A Study of EPUB 3.0 Authoring Tools Availability in Vertical Form Function
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Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 2013, 6, 482-488 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jsea.2013.69058 Published Online September 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jsea) A Study of EPUB 3.0 Authoring Tools Availability in Vertical Form Function Chien-Yuan Chang*, Hung-Jen Yang Department of Industry Technology Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei. Email: *[email protected], [email protected] Received July 16th, 2013; revised August 15th, 2013; accepted August 22nd, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Chien-Yuan Chang, Hung-Jen Yang. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons At- tribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is prop- erly cited. ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to identify the availability of authoring tools that support vertical flow function based upon empirical experiments. There were five EPUB authoring tools selected for this study. Four major editing proce- dures were designed for the project. The first was the support of Chinese character input. The second was vertical form editing. The third was ruby position editing, and finally, testing whether the editing software was capable of outputting a document as an e-Book in EPUB 3.0 format. Five programs were tested, and only one of the five was able to fulfill the aforementioned requirements. The usability of each program is positively verified through this study. Keywords: e-Book; EPUB; Vertical Form; Ruby Text 1. Introduction e-Book Publication Structure Container Format (OCF), the new standard allows for packaging of a digital file An electronic book (variously, e-Book, eBook, digital into a single format so that consumers with different book) is a book-length publication in digital form, con- e-Book readers will be able to share material. This will sisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, pub- expand the availability of titles and lower the costs for lished through, and readable on computers or other elec- publishers entering the e-Book market. For school librar- tronic devices [1,2]. EPUB is the distribution and inter- ies, a standard format offers an opportunity for students change format standard for digital publications and documents based on Web Standards. EPUB defines a to exchange digital e-Books as easily as they trade pa- means of representing, packaging and encoding struc- perbacks. Lower costs will also allow more schools to tured and semantically enhanced Web content for distri- acquire e-books and other digital material [4]. bution in a single-file format. EPUB allows publishers to EPUB 3.0 contains a huge array of specifications, such produce and send a single digital publication file through as multimedia specification (including MP3, H.264) the distribution and offers consumers interoperability be- text Pronunciation engine (TTS), synchronized media tween software and hardware for unencrypted reflowable integration language (SMIL), typesetting specifications digital books and other publications [3]. (including HTML 5, CSS 3, SVG) and Asian country EPUB 2 was initially standardized in 2007 as a suc- specific vertical text, line breaking rules, ruby position cessor format to the Open e-Book Publication Structure (such as pronunciation symbols marginal notes), and page or “OEB”, which was originally developed in 1999. A rules [5]. maintenance release, EPUB 2.0.1, was approved in 2010. Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or In October, 2011, EPUB 3 was approved as a final Rec- vertically. Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts can be ommended Specification [3]. Recently the International oriented in either direction, as they consist mainly of Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) created a technical disconnected syllabic units, each occupying a square standard “to facilitate digital content creation, distribu- block of space [5], as shown in Figure 1. tion, and use by customers.” Also known as the Open Traditionally, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are writ- ten vertically in columns going from top to bottom and *Corresponding author. ordered from right to left, with each new column starting Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JSEA A Study of EPUB 3.0 Authoring Tools Availability in Vertical Form Function 483 EPUB 3.0 format and vertical layout. The selected pro- grams were MS-Word, MS- Publisher, Adobe In Design CS6, Sigil, and Calibre. The purpose of this paper is to test the same four func- tions using each of the five programs. Four major editing procedures were designed for the experiments. The first was the support of Chinese character input. The second was vertical form editing, including the document dis- playing characters vertically, and arranging characters form right to left. The third was ruby position editing, and