What's New in IGP:Digital Publisher 7.14

IGP:Digital Publisher (DP) is designed for formal publishing and publishers. DP is a digital content production solution that converts HTML (with highly semantic CSS properties) into ANY package or format. That includes:

• PDFs for print, online and supplementary content
• EBook formats such as EPUB2/3 and now EPUB 3.2; plus Kobo Kindle and others.
• Static Websites and other  packages such as SCORM for education.

Here are the major new features in release 7.14. The full release notes are available here

IGP:DP 7.14.0 - Updates, Upgrades & Enhancements

The following new features have been implemented in this release:

1. Accessibility metadata

Accessibility (A11Y) has recently had a high level of focus with the W3C for the Internet in general and IDPF committee for EPUB... and it has become a fast moving target with no testing tools and no real worked samples.

The EPUB Accessibility Specification (http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y) requires some accessibility metadata in the package file (http://www.idpf.org/epub/a11y/#sec-disc-package). This is fully outlined in the release notes.

To meet the new requirements we have now introduced an expanded "Accessibility Metadata" section under the "Document Metadata" heading on the DPI form. The user can now select the required check-boxes as per their content features for accessibility delivery requirements.

The update will reflect in the respective opf file as generated for EPUB3, EPUB3+2, EPUB2 and Kindle formats.

We will explore these options more fully in another article. Plus a lot more information about the new WAI:ARIA accessibility standards.

2. DOCX Importer with controls

In the current version of DP, the Manuscript importer works only for IGP styled documents, WORD basic styled documents and custom created manuscript importers. With more interactive education and training content being produced it became necessary to process interactive content authored using the full DOC Form control styles in a manuscript.

To support this an additional docx importer "DOCX-Control-Style" is now introduced in the Manuscript Import dropdown. This supports the following DOC structures:

1. Dropdown
2. Checkboxes
3. Block and inline SVG
4. Block and inline MathML
5. Images
6. Content control blocks
7. Lists OL/UL
8. Nested Lists
9. Inline styles

Notes:

1. This importer is only limited to the WORD default styled structures, and does not consider the IGP styled structures. That needs to be applied to the content after import. But with Content blocks that is straight-forward.
2. ActiveX control is not supported for import e.g.: Radio buttons and normal form buttons etc.
3. If we saved docx file using Libre Office then all svg files will be convert into  png files.
4. 'Sup' and 'Sub' inline styles are not identified.

3. Formats generation window messaging update

Currently when a format fails to generate, the message displayed was programmer English! "The Server has occurred an error, could not be generated because of packaging failure."

This message is now changed to "The requested format could not be generated because of packaging failure. Please contact the Administrator."

IGP:DP 7.14.0 - Presentation Template updates

The Master Presentation Templates will be updated by IGP during the update activity. If you have created any custom templates based on the IGP Master Templates, please check that these updates are applied in your templates if applicable.

• Added Accessibility Metadata section in the DPI form.

IGP:DP 7.14.0 - Bug Fixes

1. Formats generation was sometimes failing due to missing temp directory on some deployment servers. This is now fixed.

2. On clicking Forgot Password and providing the email ID, the User gets an email with the 'Modify Password' URL link. The change password button is deactivated, unless you exit the box with a TAB. The CHANGE PASSWORD button is now kept active without having to tab out of the second password field.

Summary

IGP:Digital Publisher continues to address new publisher requirements and features. These are becoming more specialist as time goes on but are eas but do reinforce the fact that excellent basic styling as defined in IGP:FoundationXHTML and the IGP:Digital Publisher template strategy ensures new tagging, processing and format generation features straight-forward to introduce.

The heart of IGP:Digital Publisher is "Digitize Once. Use forever." These new updates demonstrate that it's not just what you do, but how you do it that matters.

Publishers of all types of content: trade (fiction and non-fiction), Academic, Education, Corporate and Institutional take giant steps forward when upgrading to IGP:Digital Publisher.