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Digital Editions demo sends ePub to Sony Reader—but read the details; regular DE 1.5 released
May 14, 2008 | 4:02 pm
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By David Rothman
Has the ePub-capable Adobe Digital Editions been demoed with the Sony Reader PRS-505 at today’s IDPF conference?
“EPUB demo!!” Nate the Great posted at MobileRead. “He used the library functions of DE. DE recognized the 505. He sent ePub files to the 505. And now he is reading the ebook in ePub on the 505.” OK, but is DE running on the 505 itself? No.
The other issue is whether the 505 is natively reading the ePub—I get the impression from Nate’s post that it is. Has the 505 has that capability, in a hidden form, all the way along, or was it added via an update? My own 505 can’t read ePub. Despite Nate’s impressions, might there be some translation going on? I don’t know. [Update: No translation. Real ePub. Great!]
PDF reflowability ahead?
Meanwhile there’s also talk of PDF reflowability. No availability date, alas. And just what are the catches? We’ve heard this talk before. Must files still be tagged to be reflowable?
Don’t blame Nate for the sketchiness of the report, which he apparently typed out—between other activities—on a Kindle keyboard.
Digital Editions 1.5 released
Meanwhile, less exotically, Adobe has released Version 1.5 of Digital Editions (PDF, PDF/A and ePub support) for desktops and said that the DRM is more flexible. Partial screenshot is of 1.5 displaying a PDFed library book on my desktop machine.
More info is available via the DE blog and MR. If you have updating problems, go here.
Bungled PR by Sony and Adobe
At any rate, I asked Sony before the IDPF conference for details, and nothing came through. I won’t criticize the PR folks, just the Sony corpocracy in general, which really should brief them and coordinate things with Adobe. All the grubby details need to be on the Web, but not a word is in the usual Sony press area or the one for Adobe.
Shudder, shudder, maybe both companies could benefit from user feedback, as well as truly informative blog on DE, especially in a 505 context. Prog reports, anyone? Given the unknowns of software projects, I can understand a DE verision for the 505 (and 500, too?) being months late. But I’ll not forgive Sony and Adobe for not doing a better job of keeping us posted. Oral conference presentations don’t count. Let’s get the details in writing.
Textbook example of the need for both commercial and open source ePub apps
This is a textbook example of why ePub needs open source apps. I think Sony and Adobe would be more responsive—and make some nice money along the way—if they had open source competition beyond FBReader, OpenBerg, etc. I’m rooting mightily for the OpenInkpot project to get open source and free apps going on dedicated readers like the Sony.
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Comments:
I’m still impatiently waiting for the point where I can openly discuss the 505.
I think I can get away with clarifying that the 505 in the demo was indeed viewing the ePub file – no smoke and mirrors going on.
Jim, thanks for telling us what you could! Let’s hope that Adobe pays attention to my gripe. I know you’d do things differently if you had control over this! David
That’s really big if this pans out the way it is being reported.
[...] of devices, at the Digital Book 2008 conference in NY yesterday, apparently (I was not there sadly) Sony demoed the Sony Reader Digital Book (505) working with Digital [...]
For those of y’all who were there, yes, I was the person in the back of the room typing furiously on my Kindle.
The main reason I live-blogged that demo was that I was hoping we would get a release date, and _that_ would have been worth telling everyone right away. For the all the other talks I used my Jornada 720 to take notes.
In all honesty, the demo yesterday doesn’t matter. It was a vapor ware demo just like at CES.
On another note, did anyone from TeleRead go the the IDPF conference? TeleRead Blog was listed among the organizations attending, but I didn’t see any names I recognized.
Hi, Nate. We appreciated your efforts and share your frustration over the lack of a release date. At least we know from Jim’s note that, yes, the PRS 505 was actually reading ePub and not something in translation. Paul Biba was all set to go to the IDPF conference but had to cancel at the last minute. Keep up the good work. David
I have been following Jim Lester’s blog on this topic, I for one think that an announcement from Sony regarding epub and Adobe DE support would greatly increase consumer confidence in both Sony’s Commitment to the ebook market and the longevity of their current Model. I think alot of potential buyers have been burned in the past when Sony abruptly abandons a technology. Really we are not asking for WIFI, bluetooth, or email for the PRS 505 (maybe in the 510) but a firmware update at the least will ease our minds.
Jerry,
Although I am a frequent poster on the Digital Editions User to User forum, I don’t think it can really be considered “my” blog
The decision on the timing and content of the announcement regarding the future of Sony products, is completely Sony’s to make, and while I’ll echo the announcements in the DE forum (and make sure that David knows about it), it’s not something that I’m going to scoop Sony on.
p.s. I am not worried about Sony’s commitment to the eBook market, but obviously can’t provide the supporting facts to ease your mind.
Jim, please do let me know as soon as Adobe will let you. Can hardly wait. Perhaps the iPod fuss will encourage Sony to speed things up. Thanks. David