We are using Ebook for a book project. We started using DITA, but
styling DITA was too much hazzle for me, and secondly, if anything, we
would have needed the DITA education profile, whish XXE does not support.
So then we went for Ebook - at least, then I know how to style the
result via CSS.
Ebook consist of an Ebook «map» file with the .ebook suffix, and Ebook
pages with simply the .html suffix. Hence I wondered what makes Ebook
pages into Ebook pages. And it turns out that Ebook pages are simply
HTML pages with the following class on the root element:
<html class="role-ebook-page" …
And it seems like the sole purpose of class="role-ebook-page" is to put
XXE in Ebook editing mode.
Because, when I tried embedding Ebook pages without
class="role-ebook-page" on the <html> element into a Ebook, it worked
just fine.
However, what was different, was the editing experience inside XXE: When
class="role-ebook-page" switches XXE into Ebook page mode, one gets
various «micro formats», such as notes, footnoes, various code examples
and so on.
But compared with the HTML editor, one also looses a lot: One looses the
Web browser view and also many things from the HTML toolbar, such as
<aside>, <article> and more. (These elements can still be inserted via
the Edit menu, though.)
Some of the Ebook page mode fetaures, such as footnotes, are very
general and something it would be nice to have easily available. While
some of the HTML page features would also be useful to have available as
well.
Why do we have to choose between the Ebook page mode features and the
HTML page features?
To (inside XXE) replacing class="role-ebook-page" with class="foo" has
strange effects on the documents: Despite that the document remains a
HTML document, next time you open the document in XXE, it opens in
generic XML mode.
Hence, for «lay people» it is not so easy switch between the two modes.
It would be nice to at least have a «Open Ebook page in HTML mode»
feature. Or perhaps the Ebook features could simply somehow be fused
with the HTML mode features?
The promise of the Ebook format is that it should be simpler to use than
DITA and Docbook, since it is simply HTML. And it is indeed simpler, in
that sense. But I feel that the Ebook page editing mode hides many of
the good parts of the XXE HTML editing mode.
For now, for our part, we will pronbably remove class="role-ebook-page"
from our Ebook pages.
--
Leif Halvard Silli
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