A Class ePub

By John Brewer

A slim volume, quite densely-packed with detail and examples of crafting an ePub for many eReaders, using open-source software, as concise and as complete as possible with examples with the aim to produce eBooks that presented as well on e-Reader screens as the most well-produced paper-based books. This book caters for people of a range of skills from using a word-processor to building skills to create an ePub in xhtml and css to a high standard. Priced similarly to donation-ware, this ePub comes without DRM to encourage the reader to learn by disassembly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Brewer
• Release date: Jan 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370592340

Book preview

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all whose shoulders I stood on (sorry about my boots)

Intro to ePub

Some introductory aspects of ePub

Preparing the Content

Section 1 Open Office with style

Open Office to ePub

Section 2 Creating ePub in Open Office and in Calibre

Going Further with Sigil

Section 3 Investigating the code of Section 2

Create ePub in Sigil

Section 4 Putting the content from Section 1 into Sigil

Style Samples

Templates using styles found on the web

Appendix 1 of 5

The following topics:

The ePub format

The files and nature of files in ePub

From pdf to ePub

How to get text wrapping after converting

Text Editors

What are they and what can you do with them.

Word wrap

A definition and practical examples

Appendix 2 of 5

A resource section on xhtml and css

xhtml

Understanding xhtml

css

Understanding css

Descendants

Inheritance in xhtml and css

Hypertext Links

Making connections between parts of an ePub

Units of Measure

Absolute and relative units

Fonts

What font, size, style and weight

Various glyphs

Special characters and spaces

Text

Indents, alignment and justification

line-height

Vertical spacing of text for readability

list-style

Bulleted, numbered lists and definitions

Tables

Containers for tabular data

Box Model

Margins, borders and padding

Document Flow

Wrapping text around images

Paged Media

Margins and page breaks

Appendix 3 of 5

Color and shades of gray

Appendix 4 of 5

How html behaves without css

Appendix 5 of 5-Layout

css for layouts, producing pdf and web pages

Addendum

Licences and permissions

aClass ePub

John Brewer

Acknowledgements

Beginnings and folks

met along the way.

Many thanks to those who shared.

As I began to research this area, I scoured the internet for information and found very many people who were passionate about presentation in ePub and, while I feel thankful that there is a host of kind people willing to share their information, I never came across a concise explanation of how to create an ePub that looked beautiful and did come across people on fora asking if a guide or templates existed.

When I learn something I take any information available and try it out and add to it where possible. As I go, I take notes as a reference and, in this case, I took notes in ePub format as a live experiment then, with some trepidation, I thought I should release these notes for others and my writing became more reader-centric. These are those notes which I hope go towards a concise guide including templates.

My trepidation was due to the very real possibility that, in presenting information I had gained through research, I may offend those people who freely gave it. If you are reading this ePub, I finally made the decision to release it – with my heartfelt thanks to all who shared their knowledge – and my most sincere apologies if I have not credited each individual or organisation whose methods I include or if I have made poor use of your information.

Around the time I was preparing to write this ePub, I was volunteering at an organisation converting local oral histories from tape and print to be available on CD and read on-screen. The task I took on both there and here was to produce an on-screen reading experience that was effortless and attractive for the majority. For oral history, the choice of format was pdf as pdf readers are common. For eBooks, the ePub format was the logical choice as it is an open format. As a retired volunteer, my research into readability included only that information freely available on the Internet, and the goal of this research was into what made on-screen reading easy and attractive for all, for children, older adults and dyslexics. 

This research suggested: Font-size was critical for some groups, but this was not a problem for ePub as eReaders allow changes in font-size. Line-length was a factor that influences readability but one controllable by font-size. Inter-line spacing was another factor for which eReaders allow adjustment. Italics were found to be a problem for dyslexics and to be used sparingly. The thick and thin strokes of serif fonts were reported to make reading less tiring, but dyslexics, and emergency workers, found sans-serif fonts (neo-grotesque) more accurately recognisable. So one choice to make was of the font and that, for both contexts, I had already made.

Fontin ticked all the boxes: It has a mixture of thick and thin strokes, making reading less tiring; miniscule serifs, so it straddled the serif-sans divide, in which bd and pq are not mirror-images; and had good differentiation between Il1 (Capital I – as in Italy, l as in letter and the digit 1). The font Fertigo Pro could also be considered for the same reasons. You really should momentarily select a much larger font size than your normal to take a closer look at the calligraphic quality of these two fonts for they are delicious to a person who appreciates softness, flow and understated excellence. Fontin also has SmallCaps, a font I usually don't have and thoroughly appreciate; thank you Jos. The EULA and permission for fonts are in the Addendum. 

The people who produce such marvellous open-source software which I use, and propose you use, certainly need to be thanked: The Open Office community, Luca Calcinai who writes extensions for Open Office (Writer2Epub and MyTXTCleaner), Alexander Davidson for Metapad, the Notepad++ community, Kovid Goyal for Calibre, John Schember and team for Sigil, Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis and the GIMP Development Team and the Inkscape team.

Kobo needs mention because its Mini seems to fit my idea of an unobtrusive eReader but I wish technical information was more abundant. I had a 'senior moment' last week and washed my phone in my jacket pocket. After drying out, the HTC Legend, amazingly, did work but the screen wasn't sufficiently responsive so I bought an 7" Asus Fonepad as a replacement phone and, with the suplied software, found it formatted my ePub almost faultlessly. It also showed me some areas (images) to edit, which I have done. So a little reporting on ePubs in Asus is in order.

And, not least, are the people who give information on the web such as the standards people, the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), W3Schools, DevOpera – which has been donated to W3C web education community group but great to read in their original form, International Digital Publishing Forum. The brilliant contributions of the people in the fora on MobileRead and MobileRead Wiki, where xhtml and ePub problems are answered, and the traits and character handling of eReaders is investigated, providing vital information manufacturers seem reluctant to publish. And information I noted on the web from Rufus Deuchler, fivesimplesteps, Piotr Kowalczyk, Jon Jackson, Jennifer Kyrnin, Mark Newhouse Dan Shafer and Allan Haley – hopefully you're all covered.

Special mention must go to my wife who never criticised the time I spent, reclusive and hermit-like.

hope it meets with your expectations,

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aClass ePub

John Brewer

Intro to ePub

A look over the terrain

we plan to master.

Many thanks to those who shared.