HTML book-like pagination

Solution 1:

Building on Dan's answer here is my solution for this problem, with which I was struggling myself until just now. (this JS works on iOS Webkit, no guarantees for android, but please let me know the results)

var desiredHeight;
var desiredWidth;
var bodyID = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];
totalHeight = bodyID.offsetHeight;
pageCount = Math.floor(totalHeight/desiredHeight) + 1;
bodyID.style.padding = 10; //(optional) prevents clipped letters around the edges
bodyID.style.width = desiredWidth * pageCount;
bodyID.style.height = desiredHeight;
bodyID.style.WebkitColumnCount = pageCount;

Hope this helps...

Solution 2:

Speaking from experience, expect to put a lot of time into this, even for a barebones viewer. An ePub reader was actually first big project I took on when I started learning C#, but the ePub standard is definitely pretty complex.

You can find the latest version of the spec for ePub here: http://www.idpf.org/specs.htm which includes the OPS (Open Publication Structure), OPF (Open Packaging Format), and OCF (OEBPS Container Format).

Also, if it helps you at all, here is a link to the C# source code of the project I started on:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/50kxcr29831t854/MDITIklW3I/ePub%20Test.zip

It's not fleshed out at all; I haven't played with this for months, but if I remember correctly, just stick an ePub in the debug directory, and when you run the program just type some part of the name (e.g. Under the Dome, just type "dome") and it will display the details of the book.

I had it working correctly for a few books, but any eBooks from Google Books broke it completely. They have a completely bizarre implementation of ePub (to me, at least) compared to books from other sources.

Anyway, hopefully some of the structural code in there might help you out!

Solution 3:

I've had to code something like this too, and my (working) solution is this:

You have to apply these lines to the webview...

    webView_.getSettings().setUseWideViewPort(true);
    webView_.getSettings().setLayoutAlgorithm(LayoutAlgorithm.NARROW_COLUMNS);

Also, you have to inject some javascript. I've had tons of problems with the differents scales of my activity and the content rendered in the webview, so my solution doesn't take any kind of value from "outside".

    webView_.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient(){

            public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url) {
                injectJavascript();
            }

        });

[...]

    public void injectJavascript() {
        String js = "javascript:function initialize() { " +
                "var d = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];" +
                "var ourH = window.innerHeight; " +
                "var ourW = window.innerWidth; " + 
                "var fullH = d.offsetHeight; " +
                "var pageCount = Math.floor(fullH/ourH)+1;" +
                "var currentPage = 0; " +
                "var newW = pageCount*ourW; " +
                "d.style.height = ourH+'px';" +
                "d.style.width = newW+'px';" +
                "d.style.webkitColumnGap = '2px'; " +
                "d.style.margin = 0; " +
                "d.style.webkitColumnCount = pageCount;" +
                "}";
        webView_.loadUrl(js);
        webView_.loadUrl("javascript:initialize()");
    }

Enjoy :)