What do you prefer: Epub or Adobe Digital Editions?

[dynamike]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

No, in this case, the problem is different: in their best practice guide, Adobe decided to use a certain set of rules that are not in the ePub specs. They only allow XML flows that are <= 300k. The problem with Proust is that there's no chapters, no page breaks etc... Because of this, you basically have 2 choices:
- adding page breaks that are not in the book to create multiple XML flows
- keeping the original formatting
I decided for the moment to keep the original formatting. What would be necessary in this case, is not an editor to FIX the formatting or different tools, you would have to MODIFY the text.
I wrote a blog post about this by the way, and I consider that it's currently the worse problem with the mobile edition of DE: http://blog.feedbooks.com/?p=74

Thanks for that insight. Do I understand correctly that the ePub implementation on the PRS-505 *only* adheres to Adobe's "Best Practice Guide" rather than the official ePub standard?

Regarding the single XML-flow problem I could accept such a limitation due to technical reasons of the reading device and, as such, practicality. But I would be really disappointed if ePub on the PRS-505 were restricted just because it was based on specifications from Adobe.

Did you try to configure a Proust as a single XML-flow and view it on the Sony? Did that work at all?

[JSWolf]

I don't think a lot of the Discworld books would work as they have no chapter breaks. Just section breaks. I suppose one could stick in a page break as needed at a section break.

[kovidgoyal]

Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is with a couple of extra page breaks. Since most novels have chapters, its not a problem. For the few that don't, or that have chapters longer than 300K, one would have to insert maybe a half dozen page breaks.

That said the adobe reader software should have been designed to fall back to a non CSS rendering mode for XML files > 300K

EDIT: And I should add that this restriction will probably be significantly loosened with the next generation of reader

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is with a couple of extra page breaks. Since most novels have chapters, its not a problem. For the few that don't, or that have chapters longer than 300K, one would have to insert maybe a half dozen page breaks.

That said the adobe reader software should have been designed to fall back to a non CSS rendering mode for XML files > 300K

Well with most books I agree: you can create a new flow whenever there's a new chapter (that's what I do on Feedbooks). But a few books, such as Remembrance of things past or Ulysses do not have any page break and are basically a single flow of text.

The fall back to a non CSS rendering mode is a pretty good idea, but overall, those books that do not use page breaks have very little CSS anyway.

Did you try to configure a Proust as a single XML-flow and view it on the Sony? Did that work at all?

A single flow won't work at all, you will get a cryptic "Paging Error" message. I'd rather wait while the XML flow is processed rather than getting this sort of message and being unable to open the book.
While using multiple XML flows instead of CSS for page breaks is indeed a *best practice*, the need to MODIFY the text is quite different.

[astra]

So far, I am LRF adherent.