tekom-Jahrestagung 2012 - ActiveDoc

Professionelles Schreiben / Technical Authoring
TA 4
Presentation
EPUB3: What does it offer, and is it ready?
Scott Prentice, Leximation, Inc., San Rafael, USA
The EPUB3 specification was approved in October 2011 and there has
been a lot of talk about its features and benefits. However, as with any
new format it can take some time for the tools to catch up. If you’re creating
eBooks, you’ll want to deliver the right format to your customers,
but how do you know what the right format is? Moving ahead too early,
may leave some people unable to use your files, and moving ahead too
late may mean that you’re not taking advantage of new features. This
presentation goes over the new features in EPUB3 and examines the
current state of the readers and authoring tools, to help you decide if it’s
time to move to EPUB3.
Brief History of the EPUBformat
The EPUBspecification is maintained by IDPF (International Digital
Publishing Forum).
−−
Initial EPUBapproved in 2007, superseding the older Open eBook
standard
−−
EPUB2.0.1 approved 2010
−−
EPUB3 approved October 2011
−−
EPUB3 Fixed Layout format approved May 2012
−−
Dictionaries and Indexes Working Groups, in progress
What’s New in EPUB3?
−−
Files now based on HTML5
−−
Ability to embed multimedia (both audio and video)
−−
Media overlays provide ability to “read-along” by syncing audio to the
highlighting of words
−−
Scripting support allows dynamic interaction with the content
−−
Better support for fonts and page layout (MathML, headers/footers,
embedded fonts, CSS2.1/CSS3 support)
−−
Better SVG image support
HTML5 Impact
New HTML5 element replaces the NCX file for TOC navigation.
For fallback to EPUB2, the NCX file can be included. The HTML5
and tags HTML5 elements like , ,
provide useful structured for books. As with EPUB2, all content
and packaging files are XML (XHTML5).
CSS2.1 and CSS3
Supports CSS2.1 except fixed positioning (avoids rendering and interoperability
issues). Also bidirectional font support should use HTML5
markup rather than CSSproperties. Use of absolute positioning is discouraged,
and may not be consistently supported by readers.
CSS3 support includes the Speech, Fonts (embedding and obfuscation),
Text (hyphenation, line and word breaks, alignment, and emphasis),
and Writing Modes (except bidi, which is handled with HTML5), Media
tekom-Jahrestagung 2012
391