[clug] Apple and ePub

[Ivan Miljenovic]

On 24 June 2010 18:36, Neill Cox <neill.cox at ingenious.com.au> wrote:
> Note: I am taking it on faith that there is such a thing as an "ePub
> specification" and that it "requires that conforming ereaders, like yours
> [ie Apple's] purports to be, support font-family". Not that it really
> matters to me as I have no intention of ever buying an iPad, or any other
> Apple device that cedes control over what programs I may run (or what
> languages I may write them in) to Apple.

My understanding of this is that the ePub standard (it's an industry
standard, so that that as you will whether you consider it a standard
or not) allows you to specify which fonts to use and if they're
available to use them.  The iPad presumably has such fonts but won't
use them.

The whole typographic design thing aside, my biggest potential problem
with this is with programming books: most code is typeset using a
monospace font, but if Apple just uses the one font for the entire
book it may be harder to distinguish and read any code in such a book.

> Actually I'm more concerned about this story:
> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/developers-expect-ios-and-mac-os-to-merge-over-time.ars,
> although I'm hoping this really is just a silly story.

That just looks more like "quick, we need content! what can we make
up?" speculation rather than something with actual substance.

-- 
Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
Ivan.Miljenovic at gmail.com
IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com