Ask Slashdot: Composing an e-Book With a Couple of Bells and Whistles 148
New submitter Cbhihe writes: I want to edit an e-book, a scientific textbook to be distributed on the Kindle tablet to be exact. The book is written. For that I used LibreOffice.
It comes complete with index, drawings, pictures, formulae and its present look and feel is no different from the majority of scientific text, you might be accustomed to browsing. I need advice for the next step, which consists in making this digital pile of data suitable for an e-book.. with a slight twist. The e-book should allow for:
— picture zoom-in in pop-ups on screen
— allow in-text basic interactivity, e.g. when in a exercise, multiple answers are proposed, each answer when clicked should display "Right" or "Wrong" (for instance).
Can you recommend, if not a commercial package that allows such features right out of the box, then at least and preferably open-source technology needed for me to achieve what I want ? I am willing to get down to moderate programming to use your suggested solution. I am conversant in C, C++ and getting there with Python.
It comes complete with index, drawings, pictures, formulae and its present look and feel is no different from the majority of scientific text, you might be accustomed to browsing. I need advice for the next step, which consists in making this digital pile of data suitable for an e-book.. with a slight twist. The e-book should allow for:
— picture zoom-in in pop-ups on screen
— allow in-text basic interactivity, e.g. when in a exercise, multiple answers are proposed, each answer when clicked should display "Right" or "Wrong" (for instance).
Can you recommend, if not a commercial package that allows such features right out of the box, then at least and preferably open-source technology needed for me to achieve what I want ? I am willing to get down to moderate programming to use your suggested solution. I am conversant in C, C++ and getting there with Python.
HTML (Score:3, Insightful)
Just be HTML+javascript. Then you'll have modern Kindles (assuming they can run web browsers) and the other 99% of the market too!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just be HTML+javascript. Then you'll have modern Kindles (assuming they can run web browsers) and the other 99% of the market too!
I think you're off by one here. I think the OP wants an e-book format, of which there are several [ebookarchitects.com], however he does not want to be constrained by the existing formats, which....is not possible.
Exactly (Score:2)
HTML
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The web browser on Kindles with e-ink screens is really not that great at all. The e-ink screen is too slow for fancier content anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You can do so much more with HTML+CSS+JS than with eBooks .epub and that is, tam tam: HTML.
That is nonsense. All e-Books I have are
Re: (Score:2)
The problem of EPUB is that HTML5 is supported in EPUB3. EPUB2 suggested _not using_ JavaScript - some EPUB2 readers do support JavaScript, but mostly they don't. EPUB3 leaves the option of supporting JavaScript?!?
And there lies the problem: Making a self supportive HTML5 (+CSS+JS) page is not that hard. Somebody else suggested that for quizzes and self-learning you need a Moodle server - you don't. Android and IOS browsers support local storage (a few MB, but still storage) in JS. If JS is used than the O
Or don't (Score:3)
Or just don't try to build an interactive ebook in the first place. Link the question to the answer key in the back (hypertext is good) but don't fill in or pop up answers. Let a book be a book.
This is the major mistake folks make with powerpoint presentations. Animations and fancy crap that get in the way of digesting the material on the slide.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Or just don't try to build an interactive ebook in the first place.
That is truly great advice for someone wanting to build an interactive ebook.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, if someone seeks advice on which gun to shoot themselves with, "don't do that it's painful and self-destructive," is pretty solid advice. Certainly better than discussing the relative merits of various firearms.
Re: (Score:2)
What is the best way to use a deep fryer on my lap in a car during rush hour?
Sometimes the best answer is "no".
If you don't know how to drive with your knees, then you shouldn't be driving during rush hour.
And besides, the deep fryer isn't the problem. The problem is catching and butchering the chickens while driving.
Re: Or don't (Score:1)
Can we have this as a sticky at the start of each thread asking for advice?
Re: (Score:2)
I know perfectly well why OP wants a splashy, flashy book. I just think it's a terrible, terrible idea. And the moment you try to use the book OP described, I think it likely that you will too.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh get over yourself. If you don't want to invite the comments folks choose to offer, pay a professional instead of posting on slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
This from a guy who doesn't have the courage to identify himself. Thanks buddy, I'll take it under advisement.
