multiple references

[troymc]

Just some thoughts regarding using multiple references from the "Things to note" section of your blog entry: http://sigildev.blogspot.com/2010/04...tics-menu.html

I recently converted an older print edition to epub and used 2 titles, 2 introductions + 2 prefaces.

The 2 titles were for the title page & the bastard title. And this was a 2nd edition with introductions & prefaces from each.

I wasn't sure exactly what the standard is for handling these since, as you mentioned, it's not really covered in the standard -- although I do recognize that they could have been combined into one file & one reference each.

The available types in the standard also don't give an option for a frontispiece and I toyed with the idea of tagging/including it as "title" too.

Similarly, many textbooks have 2 tables of contents - one short and one detailed. Before reading your post I would have tagged them individually.


I guess this may just boil down to how individual reading systems end up using these tags.


Thanks for a fantastic program!

Troy

[Valloric]

I didn't mean to imply that a book should not have more than one introduction or more than one preface. Books certainly can and should, if need be.

My argument was that these should not be put into separate files and then marked as two different references with the same reference type.

The point of the guide element is to ease navigation. In situations where a book has for instance two introductions and two prefaces, I would use one of two options:

1. Put the introductions into one file, and prefaces into another. Add an appropriate reference type for each. Done. This to me makes the most sense.
2. Put each introduction and preface into its own file, but put one introduction directly before the other in the spine, and the same for the prefaces. Then add a guide entry for the first of each.

The first option is what I would do, but the second one is viable as well. As I said and as the spec states, the guide is there as a sort of "shortcut" to the various components of a publication. If you link to the first file of several introductions, the reader will encounter the other ones after paging through the first, provided that they are listed in the spine correctly.

[troymc]

Originally Posted by Valloric

As I said and as the spec states, the guide is there as a sort of "shortcut" to the various components of a publication. If you link to the first file of several introductions, the reader will encounter the other ones after paging through the first, provided that they are listed in the spine correctly.

That makes sense. I was think of it as labelling components rather than as shortcuts into the epub. 2 quick questions then:

Does Sigil support the page tags of CSS2 so I can force page breaks? Otherwise the prefaces will run together & the frontispieces are going to show up on the bastard title page.

Does Sigil's reference feature support fragments or does it only point at whole files?


Seems I have some more work to do...


Troy

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by troymc

Does Sigil support the page tags of CSS2 so I can force page breaks? Otherwise the prefaces will run together & the frontispieces are going to show up on the bastard title page.

Sigil doesn't change your CSS. If your books had such styles or you added them in Sigil, they will be preserved on export.

It's a different matter entirely whether the Reading Systems will interpret and apply your style rules correctly.

Originally Posted by troymc

Does Sigil's reference feature support fragments or does it only point at whole files?

Only whole files.