Sausage & Laws; or, Making P+E books with CSS & HTML

Sausage&

Laws

In the trenches building print books

& ebooks using

HTML + CSS

@hughmguire@pressbooks

pressbooks.com

PressBooks is a:

content management system &

export system

for books.

Input your book once, we output:

* PDF (typeset) * EPUB (for iBooks, Nook etc)* MOBI (for Kindle)* Web* other XML

For every book, customizable template ebook & PDF output:

ibooks kindle print (pdf)

Some things that I think are really interesting about PressBooks:

1. All PressBooksbooks have a native web

version, out of the box.

(publishers, authors

and readers don’t care)

2. PressBooks is open source.

3. With an online

system like PressBooks it’s easy

to make an API

for books.

except...

4. PressBooks is a single-source

book production system that producesPDF, EPUB & MOBI...

!!interesting!!

publishers, authors want to

hear more!!(readers don’t

care)

... using HTML + CSS!!

Conclusion:

Publishers and authors are interested in ways to:

a) save moneyb) make money

"If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one

being made."

-- (mis)attributed to Otto van Bismarck

A couple of PDFs built with

CSS + HTML

Another one...

The Power of Stylesheets&a

CMS

The Catch.

CSS doesn’t handle fine-tuned

typography vey well.

... widows... orphans

... bottom-balancing(!)... bad breaks

... flowing text around strange stuff.

... widows & orphans can be controlled with:

p { widows: 2; orphans: 2;}

... but the penalty is bad bottom-balancing:

.loose { letter-spacing: 0.25px; word-spacing: 0.075em;}

.tight { letter-spacing: -0.25px; word-spacing: -0.075em;}

If the W3C (et al) can figure out how to solve/address bottom-balancing with CSS...

CSS will become an obvious choice for typesetting print/pages.

It might happen anyway.

@hughmguire@pressbooks

pressbooks.com

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