Re: (Score:1)
The first thing you need to take care is not to use tables. They behave terribly in the different Kindle devices. Better make images (preferably in black and white), and embed them in the book.
I am not sure today, but the tools provided by Amazon were outdated and they didn't make any effort to update them. It is, in fact, complicated to make them to work correctly. The
Re: HTML (Score:5, Informative)
epub is HTML + CSS + images + some metadata files (e.g. the table of contents) in a .zip file (with filename 'extension' .epub rather than .zip).
Libreoffice can export to HTML, which will get the bulk of the job done. Then the OP could use Sigil (http://sigil-ebook.com/ - packaged for several linux distros including Debian) to edit the HTML into shape as an epub book.
I've never written a book using Sigil, but I have used it many times to fix problems with bought epubs - hard-coded tiny crappy fonts, missing or broken Table of Contents and other suckage.
--------
Zooming images etc is something that is not the OP's responsibility - that task (and all other presentation tasks) are handled by the reader's epub viewer program - e.g. whatever the default is on Kindle, plus FBReader, Moon Reader, Cool Reader and many more on Android, and whatever epub viewers run on ipads etc.
FBReader and Calibre and others on Linux PCs, and Windows and Mac too (plus they probably have many more).
Re: (Score:2)
Sigil is abandonware, unfortunately. You can still get it to install, but that might not last forever. I'm not aware of a version that's in any repository, but you can find packages for various distros. Building it from source is a bit of a bear, so I'd recommend a binary package.
For repairing bad epubs, the ebook editor that is now built into Calibre is better than Sigil was. On the other hand, Sigil allows you to create a new ebook fairly easily, whereas the Calibre editor is explicitly not designed f
Re: (Score:2)
sigil is being actively worked on again. last update Dec 18.
see my other answer in this thread for details. or go to the sigil web site i linked to.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
This is good news. I always liked Sigil, and was disappointed when it seemed it was going away.
LaTeX classes are one answer (Score:2, Informative)
The LaTeX class "memoir", plus the equation-typesetting package "amsmath", combined with pop-up packages that include "fancytooltips", "fancy-preview", "cooltooltips", and "pdfcomment", in aggregate provide the requested functionality. The LaTeX/memoir/amsmath learning curve is steep however.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a blast from the past. A better forgotten one. As soon build your ebook with nroff macros so you can present it as a man page.
Re: (Score:2)
Fully agree, I wrote two books with Lyx, turned them into epubs and published them in the Kindle store.
I did use Calibre though to turn the html produced by Lyx into an epub.
You can even read how I did in a document I wrote on the process at: http://www.pluton.nl/documente... [pluton.nl]
(Note that one advantage of making the text first in Libreoffice is the spell and grammar check :-)
Re: (Score:3)
Calibre is nice for converting among formats but doesn't support detailed editing of the source files. If you just stick an OO formatted file in and have it convert, it will do it, but you're likely to need a lot of hand tweaking to get it to look like you want and pass the validators.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Both you and bitingduck need to catch up with recent developments. Calibre does editing and is basically the successor to Sigil, since development stalled on the latter awhile back. Calibre's editor incorporates most Sigil features and is actively developed.
http://manual.calibre-ebook.co... [calibre-ebook.com]
Re:Calibre (Score:4, Informative)
you need to keep up-to-date, too.
Sigil 0.92 was released on Dec 18 2015.
here's what the latest entry on http://sigil-ebook.com/ [sigil-ebook.com] says:
Sigil-0.9.2 Released
December 18, 2015 ~ kevinbhendricks
Sigil 0.9.2 is a bug fix and stability improvement release of the stable Sigil-0.9.X series. It includes all of the changes and improvements so far and it has shown itself to be very stable in testing. Most of the changes from our last release Sigil-0.9.1 are bug fixes:
Bug Fixes:
. Update BuildingOnLinux docs
. Update Building on Mac OS X docs
. Fix example clips/searches loading on Linux
. Simplify UseBundledInterpreter Logic
. Fix bug when adding existing html links to stylesheets not being updated
. Fix bug in Well-Formed error messages due to bug inside gumboâ(TM)s error.c
. Add xmlns=âhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml attribute to html tag if missing
. Fix lost DOCTYPE info when splitting or merging
. Completely rework pretty printing via gumbo to be much more robust
. Make identification and storage of page-map.xml more robust
. Restore Sigilâ(TM)s update checker thatâ(TM)s been broken for a while
. Update sigil_bs4 prettyprint_xhtml and serialize_xhtml routines to use logic of code in GumboInterface
. Update sigil_bs4 to use numeric entities when faced with nbsp so they do not get lost later in Sigil
. Fix bugs in sigil_bs4/prettyprint_xhtml and serialize_xhtml routines that failed to handle some void tags properly
. Fix out of date error message referencing Tidy
. Coerce missing or bad doctypes to meet either epub2 or epub3 standard
. Inject empty title tag if missing from head
. Html escape Index entry text used to create index.html
Improvements:
. Include Pull Request 161 by pinotree âoeSwitch TempFolder to QTemporaryDirâ to improve safety
. Preliminary Linux binary installer support added
. Add ability to change Sigilâ(TM)s user preferences directory by specifying a new path via the SIGIL_PREFS_DIR environment variable (path must be user-writable).
