Double Page Spread option

  1. 2 years ago

    I'm looking for a double page spread option in PubCoder. I found an answer that said to uncheck the 'single page' option in the Project Settings. I eventually found this option when I realised it was only available when the export format was switched to 'EPUB3' in the top tool bar. However this has no effect on page numbering, with neither single pages being split into two pages or two separate pages being displayed alongside each other.

    I'm somewhat of a novice when it comes to PubCoder so it could well be that I'm being a bit silly but I can't see a way of working in a double page spread format. This becomes an issue when you want to work across a double page spread (for instance when creating an illustrated children's book) and will want to the target device to recognise the spread as two individual pages (for page numbering and thumbnails).

    My page size is 1024x1152 (2048x1152 for the whole double page spread). We are transposing our children's book Galdo's Gift into PubCoder in order to create an app version.

    Can anyone point towards a solution (I seem to have one of my mental blocks on this one :-) )?

    Thank you.

  2. Angelo S

    3 May 2021 Administrator

    Hello Trevor,
    Yes, that's actually the way to do it when exporting to EPUB. Of course we only specify a metadata as for the EPUB3 standard, it's up to the reader app to render the page properly. Anyway it seems to work correctly for me in Apple Books for Mac, isn't that the case for you?

    As a side note, we're testing PubCoder 4 and will release it in a matter of days. It would be very helpful to have you onboard for a test-drive ;-) https://docs.pubcoder.com/pubcoder_beta.html

  3. Hello Angelo,

    That's great news about Pubcoder 4, I would be very happy to take it for a spin :-)

    Thank you for your response about double page spreads.

    It did indeed work in Apple Books. I had misunderstood how PubCoder treats double page spreads. Based on my new understanding of PubCoder's behaviour when displaying double page spreads, I have a further question...

    How do I view both pages of a double page spread in the stage area of PubCoder at the same time? As well as Galdo's Gift, we have another commission we are working on where we need to design elements across the double page spread and see how the design of both pages work together. I realise we can design elements in a third party application and match those elements in PubCoder but I'm sure I must be missing a setting in PubCoder for viewing double page spreads both in PubCoder and PubReader (where it also only shows single pages).

    I've made a short video here to show what I mean :-)

    I'm a bit worried that I've missed an obvious setting because I haven't seen anyone else query this, so I apologise in advance if I'm being a bit slow :-)

    Thank you

    Trevor

  4. Angelo S

    5 May 2021 Administrator

    Hello Trevor,
    the bad news is that PubCoder doesn't handle a double page spread in its UI, so you can't actually view two sided pages on the spread.

    The "single page" option is for EPUB only, and it only tells the reader to use a double-page spread.

    On XPUB, there's an option to view double pages, but it is thought for a very specific functionality: the ability to display a PORTRAIT page as a single page when the device is in portrait mode, and as Facing Pages in Landscape. In fact, you can see that option only when working on portrait renditions (https://docs.pubcoder.com/pubcoder_xpub.html#project-properties ).

    My question is: if the book is intended to be viewed always with facing pages, why don't simply use a 2880x1280 page size instead of 1440x1280? Also because in PubCoder (but also in EPUB) every page has a separate html file so it would be difficult to let the user interact with elements "across" pages (e.g. moving an object from one page to the facing one).

    Bye,
    Angelo

  5. Hello Angelo,

    Thank you for your detailed reply. It all makes sense.

    We will, as you suggest, work with landscape single pages and just have to accept that page numbering on the thumbnails will be 'spread numbers' rather than page numbers. This way we can work across the spreads.

    Thank you for your help, very much appreciated and I look forward to trying out PubCoder 4! :-)

    Very best

    Trevor

 

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