I have been writing in iBooks Author for a while to produce a book. I loved what was shown by Apple as possibilities. My book contains a lot of diagrams, the source material are vector images (SVG or PDF). These images are sometimes large and are unreadable, unless the user can zoom in and pan/scroll around.
Given that iOS is PDF-based and that HTML5 has SVG I assumed (mistakenly) that iBooks and iBooks Author would support resolution-independence vector images. Indeed, it will accept PDF often, but on creation of the .ibook, it produces low resolution bitmaps. There is no decent way to create image viewing that enables a user to look at a diagram that cannot be read on page size of an iPad2. Interactive Image will allow larger images (up to 4096pixels wide in landscape mode), but to let the user zoom you need fake viewpoints that point somewhere and in all, creating something where the user can pan/scroll/zoom is ugly and a pain.
I have been looking at HTML5 widgets to see if one can get around this. But here too, iBooks Author seems not to allow SVG in those (just displays empty, so does iBooks Author kills the SVG on export from .iba to .ibooks?). SO, I hoped the standards of iOS (PDF and HTML5) woul dsolve any problem, but iBooks Author seems to make sure it does not work.
I am so frustrated that I am close to giving up. iBooks Author and Ibooks need (for me):
- handling vector-images (SVG and PDF) (come on, Apple, how can you be so slow with supporting resolution independence, especially given Retina iPads?)
- the ability to let the user pan/scroll over large images that can be zoomed in/out
And I am not talking about stupid things like not being able to replace an image inside a picture element with a new image without losing the picture element and having to manually redo all the links to it.
It has been more than a half year since Apple released iBooks Author. Unless I find a way to let the reader investigate larger diagrams, preferably interactive ones, e.g. created as a HTML5 widget with SVG objects in it, or unless Apple delivers a product with less problems bugs and such, my project needs to move away from iBooks.