Pop-up notes for iPad

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by odedta

I believe that the only proper way to display footnotes in an electronic book is by pop-ups

I believe that's a too emphatic statement. I'll give you this: as detailed in my earlier long post, popups are one of the 4 potentially useful and legitimate ways of displaying footnotes in e-books. But the "only proper way"? Definitely not. I agree with Hitch that reading long footnotes in a popup window (even worse: bubble!) is not a pleasant experience. And, I definitely dislike the popup window overlaying much (sometimes all) of the context to which the footnote is attached.

I'm for giving freedom of choice to the end user, to the reader of the book. Do you wish to see footnotes as popups? Fine: push this (book-specific) settings button. Do you wish to read them as endnotes? Here's the (book-specific) settings button for you. Or do you wish to see footnotes displayed on demand at the bottom (or top) of the screen? Our e-reader app offers you that functionality as well. Or what about a split-screen? Here's the button to activate that reading mode.

That would be my ideal, truly smart and user-friendly e-reading software.

Originally Posted by odedta

to that end I support ePub3 and build only ePub3 files.

There are plenty of readers out there that support this format, things tend to get standardized.

Erm, you mean I should only deliver an EPUB 3 file to my current paying client, although for him, Amazon Kindle is the most important platform? See, he doesn't even really care about EPUB per se.

I just wouldn't dare to deliver to my paying clients a product that I would know would not get displayed properly (or at all) for a large quantity of their paying clients (the readers of their books).

Also, could you please specify the "plenty of readers out there that support this format"? All I know about is iBooks, but as mentioned in my foregoing post, iBooks is functionally such a dumb e-reader (and ugly to boot) that I find it impossible to read anything in it.

Psymon, once you're finished with that Thoreau anthology, please let me know, and I'll be happy to download (and purchase, if you prefer) a copy. It will be a pleasure for me to read Thoreau in your editions (and help catch any typos, for free), because it's clear from your webpage edition of Walden that this is a labour of love for you, and you're producing these books with the utmost professional care. I love e-books done with such meticulous attention to detail; I strive to produce all of my e-books (paid or not) in the same spirit.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Psymon, once you're finished with that Thoreau anthology, please let me know, and I'll be happy to download (and purchase, if you prefer) a copy. It will be a pleasure for me to read Thoreau in your editions (and help catch any typos, for free), because it's clear from your webpage edition of Walden that this is a labour of love for you, and you're producing these books with the utmost professional care. I love e-books done with such meticulous attention to detail; I strive to produce all of my e-books (paid or not) in the same spirit.

Thanks so much for your interest! Things are coming along quite nicely, although the more I work on this the bigger this project seems to keep becoming, and the number of "tweaks," etc. seem to be endless, I keep finding additional things that need to be figured out (and have me returning here for advice, over and over again).

I was planning on just giving this anthology away, though, and so whenever it is completed I'll try to keep in mind your interest and let you know when it is "out"! Thanks again for your enthusiasm!

[Faterson]

Thank you, Psymon. I'm looking forward to it. I forgot to mention one big caveat on my part, though, that may turn out to be an unsurmountable stumbling block: I refuse to read even slightly "modernized" (read: bastardized) editions of classics. I love EPUBs, and I detest PDFs, but if you give me the choice of reading Thoreau in a superbly crafted EPUB edition where someone presumed to mess with Thoreau's original punctuation, spelling (let alone word choice), etc., and a scanned/photographed PDF edition of the text exactly as it was published during Thoreau's lifetime (ideally under the writer's personal auspices)...

... well, given that choice, I'm always going to opt for PDF (and GoodReader on iOS) containing the 100% pure, unadulterated Thoreau. In other words, I'm a fan of the "Library of America" publishing principle: preserving every single letter and punctuation mark as it was contained in the original edition. (There's a very nice technical term for this in the German publishing industry: wort- und zeichengetreu.) To all publishers, wherever they are, I'd like to say: "Please, don't mess with our classics. If you feel the irresistible urge to 'correct' them, do so in editorial footnotes, without touching the original text."

