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Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

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Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#41

Post by cosmojg »

chrismorgan wrote: post #35
projektfu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked through fully to make sure it has no ill effects, but if you add to the css on p: text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-word; you should get what you're looking for. At least it worked in Firefox inspector.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone suggest setting text-justify. It’s one of those properties that I could imagine having been used in anger and with cause (justifiedly :P) less than a hundred times in total , though the true number is probably higher than that. Anyway, in this case it won’t change anything, because the text is English, and the default value of auto will be equivalent to inter-word. (If the text was J…

Are there any implementations of Knuth-Plass line breaking in HTML or CSS libraries? Maybe in a static site generator?

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#42

Post by mpetroff »

cosmojg wrote: post #41
chrismorgan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone suggest setting text-justify. It’s one of those properties that I could imagine having been used in anger and with cause (justifiedly :P) less than a hundred times in total , though the true number is probably higher than that. Anyway, in this case it won’t change anything, because the text is English, and the default value of auto will be equivalent to inter-word. (If the text was J…

Are there any implementations of Knuth-Plass line breaking in HTML or CSS libraries? Maybe in a static site generator?

It's possible, but the markup is very, very messy. I made a proof-of-concept by hand a couple months ago [1], but it would require quite a bit more work to automate it. It's probably best to just wait for browsers to implement CSS Text Module Level 4, which includes a property for enabling use of better line breaking algorithms.

[1] https://mpetroff.net/files/pre-calculated-line-breaks-demo/

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#43

Post by [deleted] »

jm_l wrote: post #32

I did something similar using Github pages (no serverside stuff needed) for an e-zine I recently published. Hopefully removing the server-side component makes it easier for other creators: The zine is here: https://jminjie.github.io/zine/ And you can see the repo here https://github.com/jminjie/zine

[deleted]

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#44

Post by tqi »

stevensawtelle wrote: post #40
heydenberk wrote: post #39

The author (of both the book in the demo and this software itself) is Robin Sloan. He publishes a couple email newsletters, all of which I recommend. Most recently he's been writing a development diary for a video game he's working on[0]. He published a handful of GPT-2 generated city descriptions based on a corpus of fantasy literature that was a lot of fun[1]. There's great content about the illustration style as w…

It's a seriously cool feeling to see worlds collide like this. The first half of his book Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is one of my favorite reads, but I had no idea he was actively programming as well (although it totally makes sense in retrospect).

I also really enjoyed Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Looking back on it now I felt like it captured a more hopeful / innocent time in the way it technology and the ways it has changed our modern society.

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#45

Post by Wowfunhappy »

greatgib wrote: post #10

The work is nicely done. But each time I see a website presenting a book content or catalog in pages like that, like if it was a real book, it really pisses me off. It is a design move that goes against ergonomy. Harder/slower to browser, harder/slower to seek, you have to do a mental break while pages are changing with effect that does not get the same efficiency feeling than a real book.

There's something about this format that makes it significantly easier for me to read.

On the web, my default is to skim. Actually reading a longform piece—line by line through every paragraph—is very hard.

Putting it in a "book" format doesn't completely solve the problem—I think some of it is due to the lower contrast of a screen versus paper or e-ink—but it definitely helps.

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#46

Post by smichel17 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #30
wenc wrote: post #11

Just had some feedback about the demo: I noticed chapter headings were being underlined (anchor links). I wonder if I might persuade the layout editor that the aesthetics would be improved if the underlining was removed? Underlining is a holdover from the days of typewriters, and considered unaesthetic in professional typesetting [1, 2]. It's really only done in scripts, manuscripts and other non-published documents.…

I agree with almost all of the content of Practical Typography. But “stop underlining links on the web” is the point I disagree the most violently with. Removing link underlines is user-hostile. There’s a large body of research to that effect: underlined blue text means a link, not-underlined text in a colour different from the surrounding text… might be a link? But many will miss it. “Are un­der­lined links dead? Ma…

How do you feel about underline on hover, as a compromise between aesthetics and functionality? Eg, https://sdproto.gitlab.io/

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#47

Post by chrisfinazzo »

This is nice, but I'd still like to find a no frills, to-the-point explainer on how to assemble an epub from standard tools. After all, it's really just a zip archive with a couple directories and some specially named files.

All of the tutorials I find are either woefully out of date - usually they can't create valid EPUB3 content, require stupid software like Java due to epubcheck, or just punt the whole issue to something like Calibre, Sigil, or worse, InDesign.

Have no actual, working programmers - save for John Siracusa - ever seen an epub file?

/rant

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#48

Post by harshreality »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #47

This is nice, but I'd still like to find a no frills, to-the-point explainer on how to assemble an epub from standard tools. After all, it's really just a zip archive with a couple directories and some specially named files. All of the tutorials I find are either woefully out of date - usually they can't create valid EPUB3 content, require stupid software like Java due to epubcheck, or just punt the whole issue to so…

Create an empty epub in calibre or vellum or any other editor that will create epubs for you; then unzip it and edit it raw.

You can do the same thing with a professionally published epub.

In either case, you can rip out the metadata files (opf, ncx, etc.) and create templates from them, which you can reuse in your own projects without beginning in an epub editor or generator.

You still probably want to run an epub through checking before you publish it, to make sure the metadata is consistent with the contents, and that you're not violating epub[23] rules (unless you know the standard perfectly as it applies to to subset you're using, and you never make any mistakes), but you don't have to be using any bloated tooling during the main phase of writing and editing the book.

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#49

Post by stan_rogers »

smichel17 wrote: post #46
chrismorgan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with almost all of the content of Practical Typography. But “stop underlining links on the web” is the point I disagree the most violently with. Removing link underlines is user-hostile. There’s a large body of research to that effect: underlined blue text means a link, not-underlined text in a colour different from the surrounding text… might be a link? But many will miss it. “Are un­der­lined links dead? Ma…

How do you feel about underline on hover, as a compromise between aesthetics and functionality? Eg, https://sdproto.gitlab.io/

It's great if you hover, otherwise it isn't obviously a link. It's not a whole lot better than good ol' '90s mystery meat navigation.

Re: Perfect Edition: A lightweight, responsive web e-book template

#50

Post by tyingq »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #47

This is nice, but I'd still like to find a no frills, to-the-point explainer on how to assemble an epub from standard tools. After all, it's really just a zip archive with a couple directories and some specially named files. All of the tutorials I find are either woefully out of date - usually they can't create valid EPUB3 content, require stupid software like Java due to epubcheck, or just punt the whole issue to so…

Maybe more basic than you want, but this looks helpful to me: https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/1183/what-is-the-...
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