Digital Publishing

Best Sellers and XHTML

OK. So we are (happily) "out of a closet". HBG's David Cramer gave a presentation at BEA 2012 in which IGP:Digital Publisher was mentioned. IGP:Digital Publisher has been used for the comprehensive production of a wide range of best sellers by HBG over the last few years; in multiple print formats and e-book deliverables.

Dave is the HBG digital content guru, and a significant contributor in the IDPF ePub3 spec. He co-authored the fixed layout spec.

HBG is not the only one, but we have to respect NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) when they apply.  Others users include Faber in the UK and Oxford University Press for Online interactive content and audio readers. There are also a number of other quality publishers around the globe who understand the difference map between digital content and format outputs.

SMIL. It's AZARDI 11

AZARDI 11 has been released. This is a major feature upgrade. It can be downloaded from azardi.infogridpacific.com.

AZARDI 11 has significant changes in the reading interface and now matches AZARDI Cloud Reader (aka AZARDI Online). It supports SMIL Audio overlays in ePub3. There is a demonstration SMIL audio ePub3 on the resources page. This is the full  A Christmas Carol  by Charles Dickens, with some interesting highlighting patterns including single word, phrase, sentence and paragraph.

Digital Content at APEX@IGP

One thing I have noticed on my various blogs is that  people looking for digital content answers in 2012 get articles from 2010 and earlier in their search result. These are often dated information.

Blogs are wonderful and a rich source of information. The reason I bother to blog is primarily to address technical issues related to the production of digital content in a way that brings value to anyone who bothers to read it.

It's probably a personality disorder, but I find it relatively hard to maintain serious technical content as a blog entry. By maintain, I mean keep it relevant, updated, corrected and free from irrelevant (opinion) content.

Content of "technical value" will now be maintained and available at apex.infogridpacific.com - APEX@IGP.  Be warned, it is all technical. Don't go there for a laugh. There are none.

The blog remains an opinion and announcement vehicle.

APEX@IGP REQUIRES A HIGHLY STANDARDS COMPLIANT BROWSER. Read the requirements on the home page. Be afraid IE anything users.

The relevant digital content blogs from the past are being moved and updated. They will then be maintained to reflect the state of the digital content game. It is also easier to apply and maintain More advanced CSS and Javascript to better illustrated topics such as interactivity. It will take sometime for the search engines to find all this digital content goodness, but we wait.

I have started with a short set of articles on creating our ePub 3 format packager and the various issues that had to be thought-through and addressed. There are some stubs on other formats and the Information Wing IGP:FoundationXHTML is almost ready to go live.

IDPF EPUB3 Fixed Layout Spec Demo 1

The IDPF announced the Fixed Layout specification on the 15th March 2012. Here it is 17th March 2012 and we are able to have the first IDPF sample fixed layout ePub3 books up for viewing on AZARDI Online.

It was relatively straight-forward to map the IDPF specification to the AZARDI fixed layout method as the match was very close. There are only so many ways fixed layout can be done!

You can view the IDPF samples A Voyage of Life and Page Blanche here on the AZARDI OL demo site.

We have also uploaded the IDPF sample version of Moby Dick with two chapters containing SMIL overlays for those interested in this area of the ePub3 feature list.