Introduction to ePublishing

Bill KasdorfVP and Principal Consultant, Apex Content Solutions

Making the Most of Today’s Dynamic Digital Landscape An Introduction to ePublishing

New Devices

User Expectations

Changing Standards

Scary, isn’t it?

New Devices

User Expectations

Changing Standards

More alike under the hood than you’d think.

New Devices

User Expectations

Changing Standards


Getting more aligned every day.

New Devices

User Expectations

Changing Standards


Getting more aligned every day.

They’re the point of publishing . . .

and they make us publish better.

USEr ExpECTaTioNS

User Expectations

What is this user looking for?“How much did aDB lend in South asia in 2013?”

User Expectations


They’re looking for an answer, not a publication. You publish content.

Publications are just how you deliver it.Semantics is the key.

information. Users expect to be able to query your content

to find what they’re looking for.

User Expectations


“How should performance indicator Descriptions and output indicators be

re-written for effective analysis?”

User Expectations


“How should performance indicator Descriptions and output indicators be

re-written for effective analysis?”Educational standards and technologies

are evolving rapidly. Markup, metadata, assessment, analytics—

interoperability is key.

instruction. They need to learn how to do something.

User Expectations


“How should performance indicator Descriptions and output indicators be re-

written for effective analysis?”“What are the most recent publications

that address my specialty?”

User Expectations




that address my specialty?”

Your publications are part of a rich, broad, intellectual ecosystem.

Users need to move fluidly between resources— metadata, IDs, and linking are key.

professional development. They need to learn how to do something.

User Expectations




that address my specialty?”“Show me how drought progressed

in South asia from 1990–2013.”

User Expectations




that address my specialty?”“Show me how drought progressed

in South asia from 1990–2013.”

Visualization, interactivity, rich media, “gamification,” etc. enhance learning

by involving the user. These can be expensive to create, and can quickly become outdated.

Open Web Platform standards are key.

Engagement. They want something dynamic, not static.

User Expectations

What is this user looking for?What format does the user want it in?

User Expectations

What is this user looking for?What format does the user want it in?

Text? audio? Video? animation?Not everything needs to be in every format, but things need to be in appropriate formats,

and rich media needs fallbacks.Don’t forget about accessibility!

User Expectations

What is this user looking for?What format does the user want it in?What platform/device is being used?

User Expectations


Browser online? Offline? E-reader? Tablet? phone?

Even . . . paper?OS (Operating System) becomes an issue. Responsive design enables one file to adapt

to various “viewport” dimensions.Key standards: open Web platform.

User Expectations


What does the user want to do?

User Expectations


What does the user want to do?

immersive reading? Look things up? Highlight, annotate, bookmark? Share comments with others?

Currently highlighting, annotating, sharing, etc. are confined to proprietary platforms/systems/apps.

EpUB and oWp are working to standardize and make them non-proprietary.

This didn’t just all happen overnight.Digital publishing has been evolving

for as long as there have been computers.

The Evolution Digital publishing

1960s and ’70s Early digital books on mainframes Word processing, phototypesetting



1980s actual products: CD-roMS

Digital typesetting with proprietary codes SGML and postScript





1990s The first wave of dedicated e-readers

xML, pDF, and the Web






xML, pDF, and the Web

Key DynamicsAnalog to digital

“Capturing keystrokes”Presentational tagging

to generic taggingProprietary schemes

to standards






xML and pDF

Key DynamicsAnalog to digital

“Capturing keystrokes”Presentational tagging

to generic taggingProprietary schemes

to standards. . . which leads to“Hey, we don’t even need to

print stuff out—you can read it right on the screen!”

But who would want to read on a screen?

The 1998

rocket eBook

Looks pretty familiar,

doesn’t it?

Soon there were lots of e-readers.and lots of ebook formats.

Remember Microsoft’s .lit? Remember Sony’s .bbeb?

Oh, yeah, and Mobipocket’s .mobi . . .

The turn of the millennium:

We’re building a Tower of

Babel.

iDpF to the rescue!

Developing an open standard with broad industry participation

1999: oEB (the open eBook standard)

2007: EpUB (+ the non-EpUB Kindle . . .)

2010: EpUB 2.0.1 (+ the EpUB-based ipad/iBooks)

EpUB 2.0.1 works for books

like this . . .

. . . but not for complex publications

like these

october 11, 2011:EpUB 3.0, E-Book Superhero,

comes to save the day!

remember the complaints about changing standards?

We’d be in a bad state if they didn’t change.SGML became XML. OEB became EPUB.

EPUB 2.0.1 became EPUB 3. HTML 1.1 became HTML5.

These standards are designed to evolve as the technology and user needs

change over time.

remember the complaints about changing standards?

We’d be in a bad state if they didn’t change.SGML became XML. OEB became EPUB.

EPUB 2.0.1 became EPUB 3. HTML 1.1 became HTML5.

These standards are designed to evolve as the technology and user needs

change over time.

and they’re converging.EPUB 3 is based on

XHTML5, which is HTML5 conforming to XML rules.

File Formats vs. Markup and MetadataFiles are the “containers” for content—text, images, fonts,

video, audio, scripts, etc.Markup and metadata are the

“codes” and stored information that make those files “work.”

it’s important not to confuse the two. EpUB, for example (a .epub file) is actually a .zip container with

all that stuff in it.

ContentThink of content as the

stuff you can see.

MarkupThink of markup as the engineering that

makes it work like a well-oiled machine.

MetadataThink of metadata

as the oil.

