Sausage & Laws; or, Making P+E books with CSS & HTML

In the trenches building
print books
&
ebooks
using
HTML + CSS

@hughmguire
@pressbooks

pressbooks.com

PressBooks
is a:

content management system
&
export system
for books.

Input your book once, we output:
*
*
*
*
*

PDF (typeset)
EPUB (for iBooks, Nook etc)
MOBI (for Kindle)
Web
other XML

For every book,
customizable template ebook & PDF output:
ibooks

kindle

print (pdf)

Some things that I think
are really interesting
about PressBooks:

1.
All PressBooks
books have a
native web
version, out of the
box.

(publishers,
authors
and readers
don’t care)

3.
With an online
system like
PressBooks it’s easy
to make
an API
for books.

4.
PressBooks is a
single-source
book production
system that produces
PDF, EPUB & MOBI...

publishers,
authors
want to
hear more!!
(readers don’t
care)

Publishers and authors
are interested in ways to:
a) save money
b) make money

"If you like laws and
sausages, you should
never watch either one
being made."
-- (mis)attributed to Otto van Bismarck

A couple of PDFs
built with
CSS + HTML

The Power of Stylesheets
&
a
CMS

CSS doesn’t handle
ﬁne-tuned
typography
vey well.

... widows
... orphans
... bottom-balancing(!)
... bad breaks
... ﬂowing text around
strange stuff.

... widows & orphans can
be controlled with:
p {
widows: 2;
orphans: 2;
}

... but the penalty is
bad bottom-balancing:

.loose {
letter-spacing: 0.25px;
word-spacing: 0.075em;
}

.tight {
letter-spacing: -0.25px;
word-spacing: -0.075em;
}

If the W3C (et al) can ﬁgure out how
to solve/address bottom-balancing
with CSS...
CSS will become an obvious choice
for typesetting print/pages.

Sausage & Laws; or, Making P+E books with CSS & HTML

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