From this article:

http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/04/ibooks-on-ipad-first-glance.html

bad Squishy iPad typography example

Example of Screwed up Columns on iPad

iPad Need page Breaks example

iPad Big Spaces / Gaps errors example image

April 7, 2010 1:31 PM

Jon H said…

“Yes, as far as I can tell, page breaks are not supported on iBooks at all.”

But only because of a flaw in the ePub standard. Not so much because of iBooks.

April 8, 2010 8:17 PM

Liz Castro said…

@Jon, Hmm. I don’t know what you mean. I’ve gotten CSS page breaks to work just fine in an ePub in Adobe Digital Editions.

April 8, 2010 10:07 PM

Michael W. Perry said…

Welcome to the bleeding edge of technology: A muddle of competing proprietary formats by competitors and an open standard, ePub, that’s woefully inadequate for anything other than ugly novels. I’d hope Apple and the iPad would bring sanity and good taste to this mess, but there’s no indication thus far that they even understand the problems, much less have a handle on the solutions. Steve Jobs seems to have abandoned art for geekery, hence iBooks ugly full justification.

It should be possible to make ebooks look as classy as print books. That we can’t do. It should be possible to do that at least as easily as creating a good-looking print book in InDesign. Again, not possible. If something can be done at all, it takes CSS tweaks by geeks and still looks gosh-awful.

Perhaps we need to educate readers so demand better quality rather than just $9.95 or less bestsellers. When that happens, the industry (including Apple) will follow.

April 9, 2010 12:17 PM

Peter Hinman said…

Is ePub incapable of handling symbols and formulas? I’m a mathematician, and converting PDF’s with math in it to ePub doesn’t work at all (via Epub2go or calibre). But there is a lot of talk about using the iPad as a reader for texts, presumably including math and science. Do the books have to be formatted specially for ePub or how does it work?

April 9, 2010 8:22 PM

Liz Castro said…

@Michael: I think that people do care about book layout. Once there are decent options, I think people will choose them. I’m working on it. (And ePub and iPad do allow right ragged.)

@Peter: Mathematical formulas are number 9 on the IDPF’s list. I’d love to see an example of what sort of thing you’d like to see.

April 9, 2010 8:57 PM