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Event DetailsPortland IDUG founder and author Gabriel Powell returned to the group to give an excellent presentation on the EPUB format and its implementation in InDesign. As opposed to PDF files that keep the exact page formatting from your InDesign layout, EPUBs are designed to reflow their contents on the screens of eBook readers.
An EPUB is basically a ZIP file—you can even change the file to .zip and open it with any extraction program. Inside the EPUB file is one or more HTML files, supporting CSS files, and image files.
Gabriel discussed and demonstrated some key points for InDesign users interested in exporting documents as EPUBs:
• Page size, margins, and non-over-ridden master page elements are ignored when exported to EPUB.
• EPUBs do not maintain your exact font choices or advanced typography such as size, leading, kerning, tracking, etc.
• Any formatting not done with paragraph or character styles will be lost, so always define and use styles properly. Note that although the styles will be preserved, their appearance in the EPUB when viewd on a reader will not match the appearance in InDesign.
• All content should be threaded as a single text story, and all images should be anchored to the text. Any unthreaded text or unanchored design elements will appear at the end of the EPUB, completely out of place.
In summary, your decision on whether to use the relatively new EPUB format or not should be made on how essential it is for your publications to be viewable on handheld eBook readers, and whether it is cost-effective to alter your layouts to work with the EPUB format. In some cases, it may be necessary to make to separate layouts: one for print and PDF, and one for EPUB.
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