On 01/27/2011 05:44 PM, Robert Gibbins wrote:
2. Using the XML TOC (the .ncx file) works but it takes 3-5 seconds to open, which makes this unacceptable as a navigational tool.
This is a known bug for Sony. They are too dumb to cache the TOC. It opens instantaneously everywhere else.
- The front matter isn't always broken into pages correctly (I think, as I don't have the originals).
The frontmatter, like everything eles, is broken where the producer puts pagebreaks.
I think the interesting question here is whether the layout problems are artifacts of the html/epub generator(s), in which case they can presumably be fixed if other people agree with me, or whether they come from eccentricities of the encoding in rst format by the transcriber.
Font sizes are specified in the CSS. But I'd prefer *not* to have a discussion about things that are a matter of personal taste.
4. I haven't yet found any block quotes in any of the books. I'm thinking of, for example, poems or, more frequently, letters which Victorian novelists often put into their text. These typically feature smaller fonts and right-justified text (for letter heads, closing compiments, signatures, etc). It would be reassuring to see that rst can deal with those.
RTFM: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html
5. Having looked at the html in the epub file I find it somewhat harder to read than that in older epubs or html files. Mainly, I think, because it's the product of a generator not a human. If PG goes the rst route I fear we might be at the start of a slippery slope which ends in the rst becoming the only format that can be understood by humans.
RST is much more human-readable than HTML because it is designed to be human-readable. The generated HTML is much more correct than the HTML you find in run-of-the-mill PG books. If you want the HTML to be pretty, you can format it with tidy. I don't believe your ereader will care, except that all the whitespace will eat up its scarce memory.
BTW Is there anywhere on the PG site I could put one or two of my hand-crafted epubs for readers of this forum to look at. I don't run my own web site, but as I seem to be slowly coming to the conclusion that hand-crafted epubs using a standard subset of html are the most practical answer, particularly for the thousands and thousands of great books that are already in the PG archive, I suppose I should be prepared to expose some examples for criticism.
Not on the PG site but Greg Newby can provide you with webspace if you need it. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org