Key Information

Kep your ePub projects simple. Avoid complex layouts and formatting, only use simple tables and don't use invisible topics. Only a..z, A..Z, 0..9 and _ are permitted in topic IDs in ePub eBooks!

Before generating ePub eBooks you should download and install the free Adobe Digital Editions software reader from Adobe to be able to preview your ePub books on your Windows computer. Other software readers may also work. Your ePub eBooks will not display after publishing unless you install Digital Editions or a compatible reader!

Adobe Digital Editions download page

If you plan to target other readers and devices you may also want to get those for testing, of course. See ePub Resources for more information and sources.

Styles used in ePub
Most of the style settings in your project will be used in ePub eBooks with the exception of the font face (see below). If you have separate style settings defined for screen and print view then the print view settings will be used in ePub.

You can't choose your font faces in most readers
Apple iBooks® and many other eBook readers use their own font faces and ignore the font settings in your project. Your text will be displayed using the font setting in the reader. Some eBook readers allow the users to change fonts for their viewing pleasure, but you have no control over that.

Some readers support font embedding
Adobe Digital Editions and some other eBook readers will display your font faces if you embed them in the reader. However, this makes your ePub files much bigger and you must have permission to distribute the fonts from the font copyright holders! See Managing Fonts in ePub for details.

Variable font size
Users want to be able to change the font size in the reader. To make this possible you must set your font size encoding to either percent or ems in Project Explorer > Configuration > Publishing Options > WebHelp > HTML Export Options. Setting the font size encoding to pixels or points will make the fonts fixed size in some readers, which is not what you want in ePub.

You don't need to create an HTML page template for iBooks® ePub output. Help & Manual automatically generates the correct templates for fully standards-compliant ePub documents, and since the requirements are very strict these templates are not user-editable.

The ePub eBook standard is open, free and fully documented in the  OPF specifications for ePub. Help & Manual produces standard ePub source files that you can also edit and process manually and with other programs for editing and producing ePub.

Accessing the source files:

When you publish to ePub the source files are automatically written to a new folder in your project folder called:

~tmpepub

If you turn off the Delete temporary files after publishing option in the Publish dialog page you can edit these files directly with any text editor provided you observe the OPF specifications for ePub eBooks. However, note that Apple iBooks® is extremely quirky, so get information on its requirements before trying to create iBooks® ePubs yourself!

Making an ePub file from the source files:

An ePub eBook is actually a normal zip archive with the extension .epub instead of the normal .zip extension. After editing your ePub source files you can create a valid ePub eBook by copying the contents of the ~tmpepub folder to a zip archive and then changing the extension to .epub.

Important: Make sure that the sub-folders are included in the zip archive! Some zip programs will store all the files in the zip without internal folders if you are not careful.