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.

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.

ePub 2, ePub 3+2, ePub 3 Test Books

We have posted some ePub samples on the AZARDI resource page to enable publishers to possibly understand and evaluate the various transition issues when making decisions about when to move to ePub 3, and how.

The samples include four Gutenberg books processed as ePub2, ePub3+2 (transitional) and ePub3 directly out of IGP:Digital Publisher. I could have added a KF8 mobi as well but that would have been showing off, and AZARDI doesn't like them.

The most interesting issue with these ePub variants is how they work on various readers - the reason for this evaluation set. It helps to set a baseline of understanding the issues.

Cover treatment is probably the biggest issue, but ePub 3  also has a cute little landmarks section that will only be seen in AZARDI right now.

AZARDI 8 Released

AZARDI 8 is now available at azardi.infogridpacific.com. This is the first release with auto updating. Mac and Linux will silently update. For those with AZARDI 7, Windows 7 may ask for permission and show an unsigned/unknown publisher box.

This is a relatively low-key upgrade. We have a lot more features planned for the next release based on requests and recommendations from users, and to address the demands of digital content.

Digital Content in 2012

The current fascination with Javascript and CSS, the encapsulated formats of PDF and ePub, and other distractions, blinds many to the value and need of consistent, reliable, highly controlled XHTML and the serious foundation business strategy needed for digital content ownership... regardless of content genre.

I read a laughable comment about how we produced EPUB3 UNLEASHED. "The market will wait until Adobe comes out with the tools". That is the joke. Sure they will have tools that will be able to produce something like EPUB UNLEASHED. But not with a controlled XHTML foundation and in two days, with  two production "resources" in India. The cost of producing EPUB3 UNLEASHED... around INR 5000 or US$100.

ePub 3. Around the World in 28 Languages

Reader devices for ePub have had a strong English orientation. This has been addressed with ePub 3, but of course it needs to be easier. This test book has 28 languages from around the world including alphabet, script, logograph and all the other "too hard" languages.

It is available from the AZARDI resource site for those who are interested in language in general or perhaps a specific language.

For those interested in the page sequence, it follows the sun. Starting at the International Dateline in New Zealand with Maori, and moving with the sun more or less with lines of longitude. An alphabetic listing may have been more useful, but then that would have been alphabetic in English and missed the point.

EPUB3 UNLEASHED Available

We uploaded an informational demonstration book to the AZARDI download location today. EPUB3 UNLEASHED is a highly interactive ePub3. The book is pure HTML5, CSS3, SVG, MathML and Javascript.

AZARDI is designed for the controlled channel delivery of  interactive content. It is optimized for specialist vertical channel content rather than being "just another reader".  This demonstration starts to demonstrate what is possible.

You can download EPUB3 UNLEASHED and AZARDI 7 here.

One of the motivations for producing this was to show that the core technologies can deliver a lot more than anything that is in the market at present, and it can do it easily and cost effectively. The IGP:FoundationXHTML that is packaged into an ePub3 here can also be delivered as a Web Site and WebApp (with the exception that Android doesn't handle SVG!)

FX4. F4-Headings

 The IGP:FoundationXHTML series continues. I am skipping F3-Inline content here and moving straight to F4 Headings. The reason for this is that Inline or phrasing content is big, scary, detailed and consists of many, many parts that move in many directions for any coherent XML strategy. Inline content encourages oxymorons like massively small. 

Phrasing/inline content is for the XML hard-core. It encapsulates XML to support links, generated content, generated links, processed content, semantic terms, index insertion points, metadata and of course styles like drop-caps, italics and bold text to name just a few.

So without any more waffle...headings!

FX3. F2-Bodytext

This post continues the FX series and deals primarily with paragraphs that are in the primary IGP:FoundationXHTML (FX) galley-rw flow. It also provides a list of standard descriptive paragraphs that can be found in the primary content flow, or may be found in inserted block structures.

At the risk of being shot down by huge intellectual linguistic experts, I have to say paragraphs are pretty much the most important identifiable unit of taggable content that brings sense to text (except I really do like lists too). Everything else hangs off or is inserted between the paragraphs. We really like paragraphs as XML content containers and work them very, very hard in FX.

FX2-F1 The Galley

Central to any XML strategy is the root element. Because IGP:FoundationXHTML (FX) is very concerned about format generation, reuse, remixing and future value it does not use a document genre as the root element, instead it uses a content flow container.

FX uses <div class="galley-rw"> as the primary content container. Galley best defines the content as a single continuous flow that is only interrupted or enhanced by the nature of the presentation format properties when they are generated or applied. (eg. Pagination in a PDF, chapters or topics in an online format, link jumps, etc., editing tool assistants in a production environment.)