Humor Jerome, Jerome K.: Three Men in a Boat (illustrated) v6 07 april 2010

[dpierron]

Originally Posted by cbell

This is beautiful! Thank you very much, zelda_pinwheel!

Originally Posted by cbell

This is beautiful! I had to stop reading and take a couple of photos to show you how nice it looks

No photos, then ?

[cbell]

haha you caught me between edits!

I posted them here and the copyright notice appeared so I removed them.

Edit: Got the OK to post photos here, ignore the copyright notice

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[alecE]

This has long been a favourite book of mine. I have a pbook version which I have always refused to discard 'cos it was beautiful. So is this epub, I may finally allow my pbook to find a good home elsewhere. Thank you Zelda.

Minor typo: in the version I downloaded 18/7/09, section Author's Advertisement, sentence "I have come to the conclusion that, be the explanation what it may..." the word 'may' is shown as 'mav'

Fantastic example of epub art

[Esseb]

This is really great, Zelda. It hasn't been that long since I last re-read the book, but this illustrated edition deserves to be next on my reading list, and the markup and css itself is almost as beautiful as the book.

A couple of problems though.

You used the wrong alt text for the initial letter in chapter 1 (the initial letters in the other chapters seemed fine though):
<div class="lettrine"><img src="images/t.gif" alt="W" /></div>

You should limit alt text for cases when it's actually required. The alt attribute is meant to be used when a visually impaired reader would not be able to follow the text without knowing what an image is of. A blind person really isn't going to care that some illustration he can't see is of a "man with cane". If an image actually contains text that a blind person can't read, such as header1.gif or the initial chapter letter images, then you should use alt text, but in many cases, alt="" is really the best thing to do.

Take the first illustration in chapter 1, for example. This is what the book would sound like to a blind person:

The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

Reading up on ailments. I remember going to the British Museum one day [...]

See "Context is Everything" at http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/, specifically example 2.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by alecE

This has long been a favourite book of mine. I have a pbook version which I have always refused to discard 'cos it was beautiful. So is this epub, I may finally allow my pbook to find a good home elsewhere. Thank you Zelda.

Minor typo: in the version I downloaded 18/7/09, section Author's Advertisement, sentence "I have come to the conclusion that, be the explanation what it may..." the word 'may' is shown as 'mav'

Fantastic example of epub art

thank you so much for the kind words alec, and also for finding that typo and reporting it !! i will fix that. i've not proof-read this text, so please do report any and all mistakes, i appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Esseb

This is really great, Zelda. It hasn't been that long since I last re-read the book, but this illustrated edition deserves to be next on my reading list, and the markup and css itself is almost as beautiful as the book.

A couple of problems though.

You used the wrong alt text for the initial letter in chapter 1 (the initial letters in the other chapters seemed fine though):
<div class="lettrine"><img src="images/t.gif" alt="W" /></div>

You should limit alt text for cases when it's actually required. The alt attribute is meant to be used when a visually impaired reader would not be able to follow the text without knowing what an image is of. A blind person really isn't going to care that some illustration he can't see is of a "man with cane". If an image actually contains text that a blind person can't read, such as header1.gif or the initial chapter letter images, then you should use alt text, but in many cases, alt="" is really the best thing to do.

Take the first illustration in chapter 1, for example. This is what the book would sound like to a blind person:



See "Context is Everything" at http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/, specifically example 2.

thank you very much esseb ! code almost as beautiful as the book, that is high praise indeed.

thank you for pointing out those problems ; the wrong alt text is obviously a left-over i didn't fix (originally it was the wrong image as well ).

and i will take a look a the site you link, definitely. i am a webdesigner and so i've gotten into the habit of always including an alt description but you make a very good case for situations where that is not necessary. thank you !

i'll post an updated version soon (i hope. drowning in work lately, but this will be on my list of priorities).

thank you again everybody ! with all your help one day this book will be perfect.

[zelda_pinwheel]

esseb, i've just noticed this is your first post here ! i'm quite honoured you've chosen to use it for my book. and i'd therefore like to add to my previous comment a big "welcome !" to mobileread. you'll find quite a few gorgeous epub books here, take a look specifically at any book made by jellby.

and please join in the discussions about epub in the epub forum. you might also be interested in sigil, a dedicated epub editor developped by a very talented mr member valloric ; it has its own dedicated forum.

welcome !

[Esseb]

Thank you. I've been downloading books from Mobileread for a while, but have mainly been sticking to the BBEB format until now. I'll make sure to check out Jellby's books also.

And I'm already looking at this book in Sigil, actually. Great editor. I might even make an epub version of a book myself if I can think of something appropriate, but you've already made the one illustrated book I was most interested in.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Esseb

Thank you. I've been downloading books from Mobileread for a while now, but have mainly been sticking to the BBEB format until now. I'll make sure to check out Jellby's books also.

you're in for a real treat. jellby is the epub king.

