TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘OpenReader’ Category

By Jon Noring

I have been quite perplexed in reading the many comments about IDPF’s “ePub” format following the release late last year of its underlying specs. A number of very smart people, including several developers who naturally dig deeply into tech specs, have painted ePub as a dark and mysterious digital publication (e-book) format, unlike anything else in the Universe™.

The way some have discussed ePub, if Indiana Jones were to explore the deep caverns of ePub, he would probably find something exotic and other-worldly, maybe even the remnants of a long-lost civilization. [note 1]

In reality, though, the opposite is true. ePub is internally quite recognizable and familiar, very similar to traditional web content that we all know and love.

ePub and web content share a number of important commonalities:

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By Jon Noring

When I was in college I collected 78 RPM phonograph records, primarily jazz records from the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Either I was good at collecting, or just lucky. I found and acquired several large jazz and blues collections (a total of over 100,000 records, about 25 tons, passed through my fingers), and didn’t lose a dime in the process.

I’ve long since given up massively collecting the “old 78’s”, and today have only kept a few favorites. One favorite I kept, a quite rare classic jazz recording from late 1928, is shown to the right. [note 1] My experience collecting older sound recordings has given me some unique perspectives as it relates to media, e-books, copyright, conversion, archiving, formats, etc.

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By Roger Sperberg

For something like five or six years, I’ve been able to style XML elements with CSS and have the text displayed just the way I want.

That is, in the XMetaL XML editor* and in browsers.

Not in an e-reader, however. All the e-readers specify the vocabulary you’re permitted to use in your e-book**.

There’s a difference between a reader and a browser, between a reader and an editor.

The reader has library functions, bookmarks, annotations. It collects multiple files into a single package; browsers and editors don’t have the same orientation. They just won’t do. (more…)

By Roger Sperberg

Over the last two years, I’ve thought a lot about what I want in an e-reader.

As someone who’s made my living as a freelance writer and written a couple books, I’ve thought about copyright and the rights of a creator. These concerns are pretty low in my current thinking.

As a technologist, I’ve thought about including motion, sound, color and interactivity to take advantage of the content being delivered by a computer. Following the development of Sophie, I’ve come to accept the need for creators to make rich-media texts, no longer thinking of this as an after-creation/publisher activity.

As a reader, I’ve thought about getting ahold of what I want to read and removing the barriers to what Bill Hill calls ludic reading. What kind of device do I want to hold in my hand and what do I want to see on it? In this time, I’ve mostly been using FBReader on the Nokia 770, N800 and N810 internet tablets, and I am consequently dependent upon a flexible and color-capable device, unlike the majority of what the market seems to be offering up right now.

As someone who has worked in book publishing for the last fifteen years, I’ve thought about how to forego copyright as a mechanism for economic protection and still provide incentives for publishers and writers (and jobs for editors). A viable business model — gosh, it sounds more and more like the search for the holy grail.

I’m no true prognosticator, but I think we can see the outline of the next generation of e-readers now.

Bowing to Sophie’s makers, I believe the new e-books will contain far richer media than at present. And by this I don’t mean “including video and audio” but just what Sophie’s makers do: including anything an author might devise when provided with full programming capability.

Like FBReader and Openberg Lector, the next-gen e-reader will accept a whole slew of formats. And as the OpenReader and OEBF formats champion, the most useful formats will deliver a single file that itself contains one or more maps to multiple files inside it. And we’ll be able to escape the “html with a slight makeover” straitjacket we’ve lived with since day one of e-reading.

And as FBReader and Lector insist, the next-gen e-reader will be multi-platform.

All of which lead me to expect that the triumvirate of AJAXed development platforms — Mozilla’s Prism, Adobe’s AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight (I call them “Prairielight”) — will provide us with many new e-readers. (more…)

By David Rothman

If any e-book Web site could benefit from the new .epub standard for digital publications, it’s Munseys—the mostly public domain site where David Moynihan strives to offer “Over 20,000 rare and hard to find titles in 10 formats.”

The big word here is “strives.” David M is still wrestling with Mobipocket hassles, for example, despite the months of work he has already put into the site.

Alas, David appears to be burning in a Dantesque Format Hell, beyond his other woes (I still can’t find Babbitt—database problems?).

Here’s a screenshot from a typical Mobipocket book as now offered by David. In most cases, at least in Mobipocket Desktop 6.0, you won’t see a full page. And that’s sad since I miss David’s Blackmask site and, as a reader, am rooting for his forthcoming “five-figure” formal launch of Munseys to go well.

Wacky jihad against .epub

David’s bizarre little jihad against .epub, then, which now has shown up in a wacky opinion piece in The Register, is all the more disappointing considering how much .epub could eventually simplify life at Munseys. He shrugs off .epub as just a wicked conspiracy to diminish competition in the e-book business and pave the way for sales of Adobe software.

Who knows what David is thinking? I’m surprised, however, that the Reg would publish his rant without mentioning a pesky little detail—namely that David in effect makes his living in part as a format converter.

