Using Q tags in ePub documents
Recently I’ve been making great progress on my ePub converter but in the process I’ve come across a few areas that have needed some thought. For this short article I’m going to discuss the XHTML Quote tag.
When looking though the IDPF OPS specs I noticed that <q> tags are allowed within ePub documents. As I mark up all quotes in my master TEI documents with a <q> tag I was really happy to see this. However, when I came to test my files in Adobe Digital Editions none of my quotes showed.
After seaching around the net I also noticed that <q> tags are not supported by all web browsers (i.e. Internet Explorer). Liza Daly has also noted that the HTML 5.0 specs will depreciate Q tags – will a version of XHTML follow suite in the future? Will a future IDPF OPS spec implement that future XHTML spec?
(FYI, Liza mentioned that she is currently working on implementing <q> tags in her Bookworm reader, with a work around for IE.)
This is an area which I believe ePub developers should give some serious thought over. Even if Adobe DE go ahead and implement this feature, other readers may not necessarily follow suite.
For my own project I have decided to convert all my <q> tags into regular “quote” characters. Providing more safety both now and in the long term.
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December 6th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Maybe keep separate “source” and “generated” versions of the book, the former having
December 6th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I agree Marshall, marking up the master with Q tags in place is definitely the way to go. I am certainly glad I chose to use TEI as my master format.
I am also hoping to produce books in other languages so I can utilise the language id to output quotes appropriate to the country.