User Interface Changes:
. Add some keyboard accelerators to the Spell Check dialogue see Sigil Issue# 164
. Completely revamp Cleaning to use âoeMend Codeâ and remove PrettyPrintGumbo as on option
. Rename PrettyPrintGumbo to âoeMend and Prettifyâ and move to CodeView Right-click menu and Tools Menu
. Rename âoeSanity Checkâ to âoeWell-Formed Check EPUBâ and remove check icon people confused with FlightCrew
. Change ToValidXHTML by using serialize not prettyprint
It is hoped this release will provide a stable and up-to-date version of Sigil while development work continues on adding some additional epub3 support features.
Re: (Score:2)
Good. Competition is healthy.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to publish an e-book but you also want to be able to do things that e-books can't do.
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
You want to publish an e-book but you also want to be able to do things that e-books can't do.
That's kind of the point. It will make his e-book new and innovative. That's how progress happens.
Re: So... (Score:3)
Apple's does. It can do all this and more, and there are tons of interactive educational materials done this way But it doesn't fit his open source or kindle requirements. So while it's not true that no format can do it, it's not an answer to his question.
Re: (Score:1)
Open Source is usually code for "free as in no money spent even at the expense of unlimited time spent". That definitely seems to be the requirement here, although there's also an opening in the submission for a commercial package with the features working out-of-the-box. In this case, maybe Apple is a good solution after all.
Re: (Score:2)
The Kindle requirement isn't easily solvable. The Kindle reader platform doesn't support JavaScript, so the only thing you can really do is a "book as app" thing where you write an Android app that builds a custom eBook reader on top of WebKit's paged med
Re: (Score:1)
Well guess what? There is no e-book format that allows that. That isn't what e-books were designed for. There are non e-book formats designed to do that (HTML, etc). Use those, THAT is what progress is.
Maybe not for the lame-ass Kindle; but if you want to publish your e-Book for the iPad instead (or also), Apple makes a truly wonderful (and free!) Textbook-Authoring Tool [apple.com] that will allow you to do all that you have asked for, and much more.
:-) The only catch is you have to Author with a Mac...
Jus' sayin'...
Oh, and WAIT! The newer versions of iBooks Author will create ePub3-format books [imore.com]; so I guess they maybe COULD be used with that lame-ass Kindle...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
. It will make his e-book new and innovative. That's how progress happens.
No, that would make a new e-book format new and innovative. Progress in terms of new features happens by updating the application and formats to support new features, not by making a new book that can't be actually expressed in existing formats. You sound like a business type of person trying to sell something that doesn't exist without consulting your technical staff, "Our new e-book will include VR experiences for people with Kindles," "Sir, that is not possible with the ebook format," "But saying it is
Re: (Score:1)
So you want to make an audio CD that displays images on the player's screen? You want to publish an audio CD but also want to be able to do things an audio CD can't do. Maybe try an mp3 format instead as it supports such meta-data like album covers, for some players
But the point was to make his CD new and innovative. That is how progress happens. How else would we move forward so that audio CDs can display images on players not meant to display images, until someone makes an audio CD that does?
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
There are audio CDs that have image data, but they're not Redbook. Redbook audio is just that: audio.
Re: (Score:1)
There are audio CDs that have image data, but they're not Redbook. Redbook audio is just that: audio.
I guess you've never heard of Sub-Code Graphics [wikipedia.org].
