Proprietary formats have long blocked e-books’ acceptance. Set aside all the myriad issues of lock-in, DRM, and so on. How about the Tower of eBabel? And what to do about all the platforms out there? I own a variety of computers. Just which formats can be read on all types of non e-book devices– Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm, PocketPC and WinCE?
For instance, I’d like to be able to make my e-books on a Windows laptop I use, and read them on the Linux-powered Nokia 770. Plucker‘s Viewer runs on that 8-ounce device, but there’s no native Windows version. Preparing a .pdb file with wide images requires transfer to a Linux box (or emulator, as I do) just to see how things look.
OpenBerg has delivered the first versions of a cross-platform reader, but it unfortunately uses UI tools incompatible with the GTK-based Internet Tablet distro created by Nokia. In other words, don’t expect to see it on the 770 or its successors.
If you not only want to develop on a desktop machine but read on one as well, you’re in luck. (You’re also very unusual, I would say.) Eventually WinCE devices may see an OpenBerg Reader, but not PalmOS.
Handheld/desktop divide
Adobe Reader? I know there are PDF readers for most all these platforms, but is there anyone who has made PDFs that truly work across the carry-around/sit-on-desktop divide?
The current version of Microsoft Reader, in many ways still the most sophisticated reader, limits itself to Windows and newer PocketPCs. There’s no version for MacOS, since it inexplicably carries anti-alternative-OS baggage that Microsoft Word and Excel do not. As for Linux, fuhgedaboutit. Palm? You’ve got to be kidding.
The L word
I’ve never used eReader, but it embraces Mac and Palm along with Windows. Am I the only one who misses Linux? Perhaps the reason I gave it a pass before was that I make a lot more books than I purchase. And if you can make your own e-books in this format, I don’t see how to do it from the website. [Update: yes, it turns out, using eBook Studio. Maybe it’s time for me to give this program a closer look.]
Mobipocket appears to see itself strictly as a carryaround reader–Palm, PocketPC, smartphone. In its DRMed world, it must be simpler to dismiss desktop readers. Mobi does have a desktop version, but I’m told it isn’t as good as the handheld one.
Me? Before my PocketPC imploded, I would read about 80 percent of a book on it and 20 percent on the desktop, usually at lunch. And I would do all my proofing and formatting using the desktop reader. I used the typical compile, check, revise and recompile method, and skipping the synching to the PocketPC certainly sped up development cycles.
OpenBerg approach
I know the OpenReader proponents would hope that different reading programs would accept it as an alternative or additional format, but that seems unrealistic to me. I think readers for each format will have to be built and/or ported, something like what OpenBerg is doing now.
Maybe some developer type will compile the GTK+ Plucker Viewer code for Windows–if you do, let me know! Call me unrealistic, but somehow the idea of readers that live in Windows, Mac and Linux environments makes me more comfortable. What do other e-book readers who straddle multiple environments do? Let me know, in the comments below.
Working on spreading the universe of e-books for the 770 has led me to ponder the browser as the e-book software platform. It may be that browser plug-ins and html delivery solve the basic issues of reading a single e-book on different devices better than any approach now in place. And now and then I eye Flash, with its near-universal acceptance, as another option; alas, it is as tied to format as PDF.
[…] Roger Sperling reviews cross platform ebook formats. It all sounds slightly maddening. […]
Why not use eReader? It seems to fit the bill.. I like it.
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Public Domain Books: Online – http://www.PDBooksOnline.com
Let me ask again — where is the software that allows you to put your own content into eReader format? With that, it becomes a format worth exploring; without it, it’s not (to me anyway).
Roger
There’s a little link at the bottom of ereader.com that says “make books” and links to http://www.ereader.com/dropbook
There are mac and win versions of DropBook plus an apparently older tool written in java called MakeBook which presumably should run on any platform with java support.
Matt McClintock of Manybooks.net also mentions the above programs and in addition notes the existence of eBook Studio, a $30 program for Windows or Mac X. I see Roger has already updated his post to mention eBook Studio.
Hey, this is a great example of how terrific blogs can be at eliciting the entire story. The trick is to have a comment area so readers can fill in the gaps. When will MSM understand?
the entire story? ok, sounds like a good idea. :+)
“give” is the viewer-program i’m writing.
(“gutenberg intelligent viewer for e-texts”,
as it is made as a present for michael hart.)
give takes as its input plain-ascii text-files,
the only proven “universal format” yet.
it runs on the mac (classic and o.s.x.)
and on windows too (win95 and later).
and i’ll even compile a version for linux,
if you want to alpha-test for me, roger.
no hand-held platforms, not yet. sorry.
oh yeah, even though the program takes
plain-ascii text as its input, it _formats_
the text for a 2-page-spread user-interface,
with big and bold headers, a hotlinked t.o.c.,
and translation of _italics_ and *bold* to
honest-to-goodness styled text — woo-hoo!
all this is possible due to “zen markup language”,
a non-markup form of markup that’s really simple.
the app will eventually export the newly-styled text
to .pdf, .rtf, and .html (so support for handhelds
is there, in a roundabout way), as well as an image
format (for the juicebox and the photo-ipod) and
the “notes” mode on the ipod as well. oh yeah,
did i say mp3? an image/mp3 combo for the ipod
will turn that project gutenberg e-text into a slideshow.
anyway, back to programming… ;+)
-bowerbird
The original issue I had with the program that makes what were once Peanut Press (now eReader) ebooks, was that you couldn’t create one and then give away unlimited free copies. Above X-number, they demanded a royalty. Have they done away with that nonsense?
I have a dual-boot machine that will boot into Mepis Linux or Windows 98 (how it started out), but I don’t spend enough time on it to claim any Linux expertise. I’m sort of a Linux newbie wouldbe.
From that position I’ll gladly volunteer to test the *give* reading software. Sounds intriguing. I’ll also volunteer to work with you in whatever form I can (probably pretty limited) to see about adapting what you have to run under the Internet Tablet 2005 distro of Linux that the Nokia 770 uses.
Looks like you have been grappling in a very hands-on way with this issue. Can’t think of a better way to pay back a debt of gratitude.
[…] Im Anschluss an das Thema der aktuellen LIBREAS-Ausgabe und passend zum Beitrag von Tobias Steinke in der inetbib hier ein kleiner aktueller Text aus dem TeleRead-Blog: Cross-platform e-reading (bzw. How do you read in a digital library? im electric forest) […]
[…] Over at Electric Forest, I’ve posted some thoughts about the cross-platform e-reading issue growing out of the post on that subject here, but focusing on the thread: What format(s) should digital librarians provide e-books in? And: What are the major concerns in determining the choices? If the formats chosen by commercial publishers determine this, won’t every Linux user be excluded from the digital library? In the Tower of eBabel, amid all the e-book formats out there, Linux users have not fared as well as they should. […]
[…] A reader for the desktop machines which formats ASCII text books from Project Gutenberg with italic and bold and makes it presentable is under preparation. That may be one way out of the labyrinth. […]