Comments on: Latest proprietary eBabel entrant: Adobe’s ‘Mars’? And related new DRM woes for the IDPF? http://www.teleread.org/2006/10/31/latest-proprietary-ebabel-entrant-adobes-mars/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:20:53 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: David Rothman http://www.teleread.org/2006/10/31/latest-proprietary-ebabel-entrant-adobes-mars/comment-page-1/#comment-106899 David Rothman Wed, 01 Nov 2006 22:31:48 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5731#comment-106899 Thanks for your note, Bill M. Speaking of red herrings, my post started right off with mention of the purity of PDF/A, etc. But that's not to be confused with the usual Adobe-bossed PDF. As for OEBPS vs. the Mars alternative, we'll see what the publishers choose. Some may pick the easiest path and go for Mars when they should be doing the OEBPS routine. Meanwhile, within your note, we are not seeing a four-letter acronym dear to you: IDPF. Interesting. If we go by your past comments on e-book matters, shouldn't the IDPF be Standards Central? I can't wait to see how things shake out. Thanks, David Thanks for your note, Bill M. Speaking of red herrings, my post started right off with mention of the purity of PDF/A, etc. But that’s not to be confused with the usual Adobe-bossed PDF.

As for OEBPS vs. the Mars alternative, we’ll see what the publishers choose. Some may pick the easiest path and go for Mars when they should be doing the OEBPS routine.

Meanwhile, within your note, we are not seeing a four-letter acronym dear to you: IDPF. Interesting. If we go by your past comments on e-book matters, shouldn’t the IDPF be Standards Central? I can’t wait to see how things shake out.

Thanks,
David

]]> By: Bill McCoy http://www.teleread.org/2006/10/31/latest-proprietary-ebabel-entrant-adobes-mars/comment-page-1/#comment-106743 Bill McCoy Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:23:46 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5731#comment-106743 PDF/A is standardized via AIIM and ISO, as ISO Standard 19005-1. Can't get much more de jure than that. See: http://www.aiim.org/standards.asp?ID=25013 We have not announced de jure standards plans for "Mars" - it is being shared with the community at an early stage of development as a technology preview. Speaking personally, since Mars simply defines an alternative XML-based serialization for the existing PDF "Infoset", it would be logical to consider the XML serialization being part of a future revision to ISO 19005 (a 19005-2 is already being developed). Mars itself is largely based on building-block open standards, especially W3C SVG. Your concern about overlap with OEBPS is a red herring. OEBPS defines a profile of XHTML+CSS. XHTML is a structure-based reflow-centric format, not a final-form paginated format like PDF. Defining an XML-based syntax for PDF doesn't change its fundamental nature and advantages for certain use cases (such as when it's desired to maintain high fidelity of a particular final-form visual layout, or when digital content must be authored as part of a print-based workflow). There's no danger of confusion, whether the representation of PDF be today's binary form or the future XML form previewed by "Mars". Adobe's new Digital Editions software supports both PDF and XHTML-based publications, since they are fundamentally complementary content representations. More information is at: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions PDF/A is standardized via AIIM and ISO, as ISO Standard 19005-1. Can’t get much more de jure than that. See: http://www.aiim.org/standards.asp?ID=25013

We have not announced de jure standards plans for “Mars” – it is being shared with the community at an early stage of development as a technology preview. Speaking personally, since Mars simply defines an alternative XML-based serialization for the existing PDF “Infoset”, it would be logical to consider the XML serialization being part of a future revision to ISO 19005 (a 19005-2 is already being developed).

Mars itself is largely based on building-block open standards, especially W3C SVG.

Your concern about overlap with OEBPS is a red herring. OEBPS defines a profile of XHTML+CSS. XHTML is a structure-based reflow-centric format, not a final-form paginated format like PDF. Defining an XML-based syntax for PDF doesn’t change its fundamental nature and advantages for certain use cases (such as when it’s desired to maintain high fidelity of a particular final-form visual layout, or when digital content must be authored as part of a print-based workflow). There’s no danger of confusion, whether the representation of PDF be today’s binary form or the future XML form previewed by “Mars”.

Adobe’s new Digital Editions software supports both PDF and XHTML-based publications, since they are fundamentally complementary content representations. More information is at: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions

]]>