Like an oil company zealot writing on global warming

Relevant? This is something for the reader to decide; but David’s column appeared without the slightest direct hint of his role in the e-book business, just a little link to Munseys at the bottom. Having David hold forth on e-book standards is a little like asking an anti-solar nut at an oil company to comment on alternative energy or global warming. Consider how he tarred .epub by at least implying that it “would support .pdf.” While Adobe’s Digital Editions can read both .epub and .pdf, that’s hardly a requirement for other .epub-capable readers. Time for David to take Syllogisms 101?

More importantly, .epub could help sites such as Munseys to focus less on technology and more on content and commerce. That’s what open standards will make possible, along with a greater selection of books for readers. It’s time to raze the Tower of eBabel forever.

I’ll make David an exception since I like his site, glitches notwithstanding, but otherwise a chute should goes straight from every floor in the Tower right down to Format Hell for any resident who resists .epub. (more…)

By Jon Noring

Over four years ago I published an eBookWeb article entitled “OEBPS: The Universal Consumer eBook Format?”

Unfortunately, due to eBookWeb going defunct (a casualty of the “E-book Dark Ages” that resulted after the dotcom collapse), that article has essentially disappeared from the Internet.

So I am reposting the eBookWeb article here, not only for preservation purposes, but because its themes are stil very relevant today as will be briefly explained in this foreword.

DeLorean jokes

When I wrote that article, e-books were considered a lot like the DeLorean automobile — weird and impractical — the butt of many jokes. The DeLorean even played a prominently silly role in the movie trilogy Back To The Future.

But times have changed! Just as Google News is full of articles about an entrepreneur reviving the gull-wing-doored, stainless steel automobile to an enthusiastic public, so too e-books are finally being noticed and bought by an enthusiastic public. E-book sales are growing at a fast rate.

My 2003 article had three, closely related themes:

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By David Rothman

For an explanation of the new IDPF format for e-books and other digitital documents, you’d do well to check out Executive Director Nick Bogaty’s note to the if:book blog. I’ll reproduce it later in this TeleBlog post since it’s apparently impossible to link directly to individual comments in the if:book blog right now, or at least not Nick’s.

Learn what .epub, OPS and the other basics mean, and how the IDPF format is more than just a vehicle for DRM; this is optional. Standardized e-book formats help everyone, DRMers and DRM-haters alike, by allowing sophisticated typographical niceties and other advantages—especially useful for scientific, technical and mathematical publishing. Should we prefer a Tower of eBabel? Instead, now that IDPF is on the way to dealing with core format issues, we should encourage the group to carry out promises to work toward interoperable DRM if publishers keep insisting on DRM. Of course, I hope they don’t. Consider how EMI’s retreat from DRM has improved music sales. The best DRM is none—or at least nothing more than social DRM, where identifying information would appear in the books you bought. Again, however, don’t confuse DRM with the issue of core-format standards.

What prompted Nick’s note

Nick’s note was prompted, at least indirectly, by the following observation from if:book’s Dan Visel: “One of the major reasons that we haven’t spent much time covering the efforts of the IDPF is that it’s devoted to standards that satisfy producers rather than consumers; many producers are concerned with locking down their products as thoroughly as possible. It may be a reasonable position from their perspective, but it’s resulted in products that aren’t particularly useful to consumers. (more…)

By David Rothman

Laurent Picard and Michaël Dahan at Bookeen gave the world the Cybook—the late and lamented e-book reader with a booklike leather cover and a 10-inch screen.

They valiantly tried to come up with a hardware-software combo to help users survive the Tower of eBabel among major e-book formats.

In the end Laurent and Michaël failed. But it was a good fight and not their fault that they lost, even if they made some mistakes along the way.

Retracing L&M’s footsteps

Yesterday, tinkering with my used $155 tablet, the DT 375 (photo), also Windows CE-based, I was retracing the Bookeen duo’s footsteps in a sense. I managed to get an unsupported version of Microsoft Reader going with nice, sharp letters on the screen thanks to ClearType, albeit without DRM-related “features.” Unfortunately I lacked time for the Rube Goldbergish activation procedure. See the invaluable DT375.com site for more on the tablet’s use with Reader, while keeping in mind that I haven’t independently confirmed the findings there.

Earlier I was able to read another DRMish format, Mobipocket, again thanks to a link from DT375.com, and I found that Mobi nicely digested Snow Crash and The Diamond Age in a “protection”-tainted format that lawful users must suffer. (more…)

By Jon Noring

Tomorrow (the 16th) is the last day for the public and IDPF members to provide feedback on the draft OPS 2.0 standard (the XML-based framework behind the upcoming “epub” e-book open standard). OPS 2.0 is currently in its last public review stage before moving on to final tweaking and approval by the IDPF membership.

Speak now or forever hold your peace!

Thus, it is important that anyone planning to use OPS 2.0 in any manner — from authoring to presentation — should go over the OPS 2.0 draft spec (and the auxiliary OPF 2.0 draft spec) and provide feedback. Your feedback is easy to provide: post your reply to Nick Bogaty’s IDPF forum announcement. A few people, including yours truly, have already provided feedback to this forum topic. (Note, if you do provide feedback, click on the “post reply” button, not the “new topic” button.)

Importantly note you need not be an IDPF member for your input to be considered. All input will be considered on an equal basis.

