jeroen said:
I know my ePubs are far from perfect, as, since I am unable to submit them to PG, I lack some motivation to improve them.
your desire to try to improve them is commendable...
I've only been able to test them on PC based readers, which are in general far more forgiving than the small devices they are meant to go on.
they are often "more forgiving", yes, but the real issue is that the chips in our hand-held machines are weak... a lot of hacking is being done in the reader-programs to offset the major lack of power in those hand-helds.
I normally use Calibre to read, now have also installed nook for PC and ADE.
none of the people who make e-books for a living will have anything to do with calibre, not even to just "read". nook for p.c. is also quite squirrely, and sadly, so is a.d.e. (if it weren't for its d.r.m. lock-in which locks in libraries, a.d.e. would have no customers at all; readers hate a.d.e.) there is really only one .epub platform that matters at all, at least at this time, and that's apple. so you need to test on an ipad. i recall you dissing apple, as proprietary, and i understand that. but if you wanna go where people are... the other thing that most people would have to think about is whether their .epub converts nicely to .mobi by kindlegen. because kindle is where the vast majority of people are now. and if you're gonna feed your .epub to kindlegen, then you will also need to factor that fact into your work-flow as well. but since you're working from a master-file, you should not chain your conversions. instead, write mobi-friendly .html. and feed _that_ to kindlegen. separate it totally from .epub. that will also allow you to generate another version for kf8. don't listen to anyone who tells you that kf8 is just like .epub. to put it bluntly, they do not know what they're talking about. .epub has an .xhtml base, whereas kf8 jumped up to .html5. (people will tell you .epub3 does .html5; don't believe them.)
I have regenerated the file with some fixes you suggest, and re-uploaded to the same location.
a word of warning, just so you know. the state of .epub uniformity is shockingly bad. what "works" on one platform might not work on another one. at some point, you need to shrug it off when something "fails". as long as the file, as a whole, works on _one_ platform, then you've done about all you can be expected to do. seriously... (and, as i said up above, the platform to shoot for is apple's.) each of the viewer-applications -- every single one of 'em -- supports only a subset of c.s.s., and sometimes a small one, so any expectations you might have that something will work -- or "should" work, or whatever -- will need to be _verified_. so don't even bother trying to get _everything_ right, because it's just not possible at this time. and you should be told that. (but again, don't use a.d.e. as a guide, because it's the worst.)
Doesn't reproduce for me on any of the PC based readers. Probably has to do with the width of the table.
whether something works on a pc-based reader means nothing.
(but that is really a task of the rendering device, I can only add hyphenation hints...)
expectations any hand-held viewer-app will handle _anything_ are not well-founded. so you do yourself no favor by trying to shift responsibility to them. they will not honor your to-do list. so if you don't want to -- or cannot -- handle a thing yourself, you need to just tell people "sorry, you cannot have that now"... similarly, it does no good to say "i'm following the specification", since the viewer-apps don't give a tinker's damn about the spec. i know this is not what people would like to hear. but it's true.
Again, I do not observe this with the browsers I use to test.
and again, you can't use a browser to test out your e-books... i know, i know, the format wonks tell you that "it's just .html", which leads you to believe that if the .html works "someplace", it should work _anyplace_, including in an e-book viewer-app, but the fact is that that does not accord with our reality today. it would be very nice if you could use a browser to test stuff. but you can't. so don't even try. you will be fooling yourself.
This must be an issue with devices.
ok, so i'll say it one more time. if you really want to care about what your e-books look like, you can't use this dodge. better just to say "ok, i don't care." -bowerbird