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New ePub standard among many formats that Stanza e-reader offers for the Mac
June 8, 2008 | 2:33 am
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By David Rothman
ePub, LIT, Mobi, Palm, Amazon Kindle, HTML, PDF, RTF and Word are readable on Stanza, a new e-reader that even lets you convert one format to another on your Mac.
You can export to an iPhone and your Kindle. Stanza will "convert all of your digital texts to iPhone ‘bookmarklets’ which syncs with your iPhone for reading anywhere—no internet connection required."
Too bad DRM—which turns even open formats into proprietary ones tied to Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft or another vendor—is around to spoil the fun in the case of "protected" bestsellers and other infested books.
Volcanic eruption in e-reading?
LexCycle, located at the base of an Oregon volcano, a rather setting if you think about the disruption the company could wreak in e-software, is looking for ways to support DRM. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it ran into difficulties. Will it end up using its own "protection"? I’d hope not. But Mobi, at least, can be stingy on these matters, and I’d curious about Adobe.
On the positive, get this. Via an open API planned, new formats can be accommodated. On top of everything else, do you notice how clean the interface looks?
Download info
You can download Version 1 Beta 4 for Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher (25MB). Buyers will pay $15, with $5 for updates, if Stanza acts a planned.
"We do plan to release a Windows version," says Lexcyle, "but we do not yet have a timeline in place." Come on, guys—hurry up. And if you can do at least a stripped-down PDA version, then so much the better.
Meanwhile I’d encourage TeleRead community members with Mac to try the freebie beta and check back in with us to share your results.
The dedicated reader angle
I wonder what Stanza could mean to dedicated e-readers in the long run. As chips grow more powerful, for example, could Stanza ports end up on firmware? Meanwhile the Kindle conversion capability is a positive for dedicated e-readers.
Sony reading and conversion too? Despite the reference to "all the major eBook standards" on the home page, I don’t see a mention of a Sony format there. Hint, hint, Sony. Your real future should be with the ePub standard (same for Sony-related bookstores selling E).
And about ePub
While Stanza by necessity handles other formats, it’s great to see the new ePub standard among them. Another possibility for Mac owners wanting to do ePub would be FBReader.
(Found via MobileRead.)
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Comments:
I have a Mac and downloaded the Beta. I have used it for several things. First, I had downloaded an e-book in PRC format but forgot to change the file name to the title so it ended up on my computer with a funny name that looks like nothing I would recognize. I then loaded it onto the Kindle which uses the EXIF for the title, so it showed OK. But which of those cryptic titles belong to which book? I opened each one in Stanza and it gave the the titles, which I then changed in the file names. I tried opening PDF, PRC and others and all displayed OK. You can do a crude search, but no editing of the documents in Stanza. I tried to convert a PDF book to AZW and it converted it but it was not readable on the Kindle. I sent that one to Amazon and they converted it OK. I have not tried another PDF source yet. The display of the books is 3 columns wide on a sheet and is very easy to read on the computer. It will not open DRM books. So far I will be one of the buyers when it comes out of beta.
I played with it for a bit. It does open the epub files I have, but it doesn’t render their embedded stylesheets (even as an option) and even removes very basic styling like HTML ‘em’ or ‘strong’ tags.
From their FAQ:
I can sympathize with the challenges presented by handing multiple formats, but I don’t agree that lists or even tables aren’t useful semantic content to preserve.
Al and Liza: Thanks for checking out Stanza and zeroing in on some important deficiencies of the current beta. And Liza, I agree with you about tables! If ePub is to be used for more than recreational reading of fiction, then improvements in related apps are a “must.” I wonder how Adobe DE does on the table front with ePub. Let’s hope it’s better than Stanza and, I’d suspect, FBReader. Thanks. David
Al says:
“The display of the books is 3 columns wide “
The default display is 3 columns, however, you can change the way it displays to multiple columns with horizontal scrolling or single column with vertical scrolling. You can also apply one of a few included themes which will change the appearance (text color/background color).
Overall it seems to work OK tho I have not played with it much yet or tried many file formats.
One annoyance is that it does not scroll via my wheelmouse – had to use the keyboard to scroll but that could be a problem with my non-Apple mouse (though the wheel works fine in other apps).
We at Lexcycle are delighted at all the interest this early beta has created! We’ve gotten plenty of feedback from the community for bugs that need fixing and improvements we should make, and we are taking them very much to heart.
We do plan on having Sony LRF format in the future, but it is a very tricky format. As for formatting, we do plan on allowing at least some basic styling (such as boldface and italicization), but more advanced layout features like tables and bullets are undecided.
Finally, support for the scroll wheel is a good idea. We’ve added it to our list of enhancements for a future release.
Please keep the comments and questing coming!
Hey, Marc, congrats on such an interesting e-reader, and stay in touch. Here’s hoping you’ll do a PDA version–ideally for old and new Nokia tablets and Plam and Win OSes.
Meanwhile tell us some more about the Sony LRF format and the difficulties. Yet another argument for tearing down the Tower of eBabel! But it looms tall for the moment, and it’s great your software will be around to help people cope with it.
I totally agree with HeavyG’s scrollwheel rec. Great to see you’re obliging.
Thanks,
David
We’re definitely working on PDA versions. Our priority right now is for the iPhone, but we also have Android and J2ME versions in the works. We are prioritizing platforms that don’t have any good readers available yet, since many others (like Windows-based smart phones) already have pretty good readers like MobiPocket Reader, and since we can export to MobiPocket, there is a decent solution already in place for getting your books onto those phones.
As for LRF, the format is simply poorly understood (and, it goes without saying, completely undocumented). It is simply a matter of time and effort, though.
Thanks for the comments!
@David: “I wonder how Adobe DE does on the table front with ePub.”
ADE handles tables well.