In XHTML, there are “links”… and we use them. If you work in a new medium, you use the tools that are designed into it. If all you want to do is force the new medium to act like the old one… maybe you shouldn’t be using the new medium after all…

In fact, I did read the article. And I stand by my statement that the entities you list can be created in HTML… they will simply have to take another form that is more suited to HTML. If you insist on putting footnotes, endnotes, etc, etc, in the same places you would on a printed page… then just print it. Digital is different… it’s time to do things differently.

People have been publishing utilities to clean up MS Word “HTML” for ten years and nothing has worked. MS Word will not produce usable HTML.

Yes, the Word “cleaning utilities all suck. But doing a surface copy of Word text and pasting it into a design-based HTML app like Dreamweaver strips out all of the Word garbage and creates compliant HTML. I use it for all my novels, and I can accomplish the whole thing in less than 30 minutes. As far as I know, this can be done with any word processing program… yes, most people use Word (including myself), but there are other options.

Give that a try sometime. People have been publishing utilities to clean up MS Word “HTML” for ten years and nothing has worked. MS Word will not produce usable HTML.

No, but it only takes about 15 minutes strip it by hand if you have a routine in place for it, especially for things like ligatures, em dashes, curly quotes, small caps, and other things that are problematic. Lots of find-and-replace and you have to know what you’re looking for, but still.

Yeah, it’s a hassle. I’ve never used a cleaner because the one that was recommended to me was $99 & didn’t want to spend the money.

Footnotes, endnotes, sidebars, and callouts, to name a few, are not relics of a bygone past but legitimate entities that need their own structures.[...]HTML doesn’t[...]

I don’t think they should. IMO, in an ebook, footnotes and endnotes are worthless because there are no page numbers. Reciprocal hyperlinks serve for that function. Sidebars and callouts can be handled with blockquotes.

YES, it’s rudimentary, but trying to get HTML to render an ebook “page” (aka position) like a print page is not the point. The point is to treat the ebook like its own thing and work within its limitations.

Also, until the big pubs start correcting their ebooks for basic problems like…editing…some of these formatting discussions are way ahead of the game. People who read ebooks want content but they want it clean and they’re not even getting that much consideration.

I like these ideas, Joe, I do. But I *really* think that there are some devices you just can’t CSS your way around. They don’t honor much of anything, and even then, not even the rudiments. I’m looking at YOU, Kindle.

I don’t see the problem with existing HTML that Clark obviously does. The “structural deficiencies” he cites are largely elements created for the print era

Footnotes, endnotes, sidebars, and callouts, to name a few, are not relics of a bygone past but legitimate entities that need their own structures. Some other structured formats, like DTBook and tagged PDF, provide for them. HTML doesn’t, though HTML5 fills in some gaps here and there.

His next two paragraphs demonstrate he didn’t actually read the article, so instead of wasting my time refuting claims I didn’t make, I’ll skip to the next item.

And for an HTML fan, I’m not sure why he keeps coming back to Word and InDesign.

Because people use them.

the content could as easily be created in Word or a similar app for those features, then pasted into HTML (to remove the extraneous coding that Word and other apps introduce)

Give that a try sometime. People have been publishing utilities to clean up MS Word “HTML” for ten years and nothing has worked. MS Word will not produce usable HTML.

I am not a newbie at this, and I am in fact here reading your comments, so don’t act like I’m in the other room out of earshot. Also, I answer all my mail, so you can talk to me directly, assuming spam filters don’t eat your message.

Notions of ‘proper small caps’ are more difficult; but the ePub group could commission a set of fonts that are unicode complete (or at least including all the publishing-centered unicode special characters) and make them available to all device makers and software coders producing ePub reading agents.

This is exactly the sort of demand that should have gone into ePub in the first place; somehow, typesetters and typography experts were left out of the design group? That’s shameful, if true.

— asotir

Interesting stuff.

Clark goes so far as to suggest that manuscripts should be written in HTML, then converted to Word for editing and change tracking, then passed to InDesign. (Though he does admit this point of view is “so optimistic as to be ridiculous.”)

This makes me wonder if he’s ever done print and digital concurrently.

After this, Clark goes into a considerable level of detail as to what formatting tasks should be handled by CSS, and what tasks by the reader software.

Well, that depends on what the coders of the software want. You can’t CSS/hard format your way around some devices’ kinks.

Further, there are few deficiencies he mentions that the use of style sheets, the occasional table or column format, and some truly creative digitally-minded design work, won’t solve. If Clark is really advocating books, as opposed to “vooks” and such, HTML can do that job ably.

And for an HTML fan, I’m not sure why he keeps coming back to Word and InDesign. Again, those are products that are optimized for print-based content. It’s time to move beyond that. Creating in HTML sounds good to me, but then, it can be converted directly into e-book formats. Using Word or a similar program to spell-check, etc, makes sense; but the content could as easily be created in Word or a similar app for those features, then pasted into HTML (to remove the extraneous coding that Word and other apps introduce) and formatted for e-book production.

As this is a method I use now, and as it results in very clean and compliant ePub formatting, I’d highly recommend it… pick your favorite word processor, and no InDesign needed.