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.

AZARDI 8.1 Released

An update has been released for AZARDI. This is a small feature upgrade and bugfix release. The full version is available from the AZARDI site. If you have AZARDI 7 or 8 installed this will update automatically next time you open the reader.

We have also included a 64bit deb package version for Linux in this release.

The new features are:

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.

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.)

FX2. F0 Document Sections

This post continues the discussion on using XHTML for a high-value publisher digital content strategy and how we use IGP:FoundationXHTML (FX) to create valuable, sustainable, digital content strategies for publishers. The previous post outlined the FX content classification scheme used to control the XML grammar and tagging patterns for various content types.

Sections are classified as F0 (zero) in FX. Sections are probably the most important XML structure in the digital content universe where freedom from the bookbinders glue is easy and instant. Across all publisher content of all types, including the internet, sections are the highest visibility, valuable semantic unit of content.

Understanding FX1 - Content Organization Overview

 

Critical to any XML strategy is control of the tagging vocabularies and how and where they are used. IGP:FoundationXHTML (FX) is strictly classified more or less in consonance with the primary XHTML content type deconstruction; but is refined to address publishing specific structures as well as boring ol' web structures.

FX has no root document type tag such as book, article, play, etc. The document type or genre is handled by metadata for any particular assembly of content. The reason for this is content reuse doesn't need the overhead of if/how/when; a book section can be mixed with a learning module or with how-to topic.

With document type relegated to metadata, the most important structural components become sections in all their interesting glory. For primary content reuse, the section is the most dominant semantic unit of content. This post outlines the primary FX classification structures and we will go into each one in more detail in follow-up posts.

Introduction to IGP:FoundationXHTML

This blog assumes you are interested in using XHTML and CSS as your core digital content long-term XML strategy. If not, stop reading. It is long and detailed.

Before getting into the details of an XHTML strategy for valuable publisher content in later blogs, here I review the relative strengths and weaknesses of XHTML as the primary XML storage method for your content's future. We need to be able to play against the stengths, negate the weaknesses, and develop a sustainable controlled XML that delivers immediate and future value.