There is nothing long and extended here, because I remain convinced that most book designers consider coding anathema. But after finding the script I mentioned earlier today, I have found several interesting things that can be easily fixed in the ePUB.

Edit the CSS if you can (or don’t if you can’t)

The problem with this has been the difficulty with decompressing the .epub file and then recompressing back into .epub. For that you will need a script. I recommend that you Google and download “ePUB Zip 1.0.2”. It’s an AppleScript that will let you simply drop the ePUB folder you get when you uncompress the ePUB onto the script icon to recompress it into an ePUB again.

For those of you who are ready, this helps a lot

The problem is that even with CS5.5 the resulting CSS has some major issues. Of course, you must know CSS to do anything about it. But some of the things are relatively easy.

• Make sure the font choices are good: I would double-check to at least make sure that the serif and sans-serif names are correct. Then make them work for the fonts in the iPad list.
• Define p—the basic paragraph tag: InDesign does not do this. It defines all the classes you set up in the Export Tags dialog, but p is not defined.
• Do anything else you can figure out from Castro’s “ePUB Straight to the Point”: It all depends on how comfortable you are with code, HTML, and CSS. You can open the whole folder as a site in Dreamweaver. Edit carefully, and work on a copy if you are not good with the code.

Related articles

• Amazon will fully support EPUB (I think) (pigsgourdsandwikis.com)