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badsectoraculatoday at 12:16 AM2 repliesview on HN

Be happy your readers use an ePub reader that supports (or at least, ignores) something like `max-width` in the first place :-P.

TBH i've being using an ePub reader that i occasionally had to edit ePub files so i get rid of the superfluous styling that made it either not work or show things weirdly/wrong and i've heard comments from others that a bunch of files i had no issues with personally were unreadable for them, which makes me think that unless you really and absolutely need any fancy formatting (i.e. math stuff that can't just be made images - and you really tried to!) then you should stick with the most basic HTML imaginable - things that not even IE4 would render (too) wrong.

And in turn, since i doubt this will ever happen, i sometimes ponder making an "epub reconstruct" tool that attempts to reconstruct epubs so that they use the simplest HTML/CSS :-P (ideally configurable for maximum compatibility).


Replies

dlcarriertoday at 1:43 AM

It's already bad enough that HTML/CSS barely works in the target web browser environment, I don't see why anyone decided it was a good idea to use it for books.

I've often thought about figuring out a subset that operates fast on any computer and sticking to that for any web pages I make. If someone figured that out for epub, it would make it much, much more useful.

thatguy00today at 12:30 AM

Ah, yes. When I paint, I also leave the middle unpainted, in case some people have a crack in their glasses that would make the painting look weird. Or maybe we should tell glasses makers to make better glasses and let the artists make their art.