A link to jump back to the original start point?

[zekton]

Hi, I'm new to this forum and a fairly new user of Sigil & xhtml.

To explain my Qs above. I have successfully made an href link to another page which has an Anchor ID as per the Sigil icons.

What I'd like to do is have what I've seen in other books is a little upside-down v link, which when clicked on will jump me back to the original paragraph with the link.
The original link sends me to Footnotes / Quotes at the end of the Chapter and I'd like to replicate that in my own epub.

My html is weak so if you could give me some code or point me to a page in i.e. W3schools or the Sigil manual it would be a great help.

Hope you can help
Tnx from a newbie
Zekton

[mrmikel]

If you have multiple links from different places and you want to go back to each one, you better hope your reader has a back button. A number of readers do not, and to handle them, you have to provide multiple links back to each individual place. It is ungainly.

If it is just one to one you can create an anchor at the footnote and another anchor at the original point from which you jumped and create links both places. The process is the same for both.

You highlight the text you want to be the anchor and press the anchor and give it a name. Similarly for the link process you highlight and a list will pop up of available anchors, and you just select the one you want.

These are buttons at the top near the Omega button.

[zekton]

tnx for the prompt reply mrmikel.
I understand your point about anchoring at both points and will give it a try.

I was wondering if the tag ASIDE had any thing to do with this kind of link?
Or am I way off track with that.

[zekton]

Tried that and it worked mrmikel. Spot on.

Found it makes the text blue and underlined which might be unsightly if there are a number in the same area.

So thankfully found the "Wedge" or the upside down v as code ∧
and just used this as the link to jump back, rather than a full word.

So for putting me in the right direction.

[Perkin]

Originally Posted by zekton

So thankfully found the "Wedge" or the upside down v as code ∧
and just used this as the link to jump back, rather than a full word.

If the epub will be displayed on a touchscreen device, you might want to consider extending the link to include the word, so 'fat fingers' have a bigger target to activate.

[zekton]

Yes Perkin, that's fair comment. I thought the book did it this way but when I checked back it had the wedge and the word highlighted and linked together and it looks OK. So that's probably best. Tnx for the feedback.

[mrmikel]

If this is just a personal project for yourself, it looks like you are set.

If you'd like others to be able to read it, you might download other converters, viewers, such as Sony, Nook, Kindle to see how this works in those devices. Not everybody is going to read your work on a tablet, if you make it public. Glad things worked out!

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by zekton

I thought the book did it this way but when I checked back it had the wedge and the word highlighted and linked together and it looks OK. So that's probably best.

Typically, it is recommended to just surround the number/symbol with brackets.

So a "^" back link will turn into a "[^]" or a "1" will turn into a "[1]" or "a" will turn into "[a]".

It is much easier to touch 3+ characters than 1 (ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE SUPERSCRIPT).

All the books that I convert now for work, we decided to settle on using the a non-superscript [##] format. This allows for:

• Easy touch/click
• No line-height problems
• Easier for the visually impaired to read
  • Users who read at an extremely large font size for sight reasons will not be able to read the superscript footnote as clearly.

The bracketed + non-superscript footnotes do look a little unsightly, but I believe the advantages outweigh the costs.

With more and more devices going towards touch, and more and more reading digital content, this will only help.

[mrmikel]

This is a matter of personal taste. If it is just for yourself, please yourself.

There is much in what tex2002ans says about readability. By fiddling with text size and bolding the superscript some of these problems can be approached, but not fully answered, especially on smaller screen devices. On the other hand, the brackets are not as attractive.

I think there is no simple answer to this issue. If I were trying to do something for old codgers like me, though, I think readability would trump beauty every time!

[zekton]

Great advice guys. It's a personal project at the moment, so still experimenting.
But ALL tips welcome. It's a bit of a steep learning curve at the moment, so glad I've found this community. And btw, I think Sigil rocks, just hope it can keep going in some form.

[Jellby]

In an ideal future, ebook readers will support alternate stylesheets, you could have both versions in the same book, and the user will be able to choose the best for him/her.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by mrmikel

This is a matter of personal taste. If it is just for yourself, please yourself.

Indeed. Nearly all of the typographical choices are opinions, and all over the typography boards/topics are arguments back and forth on "my way is better/nicer".

