

And if we're going to do that, why bother? FF is equivalent to PDF, for all intents and purposes, and in some ways, it's worse (e.g., on iBooks author, there's no zoom; ditto on KF8).

I, for one, don't see how we can expect to have it both ways; the convenience and reader-end control of ebooks (fonts, reflow, reading pane, etc.) AND the ability to control, to the nth, horizontal and vertical positioning. At some point, if we're lucky, the ability to export unchanging equations will exist, and we can then create viable eBooks with those equations embedded (and, more importantly, to my mind, searchable). But until that export-ability exists....(and no...I have no idea how that will happen, as it's not like there's massive demand for this that will engender commercial or paid development, I don't believe), I think that images are about as good as it gets.

Hitch