And I'm already looking at this book in Sigil, actually. Great editor. I might even make an epub version of a book myself if I can think of something appropriate, but you've already made the one illustrated book I was most interested in.

yes, i agree, sigil is brilliant ! and will keep getting better. the next version will be out really soon, as soon as valloric returns from holidays. you definitely should make an epub book of your own ! it's a lot of fun, especially now that we have sigil to do the content.opf for us. and if you have any questions or need help you can post in the epub forum and you're sure to get an answer.

sorry to get to three men before you. it's one of my favourite books, particularly the illustrated version (i love illustrated books too !), but... you could always make your own version, if you like ! and there are lots of other illustrated books out there, if you track them down. you might want to check the internet archive, for instance.

[zelda_pinwheel]

i've now corrected the errors indicated by alecE and Esseb, removed superfluous alt text, and removed a font-file which was never used in the text (thank you, Valloric, alecE and Esseb !). version 5 uploaded.

[GeoffC]

Hi Zee, you don't say -
but did you use Sigil for this excellent book ?
I'm particularly interested in the way you've got text to flow around the pictures and I haven't found that easy using the Sigil wysiwyg editor (unless that's an issue that just requires manual manipulation of the code)....I noticed mention of your method in another thread ....

[all these great books and nothing for me to read them on (danged if I'm going to take my PC to bed with me ....) :chuckles:]

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Hi Zee, you don't say -
but did you use Sigil for this excellent book ?
I'm particularly interested in the way you've got text to flow around the pictures and I haven't found that easy using the Sigil wysiwyg editor (unless that's an issue that just requires manual manipulation of the code)....I noticed mention of your method in another thread ....

no, i made this book before sigil was released. i wanted to learn to make epub by hand so i did all the code myself. it was my learning book.

the non-rectangular image wrap is an adaptation of a method i found in the adobe sample book alice in wonderland ; jellby and i both did a lot of experimenting with it and jellby came up with a better and simpler method than the one adobe used, which i used here. the results are in the epub code snippets thread in the epub forum.

you can get the same effect using sigil but it won't be automatic (no wysiwyg) ; you'll have to write the code yourself. it would be impossible to have a wysiwyg action for something like that because a computer can't see what is in an image, it just knows there's an image file there, and image files are all necessarily rectangular (to a computer).

[kjk]

Incredible looking book-great job, zelda! It looks great in Sigil and Calibre's viewer-love how the text wraps around images too, so professional looking.

Cbell showed it on his reader, here is the same chapter on an iPhone thru Stanza (Stanza seems to drop quite a bit of ePub goodness, but did manage some of the images.)

[GeoffC]

looks good, too, in mobi (thanks Calibre)

[neilmarr]

Sorry for being so slow to find this. I've just re-read this old favourite on a 505 but downloaded it from another source (the excellent Project Guthenberg). I decided it was a library keeper, but I'll now replace my version with your vastly superior work and look forward to reading it again soon. Many thanks, Zelda.

PS: Just downloaded your version of Three Men in a Boat -- a painless operation with Calibre -- and it opens beautifully on my 505. Lovely production, Zelda. It returns to the book the Victorian elegance the Guthenberg version can't offer. Thanks again. Fine job. Neil

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by kjk

Incredible looking book-great job, zelda! It looks great in Sigil and Calibre's viewer-love how the text wraps around images too, so professional looking.

Cbell showed it on his reader, here is the same chapter on an iPhone thru Stanza (Stanza seems to drop quite a bit of ePub goodness, but did manage some of the images.)

thank you so much for the photo ! i've been wondering how it would look in stanza. i was a bit worried that the larger images and advanced formatting would be a problem, but it looks like it's manageable nonetheless, good to know !

Originally Posted by GeoffC

looks good, too, in mobi (thanks Calibre)

aïe. knowing what i know about mobi format (and having previously tried to make a mobipocket version of this book, with deplorable results), i don't even want to know how that turned out. i guess whatever happens with the images, you'll still have the text, though.

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Sorry for being so slow to find this. I've just re-read this old favourite on a 505 but downloaded it from another source (the excellent Project Guthenberg). I decided it was a library keeper, but I'll now replace my version with your vastly superior work and look forward to reading it again soon. Many thanks, Zelda.

PS: Just downloaded your version of Three Men in a Boat -- a painless operation with Calibre -- and it opens beautifully on my 505. Lovely production, Zelda. It returns to the book the Victorian elegance the Guthenberg version can't offer. Thanks again. Fine job. Neil

i'm very glad you like it ! it's one of my favourites too, and i love the illustrations. enjoy.