Once the OPS 2.0 spec is finalized and approved by the IDPF membership (which it likely will), it will be etched in stone, and future changes or improvements to the spec will be somewhat restricted to maintain compatibility. This is all the more reason to provide feedback if you are concerned about any aspect of OPS 2.0.

Why should anyone care about the “epub” open standard?

The obvious question is if epub has any chance of becoming an important (or even the dominant) reflowable e-book standard in the marketplace?

In my estimation it has a great chance. First, the OPS 2.0 spec (which, as noted previously, forms the underlying framework for epub) is an update to OEBPS 1.2. (more…)

By David Rothman

My $225 Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 tablet arrived this week—a miser’s special, with XGA res, Win XP and a 6G drive. And I’m smoothly running Mobipocket, uBook, yBook, and a host of other programs on it. For e-booking, I’m using heavy fonts such as Britannica Bold since the screen lacks the contrast of more modern models. But other than that and a Win XP authentication problem—which the conscientious eBay seller will fix, so it’s clear this is a legal copy in name and fact—the old Fujitsu is fine. In the next week or so, I’ll have more to say about the Fujitsu and other low-cost used tablets for e-books. I even find that South Korea is using a modern version of my tablet in a digital textbook program. But the topic today is something else, a consequence of my purchase.

Thanks to the greater ease of reading e-newspapers on the Fujitsu than on my PDA, I’ll ax my Sunday subscription to the paper edition of the Washington Post (99 cents a week for new subscribers in my 22304 ZIP code in Alexandria, VA). A lesson for the book industry, too? When people go E in one medium, it’s at least a hint they’ll do the same in another. The more people forsake dead-tree newspapers for the Web, the wider the audience for e-books. Meanwhile I’d love to hear from people at the Post or other newspapers in response to what I’ll write below.

What I would buy from the Post

Unlike many people on the Net, I would pay the Post a reasonable amount for archival access if need be, a full-service mobile edition, and a truly customizable RSS feed, so that in one swoop I could get all the headlines I wanted—in fact, even full stories. I’d welcome a Post version of the Times Reader, too, if the same software also worked with the Times and other papers, ideally based on a standard like OpenReader or the IDPF’s. Although you can subscribe to a downloadable Post digital edition, it is outrageously clunky compared to the Times Reader. A digital package for the Post, encompassing all these goodies, should cost no more than the $50 a year that the New York Times is charging for Times Select, which comes with premium content—except that Reader-style software should be free. For now, I’ll just use Firefox to read in the Post. (more…)

By Jon Noring

DigitalPulp Publishing (DPP), a member of IDPF, is the first publisher (as far as we know) to release an e-book in IDPF’s new “epub” format: My Ántonia by Willa S. Cather. This e-book is being freely distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

At present our e-book is only downloadable from IDPF’s web site, but will soon be available through DPP’s site. In addition, I’ve posted a message to the public IDPF Standards Forum summarizing, in gory detail, which features of OPS 2.0 are and are not supported (OPS 2.0 is the backbone specification underlying “epub” — currently OPS 2.0 is in the final Member and Public Review stage.)

There are currently two ways to read our epub:

1. Adobe Digital Editions (currently in beta), or

2. Use your browser to view the XML documents (which are XHTML 1.1) contained inside the epub.

For browser viewing (which will be nowhere near optimal compared to Adobe DE), extract the files using any zip application and view the “*.xml” files in the “OPS” folder. The main content document is the file “myantonia.xml”. For best results, use a current version of Firefox, Opera or IE, and keep the present folder structure so the links work and referenced CSS style sheets and images are used.

OSoft’s dotReader will also soon support “epub”.

DPP plans to issue and distribute most of the e-books it directly publishes for authors in the epub format once the OPS 2.0 standard is elevated to the final “Recommended” status. (Note: at David Rothman’s request I plan to post an article discussing the upcoming OPS 2.0 standard, as well as discuss the current status and future of OpenReader.)

Other publishers are welcome to “decompile” this epub publication and use it as an aid to learn the OPS 2.0 specification and as a template to build your own epub publications.

Happy reading!

The author of this article, Jon Noring, is VP of Development for DigitalPulp Publishing. He also contributed to the development of OPS 2.0.

By David Rothman

Update 2007/04/28, 11:59 MDT: The OpenReader site is back online, and the “malware” has been removed. Somehow a bunch of links to bad sites and a bad-actor counter got added. They’ve been removed with the help of James “KodeKrash” Linden, who is also now tracking down how the bad stuff got there in the first place. He says avoid using canned CMS like Mambo if possible, a sentiment with which I agree. Now to get the Google bad flag removed for all search results which bring up OpenReader pages. - Jon Noring

Badware has infested the OpenReader site, and it’s down to protect visitors. Earlier I suspended my efforts for OpenReader for unrelated reasons, but I hope that founder Jon Noring can get the site cleaned up and online again. Any security-savvy volunteers ready to help him?

The bigger picture: OpenReader badly needs to end up in the hands of librarians or others with an interest in getting the IDPF to do standards for real—that could be a new mission for the group. Hello, Peter Brantley and friends?