Using heading styles for title page

[Notjohn]

Apart from their not being elegant, is there any downside to using <h1>, <h2> etc heads on the title page? I appreciate that they will then be inhaled into the virtual table of contents, but it's a matter of seconds to get them out of there. At the present I have a parallel set of styles for the title page and for the occasional heading that doesn't have to be in the TOC, but life would be easier without that accretion.

[mrmikel]

h1 and h2 are definable to make them appear however you want them to be. They will be at the top of the hierarchy of the book, so if you are using them just for display why don't you just define a couple of classes which do what they do without confusing what is important in the order of the book.

[signum]

I tossed this same issue over in my mind for several months before deciding that it would probably be cleaner to make a special style sheet *just for* the title page, that was only used in that one place. Likewise, there could be a special stylesheet for the cover, the copyright page, a colophon page, for a library of congress card suggestion, etc., to be used only if needed. If you make each of the sections (cover, title, copyright, text chapter) separate files in the epub, there's no requirement that the stylesheets don't conflict with each other, since they're used in only one place. The major stylesheet would cover (separately) the traditional headings, chapters, paragraphs, white space of the main part of the book without concern for the head material. Seems like a good division of labor to me.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Apart from their not being elegant, is there any downside to using <h1>, <h2> etc heads on the title page? I appreciate that they will then be inhaled into the virtual table of contents, but it's a matter of seconds to get them out of there. At the present I have a parallel set of styles for the title page and for the occasional heading that doesn't have to be in the TOC, but life would be easier without that accretion.

nj:

Don't forget, styles are NOT about how they look, really; they are structural. When you use styles, think about what something IS, not what it looks like.

If you don't intend to use the title page as part of your book's structure, then you should indeed continue to use the parallel styles--it's the better and cleaner way to do it. And remember, while you think of it being "seconds to get them out of there," it's not, really--that won't come out of the NCX, and will indeed affect how the NCX displays (or doesn't) in various devices. If you use an ePUB with that in it for mobi-creation, you could run into display issues on those devices/readers that use the NCX for the displayed MOBI, rather than the toc.html.

FWIW.

Hitch

[Notjohn]

I was afraid of that!

Thank you all.

[mrmikel]

Signum, I like your idea, if for no other reason than it avoids making inadvertent changes which you are editing the main stylesheet.

When you edit the title page stylesheet, you know that that is the only place that will be affected. Likewise, the main stylesheet won't affect the title page. You can also put in more extravagant paragraph spacing, etc.

[signum]

You said it better than I could. In system design, this is called "uncoupling," to reduce unintended side effects among different parts of a system. In this case, using only a single stylesheet for everything couples them together. Changing the stylesheet changes everything. Using separate stylesheets uncouples changes done in one part from affecting other parts.

[zonker]

couldn't you also use class to avoid "side effects"? for example "div.title" or "p.colophon"?