Hachette Livre Head of digitalization laudrain@hachette-livre.fr - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Luc Audrain Hachette Livre Head of digitalization

laudrain@hachette-livre.fr

Publishers activity

 For books, publishers are at the origin of content

 Contracts with authors  Editing process of author’s text

 From authors to published books, editing skills are

used to :

 Edit text  Design pages with images and graphics  Produce PDF output to printer  Convert to digital version

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Publishers digital activity

 Digital version of books are built on edited contents

whatever the process or the technology used to produce the ebook file.

 Digital accessibility then depends directly on the

editing tasks and on the good practices used at the very beginning of content creation.

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Tools for content editing

 Since the 80’s, text editing has been eased by text

processors on personal computers

 This has been the best and the worst things to occur

for accessibility

 Best as text is not anymore ink on paper but also

character codes that a software can read aloud

 Worst as ill use of text processors lead to good printing

• f non structured, non navigable, non semantic content,

producing non accessible digital products!

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Good practices are at hand

 Text processors can :

 Help separate content and presentation  Help structure documents  Give meaning to content  Enable navigation in content  Define language of text  Provide tools for Math

 Good practices rely on the use of these available functions

Inspired by http://www.diagramcenter.org/standards-and-practices/54-9-tips-for- creating-accessible-epub-3-files.html

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Content and presentation separation

 Content oriented typography

 Text typography has no meaning in itself, it is derived from

semantic

 Typography reveals the meaning but it is not the meaning  Meaningful information is interoperable, accessible,

not presentation

 Practical issues

 Use semantic character styles names in Word

 Names of styles is more important than presentation

 Example

 Citation of a work title

 In the middle of paragraph, title of a work is generally printed in

italic, but better use a style named Work_Title than direct italic

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Document hierarchy

 Consider any content as a tree within a container (the

document), root and hierarchy of branches : parts, chapters, sections, etc.

 This hierarchy should be explicit in sections headings

 Practical issues

 Learn to use hierarchy tools at hand in text processors

 Example

 Tree panel in Word

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Content meaning

 Name any piece of information even if its presentation

isn’t different from the rest of the text!

 With semantically named styles, content structure is

portable

 Semantic in EPUB is then easy to declare

 Practical issues

 Use paragraph or character style names to identify any

information

 In editing process, do not present content as it will be printed but

to reveal its meaning

 Example :

 Use symbolic decoration in text processor

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Document navigation

 The structure of the document is the foundation of navigation

 Table of content is not a part of the document  It is the summary of its structure

 Practical issues

 Learn to build table of content from the structure of the document.

Every text software has built in tools to extract a table of content from styles

 Examples

 Hierarchy level of paragraph styles

 Indexes : use index marks in text

 Index is not a part of the documents : it’s an extraction of document

places ordered alphabetically

 It can be generated from in-text indexing markup

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Language of text

 In a word processor text is always written in a

language, be it the default one

 Better be aware of the language used as you type

 Practical issues

 Language can be explicitly defined

 On paragraphs styles globally  On characters styles for some words

 Language is used for orthographic and grammar

checking

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Math tools

 Math formulæ are objects full of meaning, not just

signs and numbers

 This meaning has to be explicit in the object

 Practical issues

 Use Math tools within word proccessors

 These tools work in Math context  Math objects can be exported in MathML

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Processes and standards

 XML first production processes have considerably

helped accessibility

 Page composition built upon structured text

 Book semantic vocabulary

 Mandatory XML output

 Correctness checked before archiving  Preserve paper page numbering

 Unicode standard for characters  Automated eBook production

 Conversion process from XML to HTML  Based on semantic tagging

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Paper pages

 Digital production processes must keep track of page

breaks

 Include this constraints in RFP for EPUB production

 Practical issues

 Know how this works in different EPUB readers  Check correctness in validating EPUBs

 Example

 iBooks shows pages numbers in EPUBs

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So, where is the problem?

 Year and years of training on :

 Content and presentation separation  Structuration to add semantic and hierarchy to content

 Courses have been given on :

 Word processors advanced functions  Semantic styling  XML and its advantages

 Seems to be inefficient in the end !

 Newcomers repeat ill use  Good practices never spread

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Call for e-accessibility as a skill

 Accessibility needs :

 Match good practices for editorial content creation  Are available in every day publishing tools

This is a call for a Copernic revolution in training

 Training programs should be built from accessibility

and digital needs :

 It will benefit digital AND paper production  It will help better content repurpose on any direction  It will match accessibility needs in content

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