Is it possible to do this with just standard ePub3?

[rjwse@aol.com]

Tech rant: I want to be able to use container queries in epub. Can't even use grid yet; only flex is loosely supported. So many advantages for container queries! None of the dedicated commercial readers are capable, though. Only computer-based epub software (and only some) would be able to use cqw , cqh , cqi , cqb , cqmin , and cqmax. The ability to effectively read the same epub on tiny phones, mid size, or giant size screens while keeping captions and images and text sizes in good-looking layout is difficult without this new tech.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by rjwse@aol.com

Tech rant: I want to be able to use container queries in epub. Can't even use grid yet; only flex is loosely supported. So many advantages for container queries! None of the dedicated commercial readers are capable, though. Only computer-based epub software (and only some) would be able to use cqw , cqh , cqi , cqb , cqmin , and cqmax. The ability to effectively read the same epub on tiny phones, mid size, or giant size screens while keeping captions and images and text sizes in good-looking layout is difficult without this new tech.

My rant is about ebooks that are trying to be apps. Mark up the text sensibly, and let the reading software worry about how to display it.

[rjwse@aol.com]

Using ePub3 standard features all the items you are asking for are available.

I don't believe this is correct. Using ePub3, show me how to force a single line of text to expand or contract such that all of it remains a single line no matter width of column or screen. How about horizontal img-caption-img-caption-img-caption rearranging itself sequentially into groups of 4, 2, 1 as needed? There are lots of things missing. They don't seem to be missing because we have accommodated to their absence and make do with work arounds or simpler viewing options.

[DNSB]

Perhaps you are trying to change the playing field?

As for displaying a line of text to make it a single line regardless of screen width/font size? Have you ever looked at a fixed layout epub3? That will do exactly what you seem to want. Of course, about as useless as a PDF when reading on smaller displays though like PDF, they can have real page numbers. I have several ePub3 FLOs. One textbook works but was totally useless when a line of text that was barely readable on an iPad in landscape mode was displayed on an iPhone SE in portrait mode. Flyspeck 4 is not my favoured font size.

As I mentioned earlier, ePub4 is supposedly going to be fully compliant with Web Publications (if and when Web Publications stops being a moving target) but how long before any devices implement it?

[pdurrant]

Your example is interesting. I wonder if it is possible to do is with standard ePub3 XHTML+CSS2. Anyone?

[RbnJrg]

What you want to get on epub3 only can be obtained by grids an javascript. With javascript, you can get a line of text fills the width of the screen (no matter the width, the script set the proper font size to fill the width) and the change of layout according to the width is made by using a grid.

[rjwse@aol.com]

As for displaying a line of text to make it a single line regardless of screen width/font size?

One tried and true way to do this is (1) use print screen on that line of text (2) bring in that image to calibre as a png. The image will appear as text even though it is not. As an image it will enlarge or shrink to screen width as needed. Same method works good for image plus its caption. The disadvantage of doing this is that the caption is no longer searchable. Another disadvantage is that the text is not limited in size and can get way too small or way too large, depending on column size or screen size. The simpler, future solution is container queries making use of the new kinds of font sizes: cqw , cqh , cqi , cqb , cqmin , and cqmax. Container queries can (at least partially) take over for OL, UL, DD, DT, DL, LI, tables, grid, flex, columns, and float. As for hardware catching up... So far nothing has caught up with the calibre viewer (in my opinion).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Perhaps you are trying to change the playing field?

As for displaying a line of text to make it a single line regardless of screen width/font size? Have you ever looked at a fixed layout epub3? That will do exactly what you seem to want. Of course, about as useless as a PDF when reading on smaller displays though like PDF, they can have real page numbers. I have several ePub3 FLOs. One textbook works but was totally useless when a line of text that was barely readable on an iPad in landscape mode was displayed on an iPhone SE in portrait mode. Flyspeck 4 is not my favoured font size.

As I mentioned earlier, ePub4 is supposedly going to be fully compliant with Web Publications (if and when Web Publications stops being a moving target) but how long before any devices implement it?

The other issue is that the additions to make ePub 3.0 into 3.1 aren't really supported. And you can't grantee that webkit will be the underlying rendering engine.

[JSWolf]

Could this be done with SVG?

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Could this be done with SVG?

Sure, you could but you’d be bypassing multiple other functions like searching, accessibility, etc.

[KevinH]

svg does allow additional/alt string information for text searching and accessibility. The question is which devices actually use it?

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by KevinH

svg does allow additional/alt string information for text searching and accessibility.

Hmmm. I’ll have to try that out. I didn’t think searching looked inside the alt string. I thought the audible read back and other accessibility features flubbed up when relying on the alt string….