TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Nick Bogaty’ Category

By David Rothman

Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg, says he’s open to creation of .epub files on the fly, via the main Gutenberg site. And he is also willing to consider links to sites that store IDPF-standard files in ready-to-go form.

At the same time, however, Greg writes on a Gutenberg list that he needs convincing evidence that .epub will indeed be an open, honest standard without gotchas coming in from Adobe or any other company. He’ll also need the right software tools—free and open source.

“On the fly” explained

But first, what does “on the fly” mean? It means that Gutenberg would treat .epub as it now does Plucker.

You’d type in a number to identify the e-book file, then wait while the conversion gears ground away and generated .epub from another format such as HTML or .txt. This isn’t an optimal solution, but it’s a good start, especially if Gutenberg also uses direct links to sites with ready-to-go .epub.

Catnip for consumers, if IDPF doesn’t play games

The benefit for Gutenberg visitors would be for future Sony Readers—expected to come with Digital Editions, Adobe’s software that can read .epub, not just PDF—to be able to read .the IDPF format without conversion hassles at the human readers’ end. The same could happen with Bookeen’s forthcoming Cybook Gen3; in fact, an entire generation of E Ink machines with .epub-reading capabilities, whether or not they originated from Adobe software, which apparently won’t happen in the case of the Cybook.

Adobe funds the IDPF, whose executive director, Nick Bogaty, is about to start a job there. While the public domain community will benefit from .epub and mustn’t walk away from the possibilities by ostracizing the IDPF just because Adobe’s involved, we also need verifiable assurances that no one will compromise the integrity of the standard. Integrity is the key to many different brands of commercial software and hardware—not to mention open source freeware and shareware programs—working with .epub from Gutenberg and other sites. (more…)

By Nick Bogaty, Director, IDPF

Moderator’s note: We welcome Nick Bogaty as a contributor, in the interest of presenting a variety of views and keeping readers informed on IDPF issues. Nick will be leaving his IDPF position shortly for his new job at Adobe. - DR

What does the IDPF’s .epub format mean for the e-book industry? Does it mean that publishers can stop doing multiple conversions? For reflowable e-books, the short answer is “yes.” (I say “reflowable” because publishers will still do PDF for fixed-format books if that’s what they want.) The long answer is the following:

In implementing .epub, software companies handle files in one of two ways:

1. The software imports .epub and converts it to an end-user proprietary format. There are a bunch of reasons why a company might do this, the main one being that it wants its format to do things that aren’t covered or possible in .epub.

2. The software simply reads (or renders) .epub files that a user can use, similar to how your iPod “reads” MP3 files.

Many software companies have publicly expressed support for the specifications. Some have already implemented it, some have implemented parts of it and are working on the rest, and some have said they will but haven’t yet. I’m not totally in tune with everyone’s development plans and release dates (some understandably don’t want anyone to know), but this is roughly what I gather:

1. Adobe Systems - full support for .epub in current release under #2
2. eBook Technologies - full support for .epub in current release under #2
3. OSoft - full support for .epub in current release under #2
4. SONY - full support for .epub in next release (don’t know which category, I assume #2)
5. VitalSource - full support for .epub in current release under #1 - taking .epub as an input file from publishers in their repository
6. LibreDigital - full support for .epub in current release under #1 - taking .epub as an input file from publishers in the LibreDigital repository
7. iRex Technologies - future support for .epub (not sure which way iRex will implement…assume #2)
8. Mobipocket/Amazon - future support for .epub under Category #1 (I think) - I have no knowledge of Kindle development plans; hopefully Mobipocket/Amazon will do this with the Kindle too—go here for details. Some of .epub has already been implemented in Mobi 6.0.

Notable “I don’t knows” include Microsoft and eReader (former Palm Digital Media), but .epub is an open, free and patent-unencumbered standard. and I hope all software companies entering the market use .epub as their file format. (more…)