E-gizmos, trends, other topics to be discussed at IDPF conference in NYC in May

Comments:

• Greg Schofield says:

  March 3, 2008 at 2:46 pm

  Epub needs to better CSS display consistency as major requirement of reader software. Actual pages, headers/footers, footnotes, even the display of covers need to have standards adhered to. Margins and fonts, need base declarations for sizes, plus alternative stylesheet selections for the user to easily manipulate the text to fit (re FBreader-type styles as overrides).

  Get that right and any XML will do (especially important to get TEI, as well as Daisy and other specialist tag-sets).

  The other is specifying paragraph numbering schemes as “best practice”.

  The last is a register of epub epublications.

  The scheme I am fiddling with is simple, but relies on truly Unique Ids (I have managed, with the help of Lestec.com.au to set up a simple generator for these – 14-15 characters long available through the Net – try the website associated with this post – still in beta, can be run on any server (needs its own static IP address on which to run).

  What we need is a database that centrally records (with mirrors) the following.

  Author’s Identity.
  Work Identity (and Corpus Identity)
  Edition Identity
  Publisher’s Identity
  Translator’s Identity

  Of these edition Identity is the nearest to an ISBN number.

  I believe the epub format needs further refinement, so hopefully someone might suggest something like the above. The idea of centrally recording this is that searching for a particular work is simplified, or finding all versions of a particular work, or all works by a particular author etc.,. is unambiguous and accurate.

  Such a database is I believe essential to get right early on, so that it is easy for anyone publishing anything to register the publication and for anyone searching for a particular work to identify it easily. I do not believe it is a good idea to overburden such a thing with other search data, better to leave that to a full library shelving scheme (a Colon System would be ideal).

  If the IDPF could settle on a library reference system and include that in the epub format, the accumulative effect would stunning.

  For instance, identifying a novel abstractly via library call numbers (Colon Systems make this practical – English: Science Fiction: late 19th Century: Martians would I think produce a shelf of several versions of “The War of the Worlds” but not much else), produces a list of candidates rather than specific publications.

  Browsing ebooks, through such cataloguing would serve readers, as well as publishers and retailers. The edition identity, being used to fetch basic information, and traditional googling producing lists of retailers and details as required.

  Sorry for the long post but it seemed the best place to air these suggestions.
• Ely levy says:

  March 14, 2008 at 2:30 am

  While writing a library which parses the epub format (see url).
  I noticed that the main thing missing is pretty much documentations and examples.You are send from standard to standard instead of solving things the easy way.
  A good example is the Daisy ncx which seems to contain a lot of double information that is also in the metadata. There is also not guidelines on how to actually show things. What is preferable? navmap? pagelist? who knows?

  other comments

  - a series name and place metadata is very MUCH missing
  (such as Lord of the ring and 2 for the second book in the series)

  - page breaking is way too loose for example the book looked really horrible until I started each spine item on a new page in the viewer.

  I think making up a database is a very good idea, I saw also the guys which work on libprs5000 use something like that (https://libprs500.kovidgoyal.net/wiki/Features)

  other things which I think will be nice are:

  - Forum where you can discuss the viewing of books and maybe
  even get it a bit standardized

  - Tools to convert from various file formats to epub (I thought about adding them to my project but no idea about the legal status of doing that).

  - I think the database should include more information so you could pretty much build the OPF/toc and metadata from it.
  that will be a huge help to an automatic conversion tool and might encourage companies to support it for their readers.
• Jack says:

  July 17, 2008 at 3:06 am

  I would like to know more about how to search and find e books online. I am a final year graduate in software engineering, so i would prefer my subjects.

  =====================
  Jack
  A Very Powerful Search Engine
  google
• William Sphere says:

  August 5, 2008 at 5:17 am

  This is an online running knowledge sharing session which gives a complete overview of different technologies and platforms/domains. Forum where you can discuss the viewing of books and maybe even get it a bit standardized
  ===========================
  William Sphere
  Social Networking
  http://www.orkut.com
• martin says:

  August 5, 2008 at 8:50 am

  - Forum where you can discuss the viewing of books and maybe
  even get it a bit standardized

  - Tools to convert from various file formats to epub (I thought about adding them to my project but no idea about the legal status of doing that).

  - I think the database should include more information so you could pretty much build the OPF/toc and metadata from it.
  that will be a huge help to an automatic conversion tool and might encourage companies to support it for their readers.