It's in the format; but no one uses it (anymore).
Of course, these guys did [gamesetwatch.com], but then they're always ahead of their time...
Re: (Score:2)
subcode graphics is in parts 2 (text) and 3 (graphics) of the updated Redbook. 'Course, what're you going to do with an entire 480 interlaced lines of real estate and 256 colours? I can't see Terminator: Genisys looking particularly appealing on that.
Re: (Score:2)
ye be right. It's in Part 3, along with yet another update to specifications regarding colourspace capability.
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry, but doing what HTML+JavaScript was doing 20 years ago, just in a different container, is not innovative.
Re: (Score:3)
Except since it hasn't happened, the market pretty much must've rejected it.
I mean, Apple has iBooks Author, which is a free (beer, on OS X) application for creating "rich" books which can be exported to PDF or EPUB. (There's a licensing thing in there - if you want to sell the book for money, you have to have it approved by Apple for sale in the iBookstore. But if it's free, go nuts - distribute how you see fi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Could have had it all back in the day with HyperCard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Although I pine for the days of HyperCard myself, Apple's own iBooks Author [apple.com] pretty much gets you there at this point. It's Free (as in beer) and can be used to create ePub3 books, as well as Apple's (more robust) iBooks format.
Re: (Score:1)
yea its like he wants to jam it full of flash and shockwave
sorry I just threw up a little at the thought of an EBOOK doing new and innovative things that were already done when CD rom was a big deal
Re: (Score:2)
You want to publish an e-book but you also want to be able to do things that e-books can't do.
Use HTML+CSS+JS as your Ebook format, problem solved. The more restricted formats are specifically for wrapping content in DRM encryption and targeting old-style LCD and eInk readers that have limited capabilities than a tablet, and they are not platforms for innovating and providing richly-interactive content.
iBooks also support Javascript interactivity with EPUB content, and Adobe PDF has support for Ja
Re: (Score:2)
What nonsense comment is that?
Got even upmodded, how retarded.
He only needs to publish in .epub format and everything he wants is done by the eBook reader automatically!
This'll Do It For You, but This Will be Downvoted (Score:1)
[url=http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/]Apple iBooks Author[/url]
It was designed to be EXACTLY what you are talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
There are a surprisingly large number of authors writing in iBook format, precisely because it permits arty variations the other formats don't.
Kindles can't do this (Score:4)
The paperwhite Kindles are hopeless at showing images.
They can't do what you are asking (zoom, etc).
This has nothing to do with whatever software you used to create the file.
Re:Kindles can't do this (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't speak for Kindles, but I've owned several Kobos, and they were all terrible for showing any kind of interactive content. Clicking on a link on a page of text is an exercise in frustration, the finger press being interpreted 4/5 times as a page change, and when it works, it will take several seconds, sometimes ~20, to go see the referenced content, which is sometimes just a footnote which was only 2-3 page changes away. They're good for displaying linear content, such as reading a novel, but forget a
suggestions from a small publisher (Score:5, Informative)
If you want equations to come out reasonably, you have to use EPUB 3 or iBooks Author (which isn't open source). The problem you're going to find with EPUB 3 is that most readers don't support it yet, and you might have to distribute it yourself. I have a small publishing company and we recently did a book full of equations and ended up publishing it only on iTunes/iBooks and our own site [bitingduckpress.com]. It has the equations done in MathML so you can copy and paste them into other things. Most of your other features are things we haven't tried to implement, but I suspect will cause the old EPUB 2.x validators to barf (even if it's valid EPUB 2, many distributors are using old validators).
As far as tools, we tend to export things from Indesign (because a lot of our books are in dead tree format, too) and then fix them up with BBEdit, TextMate, or Sigil. Sigil is nice because it will render the book for you. BBEdit will open a properly zipped up epub file package and let you hand edit things inside, but it doesn't do any of the cross-file updating that Sigil does (e.g. if you change a file name it will get updated where appropriate in Sigil, but you have to do it by hand in BBEdit). TextMate doesn't open epub packages directly, but it's useful as an editor (and any other text editor with regex support will serve you about the same). BBEdit and TextMate both have good regex support (more so than Sigil). I'm partial to BBEdit, while our other editor is partial to TextMate. We have a little "tech tips" section on our main site [bitingduckpress.com] that describes how we export a word file and make an epub from it (it should be about the same with OO), as well as how we do references. Unfortunately there aren't any good epub editors available yet that support references in a reasonable way. Assuming you can figure out the EPUB 3 implementation of the features you want, you should be able to do most of what you need with a good text editor that has good regex support.
