create ipub 3 children's book in Khmer

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Level 1

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create ipub 3 children's book in Khmer

Hello, looking for recommendations on best program to use to create epub 3 format books.

The books are in Khmer as primary langauge - hence the requirement.
I have already created finished content in iBooks format, but need to now back track and make it epub 3 to comply with Apple guidelines.
Would love easiest path to go from iBooks work to epub 3.
These are childrens books that have a lot of illustrations, so I have some sensivity to the way the illustrations are handled by in epub 3 format.

Love the way they look right now in iBooks. Sad that I can't just publish as is. Any ideas on how to encourage Apple to clear this language so they start accepting them in iBooks format?

Help and recommendations very welcome.

Jacob

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 8, 2013 3:07 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,848 points

Oct 8, 2013 4:00 PM in response to jacobseagull

To ask Apple to change their approach regarding languages requiring epub3, you can use

http://www.apple.com/feedback

My understanding is that they have done this because they feel the languages on the list require features that are not available in iBooks Author. For example, for Chinese/Japanese it is vertical text, reverse page turning, and phonetic guides. So when you write them, you need to make the case the no special features are required for Khmer beyond what is in iBA already. I suspect that correct line breaking might be a problem. OS X only supports that for Thai at present.

As for epub3, here is a link relating to using InDesign that may be useful:

http://www.slideshare.net/liz_castro/writing-epub-3-tokyo-ebook-expo

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Answer 2

jacobseagull Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 8, 2013 8:27 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thank you. Khmer is very similar to Thai and it is a left to write language. I will make a submission in their feedback link and look into the differences between Thai and Khmer before I do. I was suspicious that Khmer and Loas may have been left out, whereas Thai was accepted, perhaps because they didn't have anybody advocating for their review / acceptance. Thai Khmer and Laos are all very similar, but Thailand has a much higher population of people and much longer history with the US.

With Lion, Khmer became a supported language. All the work in iBooks Author, previewing the book on iPad, etc. has been seamless up to this point.....

Anyways, thanks for your help.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,848 points

Oct 8, 2013 9:32 PM in response to jacobseagull

Khmer may now be "supported", but that's not necessarily very relevant in this case. Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Hebrew have all been supported for a decade but still require epub3 and cannot be done with iBooks Author, despite the billion plus people involved.

Last I checked Apple still needed to do some work on Khmer support as compare to Thai.

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2012/12/bugs-in-os-x-khmer-and-myanmar-keyboard.html

I wish you good luck with your efforts, though I am not optimistic.

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Answer 4

jacobseagull Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 8, 2013 9:47 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks again. I'll head down the epub3 path and maybe Apple will sort out their Khmer issues for future.

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Answer 5

jacobseagull Author

Level 1

5 points

Oct 25, 2013 10:32 AM in response to jacobseagull

Tom, you have been so reponsive, I thought I would keep this thread going.

New Pages for Mavericks. I have the export to ePub option. Do you know if that is ePub3? I understood that with Pages '09 it was ePub2.

As mentioned above, iBooks Producer wants my Khmer Language books in ePub3 and I would love to do it in Pages rather than with a different program - or by having to learn to program.

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Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,848 points

Oct 25, 2013 10:39 AM in response to jacobseagull

jacobseagull wrote:

New Pages for Mavericks. I have the export to ePub option. Do you know if that is ePub3?

I tend to doubt it, Apple would have made a big deal out of it I think. Publish a test doc and open it up and see if the epub version in mentioned somewhere in meta data or elsewhere.

The new Pages still cannot do vertical text, which is one of the things they require epub 3 for with Chinese/Japanese.

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