The thing that I like to stress most though is to just make sure your code is CONSISTENT throughout the book. For example, this is the footnote format I use (pulled this right out of an EPUB I completed today):

In Text:

<p>Adam Smith too is a target of these smear campaigns. One of the most passionate advocates of destructionism had the nerve to call him, in the Introduction to an inexpensive edition of the <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, “an unconscious mercenary in the service of a rising capitalist class” and to add that “he gave a new dignity to greed and a new sanctification to the predatory impulses.”<a href="#fn1" id="ft1">[1]</a> Other leftists resort to even still ruder insults.</p>

At the end of the chapter:

<p><a href="#ft1" id="fn1">[1]</a> Max Lerner in the Modern Library edition of the <i>Wealth of Nations</i> (New York: Random House, 1937), p. ix.</p>

Throughout the entire book, I make sure that:

• Footnotes in the text always have an ID of "ft#"
• Footnotes in the end of the chapter are id "fn#".
• ALWAYS wrap the number/symbol/letter in brackets.

This makes it extremely easy to use Regex to change/fix all instances.

So let us say I wanted to flip from [##] format to a superscript number format, I can easily run this Regex:

Search:

>\[(.+?)\]</a>

Replace:

><sup>\1</sup></a>

Or this more robust one:

Search:

<a href="#f([tn][^>]+)>\[(.+?)\]</a>

Replace:

<a href="#f\1><sup>\2</sup></a>

Keeping consistent code allows someone to just go in and change it to whatever preference they want, AND/OR in the future, if you decide to switch to a different format, you have made your life MUCH easier.

(For example, in all of the EPUBs I have created, I used that same footnote code, but instead of brackets I had "^##". I can easily open those old EPUBs and run one Regex, and I will have bracketed footnotes)

That "include the first word in the link" recommendation seems to me like it would be a big pain to reverse/fix/change, and it would look VERY inconsistent.

Originally Posted by mrmikel

If I were trying to do something for old codgers like me, though, I think readability would trump beauty every time!

Indeed. The ultimate purpose of books is to get across ideas and influence people. The text of the book itself is the most important. Users are going to want to read most comfortably for them (especially in ebooks), so they will force the book to their personal reading preferences (user margins/line-heights/colors/fonts/font-sizes/background colors...).

All you should do is pick some nice basic defaults (never forcing "black font" for instance), and make clean/consistent code so it is easy as pie for someone to go in and change if they were so inclined.

Originally Posted by Jellby

In an ideal future, ebook readers will support alternate stylesheets, you could have both versions in the same book, and the user will be able to choose the best for him/her.

Or just magical user overrides.

Originally Posted by zekton

It's a bit of a steep learning curve at the moment, so glad I've found this community. And btw, I think Sigil rocks, just hope it can keep going in some form.

Most of us are very helpful here. (Just stay away from that evil person Jellby! or Hitch!)

[zekton]

WOW tnx for that Tex.
That's gonna take a week to process lol.

I'll browse the Regex stickies at the top as well to get a handle.

As big Arnie said... "I'LL BE BACK"

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by zekton

WOW tnx for that Tex.
That's gonna take a week to process lol.

I tend to do point-by-point answers (I absorbed this style from online debates where opponents must be DESTROYED). See you in a week!

Originally Posted by zekton

I'll browse the Regex stickies at the top as well to get a handle.

Regex is a HUGE help with editing EPUBs and helping catch mistakes/inconsistencies.

In Sigil, there is the "Saved Searches" window, which allows you to save commonly used Searches/Regex, and allows you to load/run them very easily:

http://web.sigil.googlecode.com/git/..._searches.html

May I ask what you are working from? Or are you just tweaking a book that you purchased/found?

If you are working directly from a digital source (.txt, .doc, .odt, HTML, ...), of course it will be about a million times easier to create an EPUB.

Most of my work is done going from (dreaded) PDF -> EPUB, so I have a bunch of Regex to catch common OCR mistakes + helping speed up my entire process.

In Sigil, I also tend to use the Spellchecking window (I requested the feature in Sigil, and it is FANTASTIC): http://web.sigil.googlecode.com/git/...pellcheck.html

If you need any more help/examples/whatever, just let me know. Everything I do for work is CC3.0 (Creative Commons 3.0), and all my EPUBs (mostly non-fiction economics books) are available to everyone.

[phossler]

Related question about footnote placement / formatting.

Is the 'dead tree' approach of putting footnotes at the bottom of the page or putting endnotes at the end of the chapter the best way for an ebook?

Most of the time I see the endnotes at the end of the chapter technique used, and I always felt it was a little 'awkward' to navigate to and back.

For an ebook would it be more appropriate to somehow make the footnoted material inline and set off with a distinctive style?

Obviously customer and house rules are correct, even when they're not.

Hope this is not off topic

Paul