You can run your final product through Epubcheck 3 [github.com] (or whatever version you want) and verify that it's valid. Most distributors use some flavor of epubcheck 2.x and will reject it if your file throws any errors. They may or may not accurately tell you the errors, and like any compiler, you can sometimes fix 30 pages of errors by putting in the correct bit of punctuation just before where the first error is thrown.
Kindle or features - pick one (Score:5, Informative)
You described a Web Page or an App (Score:3, Informative)
What you described is not an ebook, and there is no good reason to overload "ebook" with all of what you intend.
A web page or dedicated app is what you want. Make a phone app and/or a web site with a modern framework. Most people have tablets/phones, which will already render and interact with those formats just fine.
E-readers are specialized and limited devices that have a shrinking, not growing, user base. Tablets are surpassing them rapidly. There is literally no good reason to do what you are trying to do with any "ebook" format.
Re:You described a Web Page or an App (Score:4, Insightful)
What you described is not an ebook, and there is no good reason to overload "ebook" with all of what you intend.
There's every good reason to "overload" an ebook with the features that the OP asked for. Many people (probably more than ever) are reading their ebooks on tablets that are perfectly capable of rendering all the features identified, and more. It's quite reasonable to want to put all of that into a neatly packaged file that a person can dl to their tablet and use offline. It's so reasonable that the group that defines the EPUB format has updated the format to support HTML5 in EPUB 3.0, which would be how those features all get implemented. The people who make readers haven't kept up with that-- most readers are still limited to EPUB 2, and many distributors are still using outdated versions of EPUBcheck to validate files, so they reject perfectly valid EPUB 2 files because they're too lazy to update their validator (which is free and open source).
As a reader of scientific material, I would like to see many of the features that the OP requested-- I read quite a few electronically published papers and books, and unfortunately the most common format remains flat PDF, which kind of sucks for reading technical content on a small tablet. An html based format (like EPUB) that encapsulates the whole paper or book, including scalable images and graphs, copyable equations, and video where appropriate, would be a much preferable format. And don't say "just read it off the web". I do read it off the web, but I also download papers to archive, and if the publisher disappears (it happens) or I stop having access to that publisher (e.g. my employer's library drops the subscription), I'd still like to be able to read the article in its entirety, along with all the multimedia supplements.
Questionable (Score:2)
"when the document is rendered by a Reading System without scripting support or with scripting support disabled, the top-level document content must retain its integrity, remaining consumable by the User without any information loss or other significant deterioration."
- http://www.idpf.org/epub/301/s... [idpf.org]
Re: You described a Web Page or an App (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
If you do an Epub 3 you only have to do it once and don't have to do the whole app development, and it will also be less of a storage hog and requires development across multiple devices and OS's and requires more work from the developer to allow all the things that ereaders provide. There ends up being a lot of app overhead that you don't need if you just supply content instead of an app. Ebooks that are now Epub 2.0 used to be provided as apps, too, just to give someone a text experience. I don't want
Re: (Score:2)
Also durability. An app will only run as long as the device and OS that it was made for remains current. If you're generating content that will remain useful for more than a few years the content and markup should be independent of the platform. I have PDFs and HTML that were generated in the late 90's that are still readable on any current device. If they were apps they'd be lost forever when the devices and OS's are gone. Think about dead tree books-- I can (and have) gone back to look at 100 year old
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, and there's also the fixed layout ebook format [ebookarchitects.com] Apple introduced on top of EPUB2 which EPUB3 standardizes. I've done PDF to fixed layout ebook conversions that work like a charm and look exactly like the print / PDF version -- given that your device supports fxl ebooks, of course. There are several pdf2fxl ebook / EPUB3 conversion services and tools. I like this one because it has a free [magicepub.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Tablets are surpassing them rapidly. There is literally no good reason to do what you are trying to do with any "ebook" .... I must be lucky that my old iPad and iBook.app work with .epub just fine.
So tablets don't run eBook reading/rendering software?
