Moby-Dick annotated epub, based on the great efforts of Power Moby-Dick, The Online Annotation.

• Highly recommended extras to be found there
  • Glossary
  • Resources including diagrams of whaleships and the surprising background of How Moby-Dick got his name

With front/back material from a scanned, signed first-edition from the Internet Archive.

1. Scrape PMD TOC and Chapters
2. Basic HTML clean up, then some deep cleaning and patching to improve the e-reader experience
3. Prep the EPUB content, XHTML chapters
4. Build the EPUB - an edition that uses epub footnotes, and an edition that uses hyperlinks. See below.

I test on epub readers that I have used for a long time, without trying harder for more common devices or apps :

• Windows 11, Calibre epub reader, validator and builder ❤️
• Android tablet, with the reliable Lithium epub reader ❤️
• iPhone, with the spectacular Readdle Documents, although links - not popups. See below.
• Kobo Libra Color claims to support popup footnotes. In fact, Kobo have struggled for years to get this right, and still haven't. See below.

Unfortunately, e-pub devices and apps support TOC Navigation, and Footnotes in different ways (or not).

To keep this overview minimal, I address technical topics in:

• TOC navigation, and
• Footnotes

Due to unreliable support for these two essential e-book features by device manufacturers and app developers, your e-reader may work better with

• the footnote release (popup footnotes 😃), or
• the hyperlink release (functional yet disruptive links back-and-forth between main text and footnotes 😒)

Why is it so hard for device manufacturers and app developers to get this right? I don't know. People get hard stuff right all the time.

Suggestions are welcome to improve the annotated Moby-Dick reading experience. Something not work on your e-reader? Please report it.

If you can demonstrate WORKING, or WORKING/CONFORMANT Popup Footnotes or TOC Navigation for a particular scenario, please consider submitting that. See examples that:

• conform ... popups work, and syntax conforms to a recognized standard, and
• work ... popups work, although syntax may not conform to any spec.
• no copyrighted content, please. just simple examples of working syntax, like the ones in those folders.

To customize your own edition, consider the config.yaml setting debugging: True to focus a debugging session. The setting epub_ref: "foot" produces the Footnote editions; epub_ref: "link" produces the hyperlink edition.

With respect and gratitude for Herman and Margaret. ❤️

• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is in the public domain.
• All notes in Power Moby-Dick: The Online Annotation copyright 2008 by Margaret Guroff.
• Rendered and released here to common e-book formats with permission.

This is what I can offer.

-- DDT