iBooks now supports an extension to EPUB that allows publishers to create books with precise layout using CSS. This is Apple’s own extension, not part of the EPUB specification itself (and not one that they suggested be included in EPUB3).
The goal of this post is to simply document the extension and show how to create [...]
I haven’t been checking each incremental release so it’s possible this landed earlier, but the current version of Apple Pages has improved the semantics of their EPUB export.
The original template now produces <p> elements instead of <div>s, an important update:
<h1 class="s7">Introduction to ePub</h1>
<p class="s6">This document will show you how to use paragraph styles to create [...]
Following my post Developing an EPUB Linking specification a couple of months ago, a subset of the EPUB3 Working Group formed and has been actively researching and discussing the problem of EPUB to EPUB linking and EPUB identifiers in general. Based on feedback from others inside and outside that group, I’ve decided that many aspects [...]
epubcheck is a valuable tool for anyone working with EPUB documents. Many beginners choose to start using it via the online validator at http://threepress.org/document/epub-validate, but it’s a mistake to use that too often. More explicitly:
If you’re making more than 3 EPUBs this year, you must setup epubcheck on your computer
Why setup epubcheck locally? If you [...]
Edited 3:15pm: Though the current epubcheck considers the sample below to be valid, the approach described in this post is likely not strictly valid according to EPUB 2.0.1. The XHTML TOC is not necessarily meant to be part of the EPUB publication as it is for Kindle consumption only, but it is included in the [...]
There’s starting to be a wonderful consequence to the growing excitement about ebooks in the wider world: we now have the ideas, people, technology, and commercial incentive to finally start to solve some of the tricky and tempting issues facing digital reading. But many of those solutions depend on a fundamental piece of the architecture [...]
This was my first year at TOC Frankfurt and the Frankfurt Book Fair, and I had a fantastic, sleep-challenged time. O’Reilly Media was kind enough to invite me to speak at TOC about the current work on EPUB3 as it relates to HTML5 and other technologies.
Slides from EPUB Evolutions are posted but it may be [...]
Covers are in the spotlight for the two updates we’ve just released for Ibis Reader. The first adds small versions of the covers to your web library:
In hindsight, this was an update we should have implemented ages ago, as it makes the library so much more attractive and usable. You should see a cover image [...]
Apple’s iBookstore requirement that all files in the .epub must be listed in the OPF manifest has caused a lot of headaches for content producers. There’s no such requirement in the actual EPUB 2.0 specification, and therefore no test for this condition has been in epubcheck.
However, the vast majority of cases where this [...]
Version 1.76.0 of the open source DocBook-XSL stylesheets, which convert DocBook documents into a variety of outputs including PDF, HTML, and EPUB, has just been released into the wild for testing. It includes a number of EPUB enhancements and bugfixes that we’ve contributed over the last year, so we’d love to have your feedback.
DocBook-XSL uses [...]