Earlier quoted context omitted.
The downside of that is screenreaders can't read them out.
Alt texts are a thing on epubs. I would hope Amazon's format can do them as well.
Problem solved!
Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
41–50 of 137 posts
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#42The fact that it's a book about typography may mean the requirements are a little different, because I personally (and likely many others) don't really pay attention to such things.
First half of my career was at a company writing pagination systems for books/magazines and so I can now never not notice such things as widows, orphans, kerning...
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to notice an improper keming and he would curse you for the eternity.
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#43If you think it's bad that `break-*` isn't supported in Firefox or Chrome, wait till you see what your ebook looks like in Kindle, or worse, ADE-based readers, of which there are still many in use! Kindle, the reading device with by far the largest market share, is basically the IE6 of ereaders - too big to ignore, and at the same time dragging down the entire ebook ecosystem with its crappy renderer. Amazon has show…
You can ship an ebook as a pdf file! Then no rendering problems.
You can't, at least on Amazon. Amazon is the largest ebook market; no pdf's allowed.
You could use Gumroad or sell from your own site, but these are not attractive alternatives.
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
But no reflow.
True, but if you're reading a book with equations in it, it is probably a textbook and textbooks are suited to large page, not pocketbook pages. You'd want a full size ereader anyway. Leave the pocketbook size ereaders for the pocketbooks.
Equations should render on A5 paper, you don't need A4/letter. And many here advocate for paper, 6x9 or 5x8 should handle equations easily.
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#45Maybe the reason we're still stuck with LaTeX and PDFs because ebook software can't be bothered to implement decent typesetting.
PDF's are size agnostic, by the way. We think of them as being restricted to A4 or letter paper, but you can generate a pdf of almost any size.
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#46Pragmatism wins out of waiting for css properties to get implemented, and div display inline block works today in epubs and doesn't need to be backported to iBooks. https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/how-can-i-pr...
I thought Div as well, but as a BLOCK element containing the Heading line AND the first paragraph to ensure they're rendered on the same page, or at least start on one and then overflow.
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#47If I was designing an ebook reader, the display would look like a book's display. None of the ereaders I know of do this. 1. Have a background image that looks like paper. No, a solid white or tan background doesn't look like paper. Paper has imperfections in it, dirt, a grain, and you can faintly see the other side of the page. Except for the latter, this is easy to achieve. Simply scan a bunch of blank pages, and u…
To be honest I don't know what ereader you've looked at or what books you read. The way eink works, if you look closely there is a slight grain very reminiscent of paper. Similarly, the font/letters can have small imperfections as well, and it all looks just like a new book might.
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The problem is CSS doesn't support the lh unit yet so the problem is that ebooks css does not support what you expect a slightly out of date browser to support, and almost each ebook renderer has its own problems. Think html email sized problems.
Email rendering is a great analogy.
I wonder if there's some sort of acid tests for eBook readers.
There should be some sort of acid test as well for email readers, of course.
But, IMO, all of them should be limited to avoid JS use (think of how well some sites are capable of rendering without JS [0])
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#49Not to mention the ugly/unusable rendering of mathematical formulate in ebooks on my Kindle, which is gatherig dust. Layouting is an art and a craft, and the fact that it's automated by people who lack the specialized knowledge, or for whom it is not a priority (quarter century old bug reports, really?) suggests that in 2025, you should still avoid ebooks if you care about quality and aesthetics. This is a shame beca…
You could include the formulae as jpg's, not html.
Doesn't work well with theming.
Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)
#50If you think it's bad that `break-*` isn't supported in Firefox or Chrome, wait till you see what your ebook looks like in Kindle, or worse, ADE-based readers, of which there are still many in use! Kindle, the reading device with by far the largest market share, is basically the IE6 of ereaders - too big to ignore, and at the same time dragging down the entire ebook ecosystem with its crappy renderer. Amazon has show…
I don't rate Kobo's renderer very highly. When the user turns on justifying body text, the device ends up justifying everything , including headings, and it just looks awkward.
You are not rating the renderer but ux decisions made by the Kobo reader devs.