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Is HTML5 the Future of Book Authorship?

Posted by samzenpus on from the forget-the-paper dept.

occidental writes "Sanders Kleinfeld writes: In the past six years, the rise of the ebook has ushered in three successive revolutions that have roiled and reshaped the traditional publishing industry. Revolution #3 isn't really defined by a new piece of hardware, software product, or platform. Instead, it's really marked by a dramatic paradigm change among authors and publishers, who are shifting their toolsets away from legacy word processing and desktop publishing suites, and toward HTML5 and tools built on the Open Web Platform."

3 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, HTML5 is the future of publishing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Two weeks ago I published the web edition of the Graphics Codex. It is HTML5, with full LaTeX, SVG, and complex text layout for quality and Javascript + links for interactivity. This is a port of the earlier iOS edition that I wrote, which had similar features but wasn't HTML5. After having written several traditional books and seen them massacred by conversion to PDF, MOBI, and ePUB, I think that HTML5 from the start is the way to go for future publishing.

    1. Re:Yes, HTML5 is the future of publishing by dargaud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In physical publishing, the industry has long adopted PDF. It is ideal for printing.

      ...but it absolutely SUCKS for reading on any kind of screen. It hardly ever reflows properly. Even on a large PC screen it's a pain to read a multicolumn pdf: you are always going up and down because top and bottom of page are outside the screen. You can imagine on an ereader... It's also very resource intensive on phone/ereader.

      --
      Non-Linux Penguins ?
  2. Re:No, But Maybe. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    FFS. Can you please shut up about Betteridge's law of headlines?

    No.