I’m just thinking this informal poll might be of interest to some of you for… reasons.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on ePub solutions for RPGs: reflowable vs fixed-layout.
Originally shared by Thomas Deeny
I’m thinking about the merits of reflowable versus fixed-layout ePubs for role-playing game books. As a user of these books (or if you don’t play, imagine a high-school or college textbook with charts, images, and sidebars), would you prefer reflowable epubs or fixed-layout?
Reflowable: You have a lot of control over the look of the book: page color, font choice, and text size. However, all the content will generally flow in a large column: tables, sidebars, example blocks are all read after paragraphs and won’t always appear exactly where they do in the printed book. Pages might break in your reader strangely due to these font choices you make: one sentence on the next page, which is completely blank because the next page has an illustration that takes up the screen. Cross-references have to be rewritten from “See page 23” to “see below”.
Fixed-Layout: You get a book that looks like the printed material: sidebars, examples, tables all appear near the relevant passages. However, you have no control over how the book looks — that’s the font used and that’s how large it is compared to the size of the rest of the page. Some readers will have you pinch and zoom in to read some passages, some readers (Kindle) let you tap on paragraphs and they expand larger. Cross-references that say “See page 23” don’t need to be changed (which may be a benefit for people who have both printed and epub version.)
I picked fixed layout partly because PDFs are a “standard” – and only just barely. Free-flowing (and hyperlinked) is ultimately probably better, but the tools to manage a library of that aren’t as reliable as with PDFs, which almost work right. Usually.
I’d is only text, then reflowable is nice. If there are pictures and tables, then fixed layout seems to be the way to go to prevent distortion/loss.
Pdfs are shit.
Not talking about PDFs, Jason Corley — Talkin’ epubs.
Let’s keep it civil. Thanks. 😊
My issue with reflow able is the aesthetic corners that will have to be cut and the misplacement of tables and art.
A PDF is basically the layout file sent to the printer (minus the printing marks), and that’s fine. But ePub should be able to scale between device sizes, and a properly structured and styled ePub (remember, ePub’s are basically HTML and CSS Documents) should be easily able to scale to many different files.