Live Text In KF8 Fixed Layouts

Well, the KF8 story just keeps getting stranger by the minute it seems. What is this picture at the left, you might ask? What you're looking at is my KF8 Fixed Layout template with live text!!! Zoomed, highlighted, search capable, and dictionary functional - even within the magnified region!



Yes, that's right, The single most annoyingly absent feature of KF8 FL (to my mind, at any rate), the crucial element that separates fixed layouts from simple PDF's, the one for which we toil and struggle until we're bleary-eyed and nearly brain dead, is not actually missing at all. KF8 Fixed Layout is, in fact, fully capable of supporting live text, as is.



But how might that be, you may wonder? When Amazon's own sample files for both children's and comics layouts contain no live text themselves? When every menu entry pertaining to these functions is disabled with a KF8 fixed layout file opened? Listen closely children, and I shall tell you a tale of mystery and wonder.



The fact is that when you know what you're doing you tend to do what you know will work. But when you're flying blind or wandering lost in deep despair, you tend to stumble aimlessly down unknown avenues in hopes that they might lead you somewhere. This latter, sadly, applies far more often to me than the former. Thus is was that by chance (as all good things tend to occur when trial and error is your mode of operation), that I did the one thing no one in their right mind would logically consider doing: I deleted the book-type entry from the OPF metadata section entirely. Yup. Zip. Nada. No line entry at all. No book-type of any kind.



Why would I do this? Why delete both book-type entries from the opf? Simple process of elimination, my good Watson. Perhaps I've been reading too much Sherlock Holmes of late (which may account for this over-prosy narrative as well), or maybe it's my love of science, but I tend to work by reverse engineering when trying to determine how something functions. Eliminate all other possibilities, removing the uncertainty of multiple variables, and what you're left with either works or doesn't. But at least you know what caused it to work or not.



And this works like a charm. Compiles perfectly without errors, and opens with every feature of both fixed layout and live text functioning. All, that is, save font styling options, which of course, you don't want operational in fixed layout after all. Mind you now, I haven't sent one of these through KDP, so the experiment is not as yet complete. But I can't imagine why in their right mind Amazon would not want these features active in KF8-FL. Wouldn't this be a major selling feature? Why cripple your own device with a half-functional format? Do they honestly not know this is possible? Or is this just a really glaring lapse on the part of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines editor? Okay, rant over.



And, get this: bookmarks! Readers can now actually bookmark their graphic novels and cookbooks. You can highlight your fixed layout travel guides. You can annotate the text and images. And all those entries show up under "My Notes & Marks" in the menu. Not only that, but a single tap on any interactive element reveals its magTarget area: the region within which you can double-tap to magnify that element. This makes it far more practical to determine exactly where your tap target boundaries are when constructing an ebook with mag regions, rather than relying entirely on mathematical calculations, or worse, guesswork.



And on that note, for those of you still struggling with KF8 Mag Regions, I am currently in the midst of writing something of a mini-tutorial on the subject, so stay tuned for that. It may take me a day or two to finish, as the subject is rather complex, and my free time limited. But it should be up by week's end, barring any unforeseen obstacles.