finally, testing whether the editing software was ca- pable of outputting a document as an e-Book in EPUB 3.0 format. This paper examines the usability of the au- thoring tools via the aforementioned four functions. Figure 1. Japanese and Chinese vertical flow [5]. The testing focus is on text layout because most pub- lications in Asia, such as magazines and pamphlets, are to the left of the preceding one. The stroke order and composed of both vertical and horizontal writing. For stroke direction of Chinese characters, Japanese Kana, vertical writing, the program should arrange the charac- and Korean Hangul all facilitate writing in this manner. ters from top to bottom, and arrange lines from right to In addition, writing in vertical columns from right to left left. Another important test is for ruby text compatibility. facilitated writing with a brush in the right hand while Ruby text is special styling (shown in Figure 2,) that continually unrolling the sheet of paper or scroll with the appears to the right of the base character or glyph. This left. In modern times, it has become increasingly com- value is provided for the special case of traditional Chi- mon for these languages to be written horizontally, from nese and is used frequently in Taiwan. Ruby text (made left to right, with successive rows going from top to bot- of Bopomofo glyphs) in that context appears vertically tom, under the influence of European languages such as along the right side of the base glyph, regardless of hori- English, although vertical writing is still used in Japan, zontal or vertical base character layout. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau frequently [5]. 2.1. Test Environment 2. Materials and Methods Hardware A EPUB 3.0 strengthens consistency and network stan- CPU: Intel Celeron 2.5 MHz dards to increase the performance of e-Book content in HD: 500GB new browsers, and also EPUB 3.0 increases support for RAM: 2G rich media content. In addition, EPUB 3.0 will also VGA: Intel G41 incorporate Japanese, Chinese and other languages, Operating System: MS-Windows 7 strengthen navigation, and add comments and other in- Authoring Tools Application teractive features. With the EPUB 3.0 specification evo- Adobe In Design CS6 lution, importing e-Book content will become livelier, http://www.adobe.com and more diverse. Users can not only zoom in and out easily, set the book’s font and layout, but it also supports multi-media, and more complex forms of magazines, as well as audio and video content. Japanese scholar (Robun Birtle, 2011) indicated cur- rent trends on the standardization of the e-Book format. Apple had been already committed to the EPUB 3.0 con- tent standard which encapsulates these requirements and Amazon is expected to at least commence EPUB support [6], so we can understand the importance of the EPB 3.0 format. According to the three articles: “How To Make An eBook” [7], “Online Vertical Layout” [8] and “An RDF-Based Platform for e-Book Publishing” [9], there were five programs that were selected to conduct this study. All five programs claimed that they could support Figure 2. Ruby text appears right of the base Glyph. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JSEA 484 A Study of EPUB 3.0 Authoring Tools Availability in Vertical Form Function MS-Word 2013 “Type”, then clicked “Direction/Vertical”. In Design http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ CS6 could transfer Chinese characters to vertical form, MS-Publisher 2013 and display them from right to left and from top to bot- http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ tom. The screen is shown in Figure 4. Sigil 0.7.1 (freeware) Step4: Tested ruby function for text. We selected dou- https://code.google.com/p/sigil/ ble text block, In Design CS6 could use Chinese fonts Calibre 0.8 (freeware) that place the ruby text to the right of a Chinese character. http://calibre-ebook.com/ To do so, select main menu “Type”, click “Font”, then choose a Chinese font that includes pronunciation sym- 2.2. Steps to Create an e-Book bols. The screen is shown in Figure 4. Finally, save as “Other File” format, and select the EPUB 3.0 format. Generally, there are four steps to create an e-book, listed This screen is shown in Figure 5. as follows: 1) The content should be prepared in a file, such as 2.4. Test MS-Word 2013 doc/docx of Word, plain text, or html file. 2) Import prepared content file into an authoring pro- MS Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It gram such as In Design, Sigil, MS-publisher, etc. is a popular office document processing program in Tai- 3) The imported content is edited and published into wan. It enables the user to write articles, books, letters an e-Book by the authoring program. and documents. Download the trial version of the soft- 4) Read the published e-Book via an e-reader program. ware from Microsoft’s web site: URL: http://office.mi- The process of creating an e-Book is shown in Figure crosoft.com/ en-us/word/, then install the application.