Fillable boxes or fields in EPUB

[jlhopes]

I'm working on a book that has sections where the reader keeps a "journal" and makes notes or answers questions posed in the book. In the print edition we will just use blank lines, but I'm wondering how to approach it in the ebook.

Is it possible to have boxes or fields for entering text in an EPUB file? Is it practical do this? And would it convert to Kindle?

Thanks for any advice and suggestions.

[Turtle91]

I don't believe there is an inherent "text box" functionality in ePub - there might be using JS.

You could just use the ______ (underscore), or an inline image of a box, or really fancy:

.box {border:1px solid black; letter-spacing:8em; line-height:1.5}

<span class="box">&nbsp;</span>

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, <span class="box">&nbsp;</span> consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam nec leo sapien. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam erat volutpat.</p>

[phillipgessert]

I usually suggest a wording change for that edition, something like "on a piece of paper, write down..."

Sometimes you can get lucky and keep everything except the blank. Simple Q&A stuff like "what are your favorite pizza toppings?" works just fine without a blank line. Doesn't work as well for more complicated forms and things, though. If you did retain blanks from the print edition, I'd suggest at a minimum placing some sort of disclaimer. People will surprise you by getting confused by things that seem pretty obvious.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by jlhopes

And would it convert to Kindle?

There is nothing like that in the Kindle platform.

I agree with phillipgessert's suggestions.

[0x6c616d70]

This sounds like something you do with a pdf, I doubt there's a way to do this on epub of kindle file formats. Even then, fillable forms don't seem to work properly on kindle.

[jlhopes]

Thanks everyone! That is pretty much what I thought, but it's good to confirm.

[rsuchwani]

Originally Posted by jlhopes

I'm working on a book that has sections where the reader keeps a "journal" and makes notes or answers questions posed in the book. In the print edition we will just use blank lines, but I'm wondering how to approach it in the ebook.

Is it possible to have boxes or fields for entering text in an EPUB file? Is it practical do this? And would it convert to Kindle?

It's possible to have the 'writeable fields' only in the ePub (Kindle doesn't support such fancy things) where the reader just writes stuff, but what about saving the written text? Will the written text just 'vanishes' after the page turn or it needs to be saved?

There are too many parameters before we begin to adopt a solution there.

Also, the question is posted almost a month ago, so did you just give up or following this?

[MicroDrie]

Originally Posted by rsuchwani

It's possible to have the 'writeable fields' only in the ePub (Kindle doesn't support such fancy things) where the reader just writes stuff, but what about saving the written text? Will the written text just 'vanishes' after the page turn or it needs to be saved?

With HTML, you design the page, with CSS you format it and with JavaScript you control the page. The latter is the problem, Google Play books doesn't allow JavaScript, not every EPUB reader allows JavaScript and not every user has JavaScript enabled if it can. Without control by JavaScript, the data is not saved.

In short, you can save data in an EPUB and read it back, but you have no certainty that it actually happens in an EPUB reader or app.