Published
A new update has been released for the Digital Hub. The update includes several feature updates to improve the accessibility of ebooks produced within the Well-Formed Document Workflow.
Long Description Linking
The conversion from sam to ScML will attempt to automatically link fighn to <longdescription> elements. The linking works by matching the fighn to the ah or figh1 paragraph. The figh1 or ah used in the long description will link back to the original figure.
Long descriptions that can’t be easily matched to a single figure will result in a conversion alert.
Granular Language Scribing and Round-Tripping
Language metadata can be manually added to a character style span at any stage of the WFDW. This metadata will travel between file formats.
- In a Word file, the name pattern should be style@lang=code (lang@lang=es, sup-i@lang=fr).
- In an InDesign file, the name pattern should be style-language (lang-language-es, sup-i-language-fr).
- In a sam file, the name pattern should be <style lang="code"> (<lang lang="es">, <sup-i lang="fr">).
This data will round-trip automatically between the file formats. (To extract this info out of InDesign, Scribe Tools 4.0 or later is required.)
When converting to .docx, the new style will appear like the style it’s based on: lang@lang=es renders like lang, sup-i@lang=fr renders like sup-i.
For more information about this feature and the requirements, see Language Scribing.
HTML Markup Updates
A number of ScML styles will now map to more descriptive HTML elements. This follows the recommendations of leading accessibility specifications. Scribe’s default CSS has also been updated to reflect this new markup.
Many character styles with an “-i” or “-b” will now map to <i> and <b> in ePub and HTML. For example,
- ccust1-i becomes <i class="ccust1-i">
- lang-b becomes <b class="lang-b">.
This applies to the language styles and others that currently convert to <span> in HTML (e.g., gt-i, dropcap-i, dispk-i, frac-i, tetr-i, first-i, osf-i, chemb-i, hemb-i, trh-i, sm-i, speaker-i, symb-i).
sub-u and sup-u now abide by the same rules as sub-i and sup-i, so they end up in HTML like <sub class="u"> instead of <span class="sub-u">.
Footnotes in ePubs will not be encoded in a way that is similar to endnotes for accessibility purposes. This does not require any changes to procedures or scribing. However, users who unzip ePubs may see this change in the HTML. This may appear counterintuitive at first. Footnotes will be coded as list items in an ePub, using the “list” and “listitem” roles and the “endnote” epub:type. The class of these list items is still footnote.
Retain MS Word Images Improvements
The Retain MS Word Images conversion setting has been redesigned to preserve alternate text added in Microsoft Word, report images that could not be extracted from the Word file, and fix a number of bugs. The file and image naming patterns have been changed to prevent a number of issues and to increase the number of images that can be successfully extracted from Word files.
User Interface Improvements
- New warnings have been added when the figh/fighn or th/thn counts don’t match.
- A new warning has been added when a self-closing note reference appears in the sam or ScML file.
- The last name field for creators and contributors is now handled as Last Name/Organization. If there is group authorship instead of individual authorship, this field can be used without the need to add a first name. This can also be used for single-name authors.
- Project settings that deviate from either Scribe’s default settings or the organization settings will have an alert in the project conversion settings.
Additional Changes
- Conversions to IDTT will no longer add soft hyphens to img callouts or alt text.
- Conversions to ScML will avoid linking toc lines to ah paragraphs in the endnote section.
- Paragraphs with only page locators will be deleted on conversion from XML to sam.