Embedded text

CircularFLO can work with text in several different ways and each have their advantages and disadvantages. We cover them in this article and the following articles on InDesign live text and CircularFLO live text.

It is important to understand that there is no requirement to use live text with CircularFLO and many customers use 'embedded text', especially when working with PDF and preparing files for Amazon KF8.

By default, all words in placed PDFs, and any InDesign text frames when the CircularFLO Preference Panel option to Prefer InDesign live text is set to no, are added into the eBook page and so become searchable in your ebook.

Embedded text is output as part of a retina-ready high quality JPEG and shown as an exact replica of how it appears in InDesign and in print. In this way areas of difficult to format text, complete pages or entire books can be converted to embedded text instead of live text. This means book are much quicker to convert and there is no restriction on fonts or design whilst still keeping your text searchable.

This way of embedding text is within the fixed layout EPUB3 standard and, although not recommended in Apple guidelines, Apple have thousands of fixed layout EPUBs for sale in the Apple Books Store (either made with CircularFLO or not) that contain either embedded text or no searchable text at all.

To achieve the best accessibility results when working with embedded text, the text should be added to the reading order.

Pros of embedded text

• No requirement to license fonts for ebook
• Exact print replica, all InDesign styles can be used on non live text layers
• Support for older PostScript fonts
• Support for PDF text
• Text is searchable to page level
• Embedded text can run across the ‘fold’ of the eBook

Cons of embedded text

• Text is not searchable to a word level
• Words can't be selected
• Reading order of embedded text should be checked