Meeting Summary: IDUG T.O. January Event

Thu, Jan 19th, 2012 at 7:00 PM

Ryerson University - POD 250

Event Details

Meeting Summary: InDesign and EPUB
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
POD250

Thank you to all of the members who came out to Thursday’s Toronto InDesign User’s Group meeting! We were delighted to have Erin Mallory (Manager, Cross-Media Group at House of Anansi Press) show us the EPUB export capabilities from InDesign CS4, CS5 and CS5.5.

The evening began with an introduction to the EPUB format, as well as a brief introduction to XML and CSS. We learned that CS4 is okay for EPUB (must use book function), however CS5 is better (can use single document) and CS5.5 is best (greatest support for InDesign formatting and more robust export options). Some key points from each of the three versions of software are provided below.

EPUB from CS4:

• Must use a template and apply paragraph and character styles
• All images must be anchored
• Must create book (master styles, TOC, metadata must be in the source file)
• Many elements will not export to EPUB (including underline, strikethrough, empty returns, drop caps, local formatting, etc.)

EPUB from CS5:

• Can create a single document or a book
• All images must be anchored
• Can assign a Unique Identifier
• Can choose to preserve local overrides
• Can use First Level Entries as Chapter Breaks
• Supports small caps, all caps, underline and strikethrough
• Publisher entry option during export to add ISBN

EPUB in CS5.5:

• More book and image formatting options during export
• Can define export tags in paragraph and character styles
• Will export auto-generated TOC
• CS5 broken-link bug fixed
• Easier to create anchored images
• Articles panel
• Better support for bulleted/numbered lists
• Can embed audio and video (for iPad)

Whether an EPUB document is exported from CS4, CS5 or CS5.5, tweaking of the XML will still be required after export. Additionally, OpenType fonts should be used and Erin has found that Gentium is the most comprehensive font and one that she uses often for EPUB.

In order to preview your EPUB document, free software like Adobe Digital Editions is simple and effective. Additionally, software like oXygen allows EPUB creators to access the files in their EPUB document without unzipping it, because unzipping and the rezipping the file properly for EPUB can be very difficult. Once you have previewed your EPUB document in Adobe Digital Editions and have run it through software like oXygen, you can connect various ereaders to your computer for testing. The .epub format will work on all ereaders except for the Kindle, which needs to be in .mobi format.

At the end of the meeting, after all of the feedback forms were collected, the winner’s names were drawn. For those of you who attended the meeting and are interested in a Fotolia special offer please email Andrea (hillo@sympatico.ca).

Also by popular request, here is the link to Erin’s slides https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AQ_r0FSAUqE8ZGQ2NXJueF8xMjRmenh3Nm1kMg

We know that some of you found the room very difficult to find. With part-time studies at Ryerson growing tremendously, it's increasingly difficult to book a space. Hopefully we will be back in the lecture hall next time. We appreciate your willingness to "get to know the campus"!

Also, a couple of you asked me where to find the archives of past meetings. Here is the link: www.indesignusergroup.com/chapters/toronto/events/archive

Thank you to our volunteers! Hats off to Diana Brown for putting together these wrap-up notes! And of course Erin, thank you for all of this great info!

Natalia Gilewicz, Andrea Hillo, and Matthew Potter
Chapter Representatives
Toronto InDesign User Group
toronto@indesignusergroup.com

Photos from this Meeting

See the photos