Javascript in Fixed Layout epubs

[azimuth]

A person on another web forum posted their question (about code) multiple times at several different forums hoping to get a response to his question. That would be a wise way to start your JS/Epub questions quest, then watch and see which of several chat forum users offer the best answers, and focus your subsequent questions on that forum user group.

Read more about Web App (API server) vs Native App vs Hybrid apps (run in webview) vs (your goal) Epub/JS.

Native Apps (i.e. HTML-CSS-JS in a native application Java container wrapper distributed to App stores) can offer a 'better' place for JS code interactivity when compared against the challenges a coder may incur when JS is placed into an Epub3.
A builder tool example is Android SDK software, but the months long learning curve of SDK software would notably delay your goal.
Whereas pushing some minor JS into an Epub would likely be quicker (minus any coding bumps along the way which are inevitable), while still being market dependent (iOS/Kobo/etc).

[KevinH]

I found my test Travel epub. But unfortunately it is under copyright in 2014 so I can not post it. It was very leading edge for its time and uses movies, audio, mouse over links, pdf, jquery, javascript for slideshow with buttons, and a fancy javascript widget that provides the user the ability to rotate within a 3-D image, alongside the concept of xml islands.

It is interesting to note that everything seems to work just fine in Sigil. Although trivial things like using the old media-type application/x-javascript need to be updated. It is effectively a live travel brochure!

If are interested, I can give you his name so you can get in touch with the author of the epub as I am sure they have advanced quite a bit since then.

Quite fun!

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Neither of those are needed at all. Especially not poetry. Also won't work on many things.

Giving yourself extra work for a negative benefit.

You don't know anything about what are you speaking. You should not express yourself from ignorance; Study first, and then speak. Moreover, you still haven't answered the question I asked you at the time:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...29&postcount=5

When you can reproduce WITHOUT JS the poetry format in the epub I attached to my old post, then come and talk. You should be more humble and keep quiet about a topic about which you know nothing.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

You don't know anything about what are you speaking. You should not express yourself from ignorance; Study first, and then speak. Moreover, you still haven't answered the question I asked you at the time:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...29&postcount=5

When you can reproduce WITHOUT JS the poetry format in the epub I attached to my old post, then come and talk. You should be more humble and keep quiet about a topic about which you know nothing.

In the second screenshot (in the linked post), there is a mistake. Two of the lines has been split into three when they should have been 2 lines.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

When you can reproduce WITHOUT JS the poetry format in the epub I attached to my old post, then come and talk.

It's a neat trick, but what use is it? The original poem was not formatted that way, so what are you trying to accomplish?

In other words, yes, JavaScript can do some things you can't do with HTML and CSS alone, but the number of times you actually need JavaScript to accomplish the look and feel of any sort of printed text is close to zero.

Please note that this is coming from a person who has successfully made EPUBs look almost exactly like the original physical book, even with the wide variety of output device sizes and personal preferences (font sizes, etc.). The only thing I haven't overcome is when a device flat-out doesn't render basic CSS correctly (e.g., Kindle margin handling, the table display of some renderers, etc.).

[amarie0]

Originally Posted by KevinH

If are interested, I can give you his name so you can get in touch with the author of the epub as I am sure they have advanced quite a bit since then.

Quite fun!

Sure! Also is it for sale on Apple or Kindle store? A link would be useful too.

AM

[KevinH]

The person who set me the live travel brochure test epub was called Jonathan Magus and he has an account here on MobileRead under the username "JonathanMagus" and an account in github under that same user name.

His Travel test epub has really helped Sigil's development of epub3. Even recently the support for embedded PDF was added to Sigil, spurred on by this test epub and other user requests.

I can not find his e-mail anyplace in my inbox so but it was 8 or more years ago and could have been auto deleted as some point.

You could try sending a PM here on Mobileread to his userid to see if he responds.

