[Admin] Re: [pwp] Progressive enhancement of digital books

A purely administrative request…

Here, and in other email threads, it would be good if we took the habit, when the discussion gets to an equilibrium point, to formulate the essence of the thread and add it as an issue to the PWP issue list[1], so that we do not loose it.

Thanks

Ivan


[1] https://github.com/w3c/dpub-pwp/issues


> On 4 Dec 2015, at 08:50, Fabrizio Venerandi <fabrizio.venerandi@quintadicopertina.com> wrote:
> 
>> Il giorno 04/dic/2015, alle ore 03:08, Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net> ha scritto:
>> 
>> 
>> prev/next exist today in theory, but in practice most UAs don't do anything with them. While a <nav> section in index.html would work just fine in todays browsers. Even if they don't understand that this particular <nav> is special, it's still full of links that the user can follow.
>> 
>> Also, the semantics of prev/next aren't that straightforward, as they let you create non linear reading orders (loops, forks, going back to something else than where you can from...). Maybe this is a good thing, as it is quite expressive, but I think it can just as easily be considered a footgun. Maybe we could enforce sanity of the prev/next relationships at the validator level.
> 
> I don’t know if this could be related. Actually building ebook in ePub is a problem when you try to create non-linear reading. The spine is a big limit for this, and the support for linear=“no” attribute is a good example of chaos.  To be honest the “next/previous” is a little way to see the navigation in ebook. What I really need, when I'm working with big ebooks, is a way to create a non-linear reading and have the power to mark the start of a reading point (for example a link to a picture) and the return from the readed point. A very basic example could be: there is a place of text (called alpha) that could be read starting from 10 different “chapters". I’d like to have a way to put in starting link the return point from the alpha point. Actually I can not, I have to pray the reader has got a “back” function, or write something “dirt” in javascript that do not work in ePub because break the spine order. I think something similar was in Xlink extended links, but actually is not used from bowser or ebook reader.
> The alpha point example is quite simple: I’d like also to link to a alpha point and tell to the ereader what to do when the reader turn the page.
> The navigation/spine model, for me, is too basic for this kind of work. And a multiple reference to a single picture, for example, is not so strange in a digital text.
> 
> Fabrizio
> 
> 
> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C
Digital Publishing Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704