So I hope you're producing your Thoreau e-books from such primary sources (ideally released during Thoreau's lifetime), Psymon. If not, I'll be unable to read your Thoreau editions, for which I apologize in advance. There are likely many readers out there who will appreciate "modernized" or "adjusted" texts by classics; I'm just not one of them.

</off-topic>

[odedta]

iBooks, any devices that runs Android, Azardi, Kindle Fire, Surface Pro, Readium... I recommend you read this, ADE will have support for it sooner than you might have thought.

[DaleDe]

I noticed that some of you are attempting to consolidate the information in this thread and other tips to do certain things well. This is exactly the sort of thing where the wiki is useful. You can easily develop an ongoing technique there for all to use. It is much better for that sort of thing that a forum or even a blog.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by odedta

iBooks, any devices that runs Android, Azardi, Kindle Fire, Surface Pro, Readium... I recommend you read this, ADE will have support for it sooner than you might have thought.

Yes: browser-based reading apps. We all know that. I don't consider a browser-based app, on the SP3 Pro, to be a "reading device." For that matter, considering iBooks to be a "reader" is a bit off-kilter, but...{shrug}. When I talk about reading devices, I pretty much stick to actual, mostly-dedicated devices. I realize it's an increasingly blurred line.

Hitch

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by odedta

iBooks, any devices that runs Android, Azardi, Kindle Fire, Surface Pro, Readium... I recommend you read this, ADE will have support for it sooner than you might have thought.

You are mixing devices and reading devices/programs here. For Android and Surface Pro it really depends on your reading program. I haven't found a good one for the Surface Pro... Readium is ok-ish for some ePUB3 stuff at least.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by odedta

iBooks, any devices that runs Android, Azardi, Kindle Fire, Surface Pro, Readium... I recommend you read this, ADE will have support for it sooner than you might have thought.

As the foregoing poster said, you're mixing up devices and software.

Can you recommend specific, EPUB 3-capable e-reader software for Android? I know of none.

iBooks is an unpalatable e-reader app, as I said. Crudely limited functionality, ugly looks.

In any case, this is a no-go for me – or for my client, to be precise. His number 1 platform is Amazon Kindle, and anything that does not work reliably on ordinary, black-and-white, cheap e-ink Kindles, cannot even be considered as a realistic option for this project.

I'm sorry about that, too, but that's the reality these days. I'd love to start churning out EPUB 3 e-books instead of EPUB 2 e-books right away. But I can't, because then I wouldn't deserve a single cent of fees from my clients if I proceeded in such a rash and irresponsible fashion.

PS: Oh, and I shudder to think what Adobe might come up with in this regard. Adobe is the epitome of software bloat to me, and I want none of it. (I do use ADE on the desktop, but only for checking purposes. I'd find it impossible to actually read anything in it, and enjoy reading it, even if you paid me to do so.)

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Faterson

Thank you, Psymon. I'm looking forward to it. I forgot to mention one big caveat on my part, though, that may turn out to be an unsurmountable stumbling block: I refuse to read even slightly "modernized" (read: bastardized) editions of classics.

Well, you are familiar with the Princeton editions of Thoreau's writings, I suppose? Those are THE authoritative editions of all his works, the closest thing we'll ever get to what he really intended to have published -- and not, in fact, what was published, full of various errors, and things that he later corrected/emended himself. One might say that the Princeton editions are a "bastardization" of the first edition, but if anything it's actually the other way around -- that most of the first printings of his works were bastardizations (done by either the editor or printer) of what he'd intended to publish.

Nevertheless, although I wish I could just take Princeton's versions and publish those, that would be a violation of their intellectual property rights, of course, and so in a way, you're getting both what you asked for, as well as what you didn't want: you're getting what was first printed (in some, but not all, cases within Thoreau's lifetime), which in many places is indeed a bastardization of what he actually wrote and wanted.