A Google search also showed the following top hit:

Jonathan Stephenson (@JonathanMagus) / X

Twitter
https://twitter.com › jonathanmagus
Magus Digital is an independent ePublisher producing beautiful eBooks—working with authors, content creators and imprints to define the future of digital ..

So contacting Magus Digital may help.

Sorry I can't be more help but many people have sent me test epubs over the years to illustrate Sigil bugs or missing features. Many of these that are copyrighted and therefore can not be shared publicly without permission. This is one of those.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

It's a neat trick, but what use is it? The original poem was not formatted that way, so what are you trying to accomplish?

In other words, yes, JavaScript can do some things you can't do with HTML and CSS alone, but the number of times you actually need JavaScript to accomplish the look and feel of any sort of printed text is close to zero.

I don't use JS to mimic the layout of a printed book; I use JS to improve the reading experience. An epub has to give me more than a book in paper. Do you know JS? Have you studied the subject? JS gives you the possibility of working much less and formatting an entire book much faster (and apply styles that are practically impossible to do by hand (because it would take a lot of time and a lot of code). I can't explain here, in a few lines, what I have read (and put into practice) in many books. But if you want a small sample of what you can get, do a search in Google with "text fit javascript" and you'll some tools to get that titles and subtitles always looks perfect no matter the user change the font-size.

[Quoth]

Most people (about 99.99% of readers) using ebooks just want to read actual books on a portable device for convenience (phones) or on eink for readability and convenience. They expect the content to be the same as paper. They don't mind if the formatting is a bit simpler. Few obsess about it being identical format to a particular paper edition, that is usually publisher or author egotism. The important thing is easy to consume (read) content.

The only "more" they expect is easy TOC access, bookmarks, search, library management and way down the list is highlights and annotation.
They want to be able to change the font size.

Formatting most ebooks needs no javascript or human editing, just conversion of a properly styled docx. Then the epub, awz3 and kfx are similar to original. Even the mobi can be usably similar.

I've edited / written javascript since late 1990s, also later Adobe EMCAscript (Flash based applications that were not video). I've produced multimedia interactive content many years earlier. Books, even if poems, plays or textbooks don't need javascript at all ever. I've coded for servers where indeed the content might be in a database. Horrid files with a mix of coldfusion, SQL stored procedures, java, php, html and javascript. Fortunately ebooks are simpler.

An interactive application with a lot of reading content can use javascript as way to implement it. However that is then really needing a web page, so an iOS/Android framework you just add your text & images content to and edit the controls/logic is easier to distribute to Google, Apple & Amazon stores, though you can wrap your JS based web thing as an app (but on iOS to date that is a problem).

[KevinH]

Please take the discussion of javascript vs no javascript to a new thread. The op asked about people who use javascript to do things in epub. Please stick to that topic.

[Quoth]

Why is the elephant in the room on the topic.
I'm very expert at javascript. The fact is that it's poorly supported in real world in ebooks and not needed at all. If you need javascript then there are far better "publishing" options. To suppress discussion of that in a discussion of "Javascript in Fixed Layout epub" is doing no favours. Also the thread title asked about Fixed Layout, which has even less need for javascript than reflowable epub.

[KevinH]

Because you are on an anti-javascript and anti-epub3 personal crusade. Progress happens. Things change. Not everyone wants to just duplicate printed matter. Some are looking to take advantage of the digital media to try to do new or interesting things. You try to quash all activity and interest in that direction.

And just read the what the first post in this thread is asking. You are not answering their question.

This is just another example. Please stop.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Some are looking to take advantage of the digital media to try to do new or interesting things.

I don't have a problem with "new or interesting things" in eBooks, but I haven't seen a lot of people asking how to do "new or interesting things" using tools like scripting.

I have seen a lot of people ask questions that are basically "how can I turn an e-reader into a web browser?" That's not really "new or interesting". There's also a lot of questions that really come down to "advanced CSS still isn't quite enough to give me the exact same look across all possible reader sizes and font choices". Having done a lot of that kind of CSS, I fall squarely into the camp of sometimes having to live with "close enough". OTOH, if somebody could come up with a way other than fixed layout to properly render The Demolished Man on any device, I'd be really interested.

