Comments on: 1M iPhones sold—first weekend: Hint, hint to clueless book biz

By: 2 iphone or not? « The Book is Dead

2 iphone or not? « The Book is Dead — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:53:21 +0000

[...] client and a perfectly readable screen, many are either (1) declaring the death of kindle or (2) bemoaning the lack of publisher interest in what appears to be the hottest portable computer device around. Not that we’re there yet. [...]

By: Hadrien

Hadrien — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:19:12 +0000

@Keith: I agree, using Webkit seems like a natural solution but keep in mind that those engines are not designed for paginated media. There’s also a few specific CSS elements in oeb-* that wouldn’t be natively supported by Webkit.

From a developer perspective, a more open environment, one where you can at least access the file system, would be much better. Maybe we’ll see more and better applications on Android ?

By: Keith Fahlgren

Keith Fahlgren — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:11:37 +0000

@Hardien: I’m saddended by the lack of progress by Adobe (while understanding their complaints) on an iPhone version of the Digital Editions reader. That said, I’m surprised that the work being done doesn’t seem to be leveraging the rendering power of the iPhone browser to do the heavy work of XHTML & CSS support. Sadly, without Leopard I can’t even run the SDK to do a proof of concept. Oh well, the reading software is better _not_ designed by publishers, I think.

By: Keith Fahlgren

Keith Fahlgren — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:08:07 +0000

@David: Stanza clearly has a role to play & has won the race to provide a simple-text reader on the iPhone. However, no CSS, headings, images, & tables means that Stanza is not currently a conformant ePub reader. That lack of conformance means that it does not “support” ePub today:

http://idpf.org/2007/ops/OPS_2.0_final_spec.html#TOC1.4.2

“”"1.4.2: Reading System Conformance

This specification defines only one level of conformance for a Reading System. A Reading System is conformant if and only if it processes documents as follows:

When presented with an OPS Content Document the Reading System must:

1. correctly process the XML as required in the XML 1.1 specification, including that specification’s requirements for the handling of well-formedness errors; and
2. recognize all markup described as permitted in this specification and processes it consistently with the corresponding explanations in this specification and in those of XHTML 1.1, CSS 2, and DTBook”"”

While I’m delighted that they’ve made the first steps in supporting ePub on the iPhone, I don’t like the implication that the “ePub on the iPhone” work is done (or even close).

Why do I care about the lack of CSS, headings, images, & tables? Because I’m interested in giving readers access to more than just Fiction content. There is a huge segment of the output of the publishing industry that can’t be understood by readers without some amount of structural markup.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:55:46 +0000

But, Keith, the Stanza e-reader does support ePub. Feedbooks has gotten thousands of ePub download requests in two days or so. Stanza may well have been the reason. As for DRM, there is no "protection" standard for ePub. But who says DRM is the best way to go anyway, and at least the publishers could have encouraged Mobi to come out faster with its proprietary DRM-"capable" reader to make the launch date. Lost sales! eReader was apparently the only one of the big-time readers with DRM capabilities to be ready by then. Thanks. David

By: Hadrien

Hadrien — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:55:39 +0000

That’s correct Keith, there’s no reading system that fully supports the standard yet. Stanza support it a bit better than FBReader currently (page breaks between flows and support for NCX files) but there’s no CSS support for example. Adobe wanted to create an iPhone version of DE but there’s several reasons why they’re annoyed by the current development conditions on the iPhone: no access to the filesystem, no MIME handler, no support for Flash etc…

By: Keith Fahlgren

Keith Fahlgren — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:39:55 +0000

“”"Why aren’t publishers piggybacking on all this commerce with cross promo? “”"

…because there aren’t iPhone/iPodTouch ePub readers that support the standard.