That was new to me
Latex and Our Choice (Score:4, Interesting)
Two, look at the Push Pop press technology which published Al Gore's Incontinent Truth, now called Our Choice. Aside from the politics, the technology in the book is everything the post asked for. I am pretty sure it publishes the book as an APP, but as mentioned an ebook is an extremely limited format, especially on a kindle.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
First, it annoys me to now end to have to read a 'science' book published in a word processor. It looks ugly and unprofessional and incompetent. It is just my opinion, and I am not going to embarrass anyone by showing examples, but suffice it to say 25 years ago when MS Words was cool we did not know any better, but now if you are doing a science book, do it in LaTex. It will make updates easier.
Two, look at the Push Pop press technology which published Al Gore's Incontinent Truth, now called Our Choice. Aside from the politics, the technology in the book is everything the post asked for. I am pretty sure it publishes the book as an APP, but as mentioned an ebook is an extremely limited format, especially on a kindle.
It annoys me to no end to read posts with errors like: "... it annoys me to now end", "MS Words" (it's MS Word), "Al Gore's Incontinent Truth" (it's 'An Inconvenient Truth'). Most annoying is getting the capitalization of LaTeX wrong (it's not "LaTex"). It looks ugly and unprofessional and most certainly incompetent.
Re: (Score:1)
25 years ago when MS Word was cool we did not know any better
Speak for yourself. I've been publishing in TeX since about 1985. I have published thousands of pages in TeX (mostly plain TeX with some LaTeX), and some handful of hundreds in MS Word. MS Word has only in the last decade approached what TeX can do and with the same level of polish (although you have to work much harder to achieve it).
There are only two advantages that MS Word currently has: (1) ubiquity, meaning that you can be reasonably certain that your colleague will be able to view your document ap
Re: (Score:3)
but suffice it to say 25 years ago when MS Words was cool we did not know any better, but now if you are doing a science book, do it in LaTex.
Tex was the format of choice 25 years ago, and Word wasn't cool then either.
The kindle is an extremely limited device which simply isn't going to do what he wants regardless of format.
He wants EPUB 3 or iBooks, probably iBooks since its pretty freaking awesome once you get over the shitty side of it being so locked into Apple which means you aren't going to use it since its really worthless outside of Apple :( Damn shame.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
First, it annoys me to now end to have to read a 'science' book published in a word processor. It looks ugly and unprofessional and incompetent.
While I strongly encourage science, technical, and academics to consider using TeX / LaTeX for technical or academic documents, not everyone will. There is a learning requirement, and while in my opinion the productivity gains of dealing with equations in TeX rather than in a word processor (even if it has an equation editor) will normally offset the time to learn such new / different system, not everyone will make same conclusion, even with the modern TeX / LaTeX editors / IDE such as TeXmaker, TeXstudio,
Re: (Score:2)
I love LaTeX, but in several years of using it, I'm yet to discover how to make the text flow if I reduce the window of the viewer size. I can't read a latex generated PDF on an ebook because I have to keep scrolling sideways because the text won't adapt to the screen size.
I'm not an expert on PDF or LaTeX, but as far as I know PDF documents are outputted to a fixed (virtual) page size, and don't do adjustment (reflow or resizing) beyond possibly US Letter to/from A4. PDF documents don't reflow if you rotate them either (i.e. switch from Portrait to Landscape).
Good luck with that! (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) Kindles and (much better) e-books don't do that. You might as well have asked for a flying pogo-stick.
(2) You may be confusing pop-up with box-out or even foot-note. If you want the 'less accomplished' to keep up then you can't do it with pop-ups[1] Instead write two books.
(3) An e-book reader is not a multi-media volcano of goodness. The opposite: A constrained text reader with occasional images and no character.
[Footnote 1] Note that a box-out remains in clear view forever. A pop-up vanishes after first use, so after being shown it isn't there for re-reference. A footnote a diversion for someone with a particular interest.
Re: (Score:2)
You might as well have asked for a flying pogo-stick.
Now that you mention it, I would like one of those....
iBook . (Score:2)
I have an iBook from several years ago of 'Yellow Submarine' (a variation of the movie featuring music of the Beatles). Pretty much every page has sound, animation, text, images ... and I can't remember if it includes extensive reader interaction. These Apple format books probably work on all devices where Kindle works (with the likely exception of proprietary, exclusionary devices).
