My Antonia is now online in OSoft‘s ThoutReader format, as a hint of some of the capabilities that the OpenReader format itself will enable.
I can’t overemphasize the “some.” Just from OSoft alone–remember OpenReader is a format for the whole cosmos, not just one company–there will be different kinds of interfaces. Either through the same program or separate ones, you’ll be able to enjoy interfaces optimized for school, work or pleasure reading. That is just another of the glories of divorcing a reader format from specific vendors or even specific products from the same vendor. Imagine–same format, but a choice of different looks and feels. If Microsoft, Adobe, Mobipocket, eReader and Jane Doe Software want to keep their present interfaces, they certainly can. Yes, the OpenReader Consortium will warmly welcome other companies, large and small, that follow OSoft’s example. CEO Mark Carey and CTO Gary Varnell are clueful boosters of the open source approach to formats. In this case they’ve simply offered up My Antonia as an illustration of the time and technical expertise to be devoted to their version of the OpenReader reading program.
“Putting My Antonia in the ThoutReader format, from an XHTML file provided by LibraryCity, helps show our commitment to the implementation of a standard XML-based reader,” Mark says. “But this represents what ThoutReader is, not what OpenReader will be. The present ThoutReader was not designed for novel reading. It is primarily for the highly demanding open source developer community with sophisticated search capability, bookmarks, copy/paste of code, and private and public annotation. Imagine this same capability in a more intuitive user interface for a general reader and the academic community. That is what you can expect from future products based on OpenReader, whether for work or reading the latest thriller.”
Note: To read My Antonia just download and install ThoutReader, request the My Antonia file and go through a simple registration process, after which the file transfer will happen.
