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• • May 17, 2013 at 12:48 am #53566
    Peter Jutai

    Member

    Hi!
    I designed a book for print, and my client wants an epub. The book has twenty tables or so. There are small tables (3×4) and huge ones (3 columns and 20 rows).

    My problem:
    When I exported the book with the tables to an epub, it did not look good. Epub readers for Android phones messed up the bigger tables. Then I tried to make jpegs or pngs from the tables, and insert the pictures back into the document, but all pictures went blurry and practically unreadable on exporting the epub from InDesign. (The quality was deteriorated on exporting the tables into jpegs. But when I exported the finished indd file, the tables — pictures — deteriorated further.)

    The epub looks good on a laptop or a desktop. I would like to have an epub that looks good on devices with small screen. I don’t know if it is possible at all. Maybe not. [URL=”https://data.hu/get/6548466/CCC_epub_copy.indd”%5DPlease check the indd file here.[/URL] (Go down to the red texts and click on “Lassú letöltés” meaning ‘slow download’.)

    If there is no way to make these tables look satisfying in an epub on a small screen device (smartphone), can anyone have any idea what I should do?

    Thank you!

    Péter

  • May 17, 2013 at 4:39 am #53567
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    Hi Peter,

    It’s possible to create great-looking tables on small devices, but you’d need to redesign them to be readable. Break them down into tables with no more than 2 columns, for example, and place them one right after another. Frequent testing/proofing on the iphone as you go will help.

    I would avoid turning tables into jpegs, as you’ve seen, text doesn’t fare well.

    Redesigning info initially presented in complex illustrations or tables is called “linearizing.” I’ve had to do it quite often for some InDesign > EPUB projects from client files.

    AM

  • May 17, 2013 at 4:42 am #53568
    Peter Jutai

    Member

    Dear Anne-Marie,

    thank you very much for your response. I thought that simply redrawing the tables or other simple methods wouldn’t work. I will ask my client to reedit the tables, because I am only a typesetter, not the editor of the book.

    Péter

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