Here's a "new or interesting" thing I have never seen anybody ask how to do, and it's something that has actual application to eBooks:

There has been a lot of discussion about the editing of older books to meet current political correctness, and many readers want to know which version of the book they are getting. How about a system where both versions of the book are in the EPUB, and you choose which you want to read. This is easy to do by having both versions in the file and just picking from a table of contents. The "new and interesting" part would be to have a way to have a single copy of the book, with only the differences being a "duplicate". A button click at the beginning would hide/show the text based on the version chosen. That would be a "new and interesting" use of interactivity, and has real utility for readers, since it keeps the file size much smaller.

An even cooler addition to this would be to optionally highlight the changed text in either version, and allow a click on that specific text to toggle the view of only that change.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Because you are on an anti-javascript and anti-epub3 personal crusade. Progress happens. Things change. Not everyone wants to just duplicate printed matter. Some are looking to take advantage of the digital media to try to do new or interesting things. You try to quash all activity and interest in that direction..

This is nonsense. Right tool for the right job. I was writing Javascript nearly 25 years ago. I'm not anti-javascript.

I want quality ebooks. People have been taking advantage of digital media 20 years before first Kindle or iPhone.

There are loads of platforms and tools to do interesting things that are well supported and very flexible. Making stuff that is brilliant and calling it an ebook holds back that brilliant interesting stuff. It damages the reputation of ebooks.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

I don't have a problem with "new or interesting things" in eBooks, but I haven't seen a lot of people asking how to do "new or interesting things" using tools like scripting.

I have seen a lot of people ask questions that are basically "how can I turn an e-reader into a web browser?" That's not really "new or interesting". There's also a lot of questions that really come down to "advanced CSS still isn't quite enough to give me the exact same look across all possible reader sizes and font choices". Having done a lot of that kind of CSS, I fall squarely into the camp of sometimes having to live with "close enough". OTOH, if somebody could come up with a way other than fixed layout to properly render The Demolished Man on any device, I'd be really interested.

Here's a "new or interesting" thing I have never seen anybody ask how to do, and it's something that has actual application to eBooks:

There has been a lot of discussion about the editing of older books to meet current political correctness, and many readers want to know which version of the book they are getting. How about a system where both versions of the book are in the EPUB, and you choose which you want to read. This is easy to do by having both versions in the file and just picking from a table of contents. The "new and interesting" part would be to have a way to have a single copy of the book, with only the differences being a "duplicate". A button click at the beginning would hide/show the text based on the version chosen. That would be a "new and interesting" use of interactivity, and has real utility for readers, since it keeps the file size much smaller.

An even cooler addition to this would be to optionally highlight the changed text in either version, and allow a click on that specific text to toggle the view of only that change.

Unfortunately that idea is not new or different either. Although the application to ebooks is a different use.

A long time ago there was a dvd player that came with "ClearPlay" technology embedded in the hardware which would automatically mute bad words and skip violent scenes, etc. by applying a filter while watching the movie. There was a lot of concerns about copyright infringement because it was changing the product. I don't remember how that turned out(??), however the concept is the same as you are suggesting.

Personally I would be against changing historical documents (assuming you could only change books that are out of copyright) just to appease a current morality fad (whatever fad that might entail). When you read older documents it is incumbent on the reader to understand that their sensibilities might not be the same... Can you imagine trying to read Alex Haley's Roots while having any mention of "slavery" or "master" being edited out or changed to something else??!!?! Could you consider yourself as having read Roots??

Anyway, while JS might not have widespread use in ebooks now, it certainly never will unless people are allowed (and encouraged) to experiment. Someone may discover the next best thing that will become the defacto standard in 5 or 10 years. They would never be able to do so if their ideas are squashed by those saying "I've never seen it and it is useless anyway". I say "Let them try it; the market will determine if it is worth it, or not."