Assuming that things have improved in 2016, it's probably a better platform now. I hear from creators that iBooks are easy to
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Quite right according to http://www.apple.com/ibooks-au... [apple.com]
Only available for iOS & Mac at the moment.
Sorry to have assumed that, like iTunes, Apple would open the platform.
Contract terms are worth a close look. I've heard vague suggestions that both Apple and Amazon want exclusive access to your work; also that they want to dictate prices on their platform and elsewhere. (You can't sell elsewhere at a lower price...) But again, that is rumor and I can't find time to dig in for actual facts. OTOH, an ope
Re: (Score:1)
iBooks only work on iOS devices. The iBooks application states specifically that you are only to use it to develop books for the iOS platform as well.
But iBooks Author can publish in ePub3 format, and PDF, too, as well as the (much more robust) iBooks format.
Re: (Score:2)
http://venomousporridge.com/po... [venomousporridge.com]
Re: (Score:1)
It appears they updated the EULA afterwards. Before that, it expressly did not permit selling outside Apple platforms. http://venomousporridge.com/po... [venomousporridge.com]
Which would have made some sense when it was iBooks-format only. But now that you can Publish in ePub, it makes just as much sense that they changed that part of the EULA, too, right?
Re: (Score:2)
We have to be specific here. The EULA says that the iBook may not be offered for sale outside Apple's service, which I suspect would be struck down by the first judge that saw it. It says nothing about anything you turned into an eBook using Calibre or similar software. Apple may still be engaging in illegal price-fixing, but that's another issue. It's still disturbing, but it isn't as bad as some have claimed.
Re: (Score:2)
Originally it was not worded to only be iBooks.
Re: (Score:2)
You want to do that on Kindle? Forget it. (Score:2)
Sorry pal, but what you want totally blows the lid off generic e-book specs.
E-Books are a mess as it is - it's difficult enough doing such simple things as getting usable layouts across various readers and devices, despite the whole e-book thing being based on web-technologies. Or should I say 'because'? And it's things like that that should be easy with ebooks.
What you want to do is build an app for tablets and phlablets. There perhaps web technologies are the best way to go - you'd build your mulitmedia '
Multiple WTFs (Score:2, Insightful)
No offense, but your post is a WTF galore. Let us start by the fact that you wrote a scientific book on LibreOffice. You say you are willing to learn programming etc to add some "bells and whistles" and yet you did not seem to want to learn a proper tool for the main part of the work, which is writing the actual book.
Then, you want to add various things to ebooks, when most people like ebooks exactly because they can't do those things. Sure you could have an interactive website come up on an Android tablet
Re: (Score:1)
You're missing that they actually wrote the book. So rather than spending time learning a tool, they actually accomplished their task.
Astonishing, huh?
Creating an eBook (Score:1)
iBooks (Score:2)
I've published an e-book and worked on a 2nd (not yet published). The 2nd one I wanted the same. It should have been more than a book, with bells and whistles as you say.
I used iBooks, which has all these features built-in. I got them to work. Then I pulled most of them out again and made a simple book.
So if you are absolutely sure that the bells and whistles will actually give you something: Most ebook formats are basically HTML and they do support a subset of Javascript. Good luck getting it to run on mor
EPUB3 ... except (Score:2)
The EPUB3 format is just HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, some metadata, and a couple other things I can't remember right now, all packaged up in a .ZIP file with a different file name extension. The spec literally allows ANYTHING you can do on a web site.
Except, no current EPUB readers will handle anything much more than just displaying the text, let alone any kind of persistence. You can do all that you want, and much more. But no one will see it. It's as if the HTML5 standard had been released but the only brow
Can Kindle and/or Nook zoom? (Score:2)
This is off the main topic, but seeing as the Kobo Aura I bought does not have any way to zoom on images, I'd like to consider an alternative product.
The Kobo lets me change font size very easily, but that doesn't affect the pictures. (in either pdf or epub documents)
Re: (Score:1)
Just link to a dedicated website for interactivity (Score:1)
I've done it (somewhat) (Score:1)
I have created Java code that makes image-heavy, interactive ebooks in several formats. It has been quite a learning experience.
Feel free to contact me off-group:
bobswansong "at"
gmail
"""dot"""
com
Re: (Score:2)
But as you already said: that's a markup language. What are you using to render it?