I guess you might say that this is a case of "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it!"

[odedta]

@Tox: Yeah, some are good some are bad.
@Faterson: Gitden is rather good, Astri-Bee is a chinese app and people say Moon Reader, I personally dislike Moon Reader.
I understand your reluctance to create ePub3 files, but I believe that the more we push the market towards that "technology" the faster it will get adopted.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Faterson

As the foregoing poster said, you're mixing up devices and software.


In any case, this is a no-go for me – or for my client, to be precise. His number 1 platform is Amazon Kindle, and anything that does not work reliably on ordinary, black-and-white, cheap e-ink Kindles, cannot even be considered as a realistic option for this project.

the KF8 platform is actually an EPub 3 look alike similar to the iBooks app. Of course it is wrapped in a mobi skin.

Dale

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Psymon

Well, you are familiar with the Princeton editions of Thoreau's writings, I suppose? Those are THE authoritative editions of all his works, the closest thing we'll ever get to what he really intended to have published -- and not, in fact, what was published, full of various errors, and things that he later corrected/emended himself. One might say that the Princeton editions are a "bastardization" of the first edition, but if anything it's actually the other way around -- that most of the first printings of his works were bastardizations (done by either the editor or printer) of what he'd intended to publish.

Nevertheless, although I wish I could just take Princeton's versions and publish those, that would be a violation of their intellectual property rights, of course, and so in a way, you're getting both what you asked for, as well as what you didn't want: you're getting what was first printed (in some, but not all, cases within Thoreau's lifetime), which in many places is indeed a bastardization of what he actually wrote and wanted.

I guess you might say that this is a case of "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it!"

Thank you for the "Thoreau editions report". Yes, the situation with his texts is tricky, and he's not the only writer with such issues. My no. 1 favorite writer (and Thoreau admirer) Leo Tolstoy was censored all life long by Czarist censors, and soon after he died, his works started to get censored by Communist censors for another 7 decades. We've been pretty much re-discovering Tolstoy's writings in their true flavor over the last two decades. (The oft-quoted, Russian "academic" 90-volume "Polnoye" edition of Tolstoy's works, that it took over 30 years to publish, is not reliable – it's the textbook example of how classic writers should not be re-released.)

That's why I said "ideally under the writer's personal auspices". The important thing is for the e-publisher always to strive to remain as close as possible to what the original writer actually published or (more tricky:) may have intended to publish. But editorial policies such as modernizing spellings, or modifying the original punctuation to suit today's readers' tastes (let alone even more visible original text modifications) are an anathema to me. Only that honorable German wort- und zeichengetreu publishing principle is good enough for me when creating EPUB editions of classic writers' works. I'm not saying modernized editions shouldn't have the right to exist – they're OK, as long as they're clearly labeled as such; the trouble is, they typically are not labeled in any way, and are marketed and sold under the guise of the original work.

Originally Posted by odedta

@Faterson: Gitden is rather good, Astri-Bee is a chinese app and people say Moon Reader, I personally dislike Moon Reader.

Thank you for the recommendations; I'll check them out. Moon+ Reader already ("heuristically") pops up footnotes even in EPUB 2 books (!), so there's a (modest) start.

Originally Posted by DaleDe

the KF8 platform is actually an EPub 3 look alike similar to the iBooks app. Of course it is wrapped in a mobi skin.

