d.p. releases first public draft of document on html "best" practices
since nobody else seems to want to mention it... d.p. finally released the first public draft of its long-awaited position on html "best" practices. (read the thread to see why "best" is in quotes.)
since its release has been anticipated for so long, it strikes me as being just a touch underwhelming. but maybe there's more substance there than i see. -bowerbird
Well, just a quick scan shows that predictably, though I have been telling them for years, they follow Marcello's lead in getting "@media handheld" exactly wrong. Ebook readers, including epub and mobi ebook readers are NOT "@media handheld" devices because the epub standards committee has declared that these devices are NOT "@media handheld" devices, rather only tinier and weaker devices such as early PDAs [think "Plucker"] are "@media handheld" devices. And in fact "@media handheld" is not something that epub standard devices respond to. So this is another example of PG/DP implementing something which is deliberately broken in order to assure that volunteers are writing something which is gratuitously incompatible with the rest of the world. From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Bowerbird@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 1:07 PM To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org; bowerbird@aol.com Subject: [gutvol-d] d.p. releases first public draft of document on html "best" practices since nobody else seems to want to mention it... d.p. finally released the first public draft of its long-awaited position on html "best" practices. (read the thread to see why "best" is in quotes.)
since its release has been anticipated for so long, it strikes me as being just a touch underwhelming. but maybe there's more substance there than i see. -bowerbird
On 10/31/2012 6:01 PM, James Adcock wrote:
Well, just a quick scan shows that predictably, though I have been telling them for years, they follow Marcello's lead in getting "@media handheld" exactly wrong.
Ebook readers, including epub and mobi ebook readers are NOT "@media handheld" devices because the epub standards committee has declared that these devices are NOT "@media handheld" devices, rather only tinier and weaker devices such as early PDAs [think "Plucker"] are "@media handheld" devices. And in fact "@media handheld" is not something that epub standard devices respond to.
So this is another example of PG/DP implementing something which is deliberately broken in order to assure that volunteers are writing something which is gratuitously incompatible with the rest of the world.
But it is *not* broken in PG-produced epub/mobi/etc., James. It might be considered broken, I suppose, if someone were to take PG HTML and run their own conversion on it, in ignorance of PG's approach. Or if they were to take PG HTML and use it directly in an ebook reader. But if they take our epub output they'll be just fine, because our epub output won't say "@media handheld" once epubmaker gets done with it. And if they are running their own conversions of PG books they should do so with some knowledge of what they look like. -- Walt
It might be considered broken, I suppose, if someone were to take PG HTML and run their own conversion on it, in ignorance of PG's approach. Or if they were to take PG HTML and use it directly in an ebook reader.
The HTML exists, the HTML is being distributed, and the "@media handheld" declarations inside them are exactly wrong. Marcello could have correctly followed the lead of other vendors and invented a PG-specific @media, such as say "@media pg-ebook" and epubmaker would have worked just as well, and then PG/DP would not be stomping all over the standards the rest of the world has defined. Even today it would be better now to switch over to such a pg-specific @media designation rather than continuing to propagate a mistake. It is not the rest of the world which is being ignorant of PG's approach. Rather, it is PG who is being ignorant of the rest of the world's approach. PG is the flea on the tail of the dog. The HTML, EPUB and the MOBI world is the huge dog, and PG is the tiny flea.
participants (3)
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Bowerbird＠aol.com -
James Adcock -
Walt Farrell