Why a default reading order?

Hi, 

I’d like to share my perplexity about the recent definition about the reading order in digital publication:

“The default reading order is the static progression through the primary resources defined in the manifest by the creator of a Web Publication. A user might follow alternative pathways through the content, but in the absence of such interaction the default reading order defines the expected progression from one primary resource to the next.”

Our publisher house is creating ebooks in ePub from 2010, and one of big limit in creating native digital ebook is the “book” notion of “default reading order”. There is not a “default reading order” in a website, but I need to allow one in a digital publication. This prevents me to build an ebook with several different "reading order” without the risk the reader can fall from one to another one. I can not set a rule for a chapter for “don't go in another chapter when the user turn the last page”. So, I can use the atomic complexity of a website for a digital publication, but I have to pray the user will use my hyperlink and does not turn the pages, because I have to “flat down” my atomic resource to a linear book. Also, the concept of “default reading order” caused a lot a misunderstanding for how handle the “non default” chapters in ebook. The ‘linear-no’ support in ePub and EPUB3 is a mess: someone handles it as a pop-up, someone like a normal chapter (but does not remember the page I was reading if I close the ebook), someone like a separate atom (but if I turn the last page I will “fall” in another chapter), someone does not support linear-no at all. Et ceterae.

I hope the working group could still think about a digial pubblication that allow *multiple* reading order by default, and not a single one.

Thank you.


Fabrizio Venerandi

Received on Monday, 7 August 2017 06:56:28 UTC