Some Common Text File Formats

Microsoft Word Used for most authoring and editing

Tex/LaTex Common for math, statistics, engineering

inDesign The leading design/page layout format

xML The foundation of most modern publishing

HTML The format of the World Wide Web

Some Common Metadata Formats

oNix Supply chain metadata for bookselling

priSM Suite of metadata standards for magazines

Dublin Core Widely used generic metadata standard

schema.org Standardized vocabularies for browsers

Thema New international subject codes

Some Common image Formats

TiFF (.tif or .tiff) “Tagged image File Format”

JpEG (.jpg or .jpeg) “Joint photographic Experts Group”

GiF (.gif) “Graphics interchange Format”

pNG (.png) “portable Network Graphics”

SVG (.svg) “Scalable Vector Graphics”

. . . and Some Common proprietary Formats

ai (.ai) adobe illustrator

pSD (.psd) photoshopEpS (.eps)

Encapsulated postscriptppT (.ppt)

powerpointWMF/EMF

Windows Metafile / Enhanced Metafile

These are used in production

but don’t belong in deliverable

products.

audio and Video Formats

HTML5 vs. proprietary Best: open formats permitted by HTML5

in the <audio> and <video> elements:they work natively in browsers (and ioS etc.)

proprietary formats like Flash (.swf) and QuickTime (.mov, .qt) require plug-ins

ideal: Formats recommended by EpUB 3 audio: Mp3 and Mp4 aaC LC Video: H.264 and Vp8/WebM

(often both due to browser/RS inconsistency)

Scripts

JavaScript Fundamental to the open Web platform

JavaScript Libraries “pre-written” scripts to adapt as needed

Most popular: open-source jQueryWidgets

interactive features like quizzes, sliders, “assessments” in educational content,

graphing data from a table, etc.

Fonts

openType primary font format for print

WoFF primary font format for web

Licensing Know what rights you’ve got!obfuscating and Embedding

Enable ebook to contain the fonts it needsUNiCoDE Fonts

Encoding aligns with Web and xML

Stylesheets

Word a good “styles library” helps add

structure and semanticsinDesign/Quark

paragraph styles and character styles ensure consistency, efficiency

Browsers/Ebooks CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

adapts rendering for context/device Enables “responsive design”

Deliverable products

pDF preserves look of typeset page

Used for printing, online delivery Doesn’t “reflow” for different screen sizes

EpUBinternational standard format

Non-proprietary, works almost everywhere Reflowable or fixed layout

KF8 amazon’s proprietary ebook format

Markup & Metadata

CoNTENT MarKUp

Structure What are the pieces, and how do they relate?

Semantics What are the pieces for, what are they about?

resources Images, multimedia, scripts, stylesheets, etc.

associations Links, references, annotations, indexes, etc.

<CN> </CN>

</CT></aU>

<iNTro>

</iNTro><H1><H2>

</H1></H2>

<CT><aU>

<GLoSS> </GLoSS>

Here’s one possible markup scheme:“Chapter number”“Chapter title”“author’s name”“introductory paragraph”“Level 1 subhead”“Level 2 subhead”“Glossary term”That’s XML markup. Those are “tags.”

<CN> </CN>

</CT></aU>

<iNTro>

</iNTro><H1><H2>

</H1></H2>

<CT><aU>

<GLoSS> </GLoSS>

Here’s one possible markup scheme:“Chapter number”“Chapter title”“author’s name”“introductory paragraph”“Level 1 subhead”“Level 2 subhead”“Glossary term”That’s XML markup. Those are “tags.”

xML is the best form of

markup.it enables you

to not only render

the pieces differently in different

contexts but manage

the pieces independently.

XML

xML enables the separation of

structure and semantics from

rendering, presentation.

XML

xML liberates your content from any particular page design, any particular reading system,

any particular workflow.print, app, ebook, and online:

all from the same xML document!

Semantics

Semantics Supercharge Your ContentDistinguish elements with same tag

that have specific structural functionsDisambiguate text: is “Washington” the

president, the city, the bridge, or the state?Describe content to enhance discovery, enable filtering via keywords, controlled

vocabularies, taxonomies

METaDaTa

Identifiers Unique, unambiguous, machine-processable

Enable precise linking and “chunking”Subject Codes

Terms + codes facilitate discovery, enable “recommendation engines”

Supply-Chain Metadata Essential to retailers, distributors,

aggregators, licensees, etc.

Workflow and Content Management

We all know what the stages of the editorial and production workflow are . . .

Design. Copyediting. Typesetting.

artwork. indexing.

Quality Control. Ebook Creation.

. . . but we need to look deeper to optimize how they work in any given organization.

They’re usually done in silos. Which are hard to see into,

and are starting to break down.

Who Does What?

Do it in-house?outsource it?automate it?

You can’t answer these questions properly without deconstructing the categories.

And the answers differ from publisher to publisher.

Workflow

Workflow is where it all comes together:a vocabulary that fits your publications.Markup that makes your content agile.

Metadata that makes it meaningful.The standards that make it interoperable.The technologies that fit your capabilities.

Don’t start by looking for a Content Management System.

Start by thinking about how you need to manage your content.

The point is to . . .

. . . get from this . . .

Thanks to Jake Zarnegar of Silverchair for the graphics.

. . . to this.

Which means managing your content

not just your publications.

Six Things “Content Management” Might Mean

1. Web Content Management2. Digital asset Management

3. Workflow Management4. XML Workflow Management

5. xML repository Management6. aLL oF THE aBoVE

Number of Content Management Systemsthat are Magic

They only work if you work to make them work!

Analyze your workflow, models, products, and plans so you know what you want the CMS to do.Implementing a CMS helps you understand,

document, and improve how you do what you do!

You can buy a Content Management System

but you can’t buy good content management.

You have to do good content management.

Thanks!

Bill [email protected]

+1 734 904 6252@BillKasdorf

Introduction to ePublishing

Technology

Transcript of Introduction to ePublishing