But that would (I understand) entail throwing the users of the first 3 Kindle device generations overboard, which I'm not ready to do at this point. I possess a Kindle 3 myself (although I gave it away to a family member), and it's still a perfectly capable e-reader in 2014. Excluding owners of only 4-year-old e-reader devices from the target audience is not something I'm ready to do, unless explicitly prompted to do so by the client. Why, I still use iPad 1, purchased in the summer of 2010, on an everyday basis (for secondary purposes) – I'd be upset if someone told me I'd be unable to open certain e-books on that device.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Faterson

But that would (I understand) entail throwing the users of the first 3 Kindle device generations overboard, which I'm not ready to do at this point. I possess a Kindle 3 myself (although I gave it away to a family member), and it's still a perfectly capable e-reader in 2014. Excluding owners of only 4-year-old e-reader devices from the target audience is not something I'm ready to do, unless explicitly prompted to do so by the client. Why, I still use iPad 1, purchased in the summer of 2010, on an everyday basis (for secondary purposes) – I'd be upset if someone told me I'd be unable to open certain e-books on that device.

KindleGen creates both versions but of course the older KF7 may look quite a bit different from the KF8 version even when the source is ePub 2. I am not aware of any good way to make KF8 and KF7 look the same and do anything other that simple text. Sometimes you can have fallbacks in the CSS to help with this but even then it is problematic. I am not suggesting that you release only KF8 but people using these early devices can't expect fancy formatting anyway.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

KindleGen creates both versions but of course the older KF7 may look quite a bit different from the KF8 version even when the source is ePub 2. I am not aware of any good way to make KF8 and KF7 look the same and do anything other that simple text. Sometimes you can have fallbacks in the CSS to help with this but even then it is problematic. I am not suggesting that you release only KF8 but people using these early devices can't expect fancy formatting anyway.

Dale

Dale,

Yes, but in this case, we are not really discussing formatting; we are discussing functionality, and without a lot of craziness, there's no viable way to put in both ePUB3 and ePUB2 footnotes for a mobi, not that I know of. (Now, admittedly, I haven't really tried). The devices that CAN display pop-up footnotes, for Amazon, do, with regular ePUB2-way footnote linking. I have a perfectly normal dual-pack MOBI sitting here (by which I mean, it's not stripped or modded in any way, made with the usual ePUB, KF8 and KF7 files inside), and on the PPW, the footnotes pop-up.

In fact, as far as I know, the only "device" that requires additional coding to create a pop-up footnote IS the iPad/iBooks; on Amazon, it's more like...if you built it in ePUB2, it works. So, I'm on the other side of odedta on this argument; I say, let the damn device and firmware and software makers make the functionality work for regular 2-way footnotes--of which there are already millions and millions--instead of making us (and our CLIENTS!!!) all go back and redo the cursed things.

odedta wrote:

I understand your reluctance to create ePub3 files, but I believe that the more we push the market towards that "technology" the faster it will get adopted.

Uhhhh..no. That hasn't worked yet. Go back and look at everything that Liz has posted (footnotes, 2 years now?), or anything over at Azardi, for the last THREE years. Bookmakers don't drive the market. What drives the market is what APPLE wants, not anyone else, in terms of the tech. If you followed what happened with ePUB3 in the first damn place, that's obvious. There was nearly bupkus involved with conforming the standards, making it simpler or better; it was all multimedia, all the time. THAT is what happens, not what a small band of ragtag rebels achieves against the Galactic Evil Empire, trust me. Thinking that? That way lies madness.

Just my $.02.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Hitch

on Amazon, it's more like...if you built it in ePUB2, it works.

That's excellent news. And if Amazon's more recent devices can do it, so should all other devices and e-reader apps, even if it's just EPUB 2. Moon+ Reader on Android has already followed suit. I don't care if it's just "heuristic guesswork" on the device's or software's part – if you can pop them up, just pop ’em!

(Though, as I've mentioned a couple of times, I believe this should be a book-specific preference left up to the reader's choice: the reader should be allowed to decide in what manner he or she wishes to view footnotes. Some readers might be delighted by popup footnotes, but others might hate them. There should be a way to switch popup footnotes on or off, on the fly, on a per-book basis; a toggle button, or as I've been suggesting in this thread, a 4-way toggle.)