Flexibility helps keep us healthy. We can better enjoy physical activity which, in turn, motivates us to exercise. Keep on stretchin’! Likewise, a flexible digital publication format is much better for the industry—and for readers—than a rigid, limited one. To be more precise, a flexible format is more likely to be embraced, due to business pressures. The IDPF’s new open standard e-book format, ePUB, is rapidly proving its flexibility. And ePUB’s flexibility is, of course, intentional by design. A little history of ePUB's predecessor as a consumer standard Five years, two months and eight days ago, I published the reviewed eBookWeb article: “OEBPS: The Universal...

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...

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...

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. As it happens, I've worked with XML since...

I'm no true prognosticator, but I think we can see the outline of the next generation of e-readers now. Like Sophie, it can be programmed by an author. Like FBReader and Lector, it will be open platform and accept many formats. And it will be built on a 'prairielight' framework....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...