Talk about HTML standards for Epub

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

The support for ePUB3 is scarce. Every reader and app supports ePUB2 and will continue to do so, because it is much easier. This is especially true for e-ink readers. Building and creating ePUB2 is also easier, since the most used editors support ePUB2 much better than ePUB3.

To be pedantic, it is possible to build EPUB 3 books that are mostly backwards-compatible with EPUB 2 readers. You just have to put in lots of optional segments in the various metadata files and leave out all of the features that make EPUB 3 interesting (e.g. scripting).

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

To be pedantic, it is possible to build EPUB 3 books that are mostly backwards-compatible with EPUB 2 readers. You just have to put in lots of optional segments in the various metadata files and leave out all of the features that make EPUB 3 interesting (e.g. scripting).

True, and it has no real advantage then over ePUB2. It will take a lot more work.

[skreutzer]

With only few EPUB3 files around, device producers have little reason to increase EPUB3 support, with little EPUB3 support, ebook creators are not incentivized to make EPUB3s by sometimes taking advantage of its advanced features.

As EPUB3 to some extend is backward compatible and improves several basic features (specifying the cover explicitly, footnotes, no duplication of file reference), you could in general switch to EPUB3 without using multimedia or scripting, or at least provide EPUB3 and EPUB2 at the same time.

Anyway, in case of interest see this and that (1/2).

[JSWolf]

ePub 3 is a mess. They really screwed it up. We need ePub 4 which would be a ePub 2 with extensions. There's no reason to change things so drastically. Just add in what's missing, keep it simple is the way to go.

[skreutzer]

What's “really screwed up” and “a mess” in particular? I didn't encounter anything like that while constructing a basic EPUB3. Just like an EPUB2, with some beneficial improvements in my opinion.

[Toxaris]

One of the issues is, that if you do footnotes as they should be in ePUB3, they will not work in ePUB2 at all. So you either need to do them double or accept that with a normal e-ink reader there will not be any footnotes. The choice is easy then.
There are some benefits to ePUB3, but most are related to CSS3 and not the real ePUB3 specs

[skreutzer]

Yes, that's right, I'm affected by it because footnotes is something I'm using quite frequently. In theory, maybe one can place backlinks in the footnote text as fallback [1], but I haven't tried this yet. As of EPUB3 structure, I think there are only minor advantages and minor disadvantages compared to EPUB2, so I at least attempt to provide EPUB3 too as some kind of encouragement for software and device producers to gradually switch to EPUB3. Especially (optional) JavaScript support may open entire new worlds of what can be done with electronic offline texts (think of freely licensed libraries that could be incorporated, which work on semantic markup within the text).

[1] However, such kind of upward compatibility may always be an issue, an EPUB2 reading system therefore could just refuse to accept EPUB3 input, or ignore EPUB3 specific features, or attempt an best-effort approach, but of course there's no safe way to predict the future in the implementation, so only a firmware update might do.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

ePub 3 is a mess. They really screwed it up. We need ePub 4 which would be a ePub 2 with extensions. There's no reason to change things so drastically. Just add in what's missing, keep it simple is the way to go.

Can you please be more specific as to what is missing?

Originally Posted by Toxaris

One of the issues is, that if you do footnotes as they should be in ePUB3, they will not work in ePUB2 at all.

As long as you code them as rearnote endnotes they should also work with older ePub2 readers.
You can test this with this simple epub2 compatible ePub3 file that I created some time ago. (The rearnote footnotes even work with ADE 1.7.)

[crankypants]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

One of the issues is, that if you do footnotes as they should be in ePUB3, they will not work in ePUB2 at all.

I'm not sure what you mean. Chapter footnotes work just fine in my EPUB2 that I make with Mkepub. But my footnotes are one footnote group per source file (chapter), they do not appear as one group at the end of a book.

But my footnotes don't use a special footnote format, it's regular XHTML generated with links to the footnote, and in the footnote, a link back to the passage itself. And my footnotes are automatically numbered each time the EPUB is generated. You can use numbers to make a footnote reference, but you can use words too. In the end, when the EPUB2 is generated, the footnotes and their references come out numbered.

[Notjohn]

One of the few things I love about Word is its footnoting (endnoting) ability. The two-way links it creates translate just fine into html. (And if I add or delete a note, the numbering changes automagically. What a horror that used to be, renumbering the notes in a thesis with EZ-rase paper and multiple carbons!)

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by crankypants

I'm not sure what you mean. Chapter footnotes work just fine in my EPUB2 that I make with Mkepub. But my footnotes are one footnote group per source file (chapter), they do not appear as one group at the end of a book.

But my footnotes don't use a special footnote format, it's regular XHTML generated with links to the footnote, and in the footnote, a link back to the passage itself.

Those work fine in both ePUB2 and ePUB3. Those are the same I use. However, in ePUB3 you can work with the aside tag. Doitsu claims to have it working (and I have no reason to doubt that) and posted an example. When I have team I will try it on my reader to be sure. If it works, it would be great.

[skreutzer]

It can look like this, but it's up to the reader engine developer how to render those.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Can you please be more specific as to what is missing?


As long as you code them as rearnote endnotes they should also work with older ePub2 readers.
You can test this with this simple epub2 compatible ePub3 file that I created some time ago. (The rearnote footnotes even work with ADE 1.7.)

The missing things include MATHML. Given the relationship of HTML then version 5 HTML is a plus. SVG support is improved. Semantics knowledge I think will help in the long run. I think NCS was out of deference to DAISY and the new method is better with uniform support for additional lists like a LOF.

Footnotes can be done with html links of course but a popup footnote is a great plus so having specific syntax is a plus IMHO, even though Amazon has tried to automate all links though inference.

Even ePub 2 had some audio support in the spec but it is improved in 3.

Dale

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The missing things include MATHML.

MathML is part of the ePub3 standard and is supported by ADE 4.5/RMSDK 12.5 (and higher).
BTW, ADE 4.5 passes most of the official MathML tests in (EPUBTEST 0100 - Reflowable Content Tests).

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

MathML is part of the ePub3 standard and is supported by ADE 4.5/RMSDK 12.5 (and higher).
BTW, ADE 4.5 passes most of the official MathML tests in (EPUBTEST 0100 - Reflowable Content Tests).

I was pointing out those things in ePub 3 that were missing in ePub 2. I would expect any reader supporting ePub 3 to support MathML.

Dale