9

By David Rothman

ThoutReaderThe OpenReader Consortium is in exploratory talks with OSoft about OpenReader-compatible software for reading e-books and other publications.

If the above happens, as I expect, OpenReader software will come out in the first quarter of ’06. OSoft, already keen on an XMLish approach, plans to remake its existing product, ThoutReader, to conform with OpenReader specs. A screenshot from ThoutReader appears here. Some leading publishers, such as O’Reilly, McGraw-Hill and Wiley, are already authorizing books in the ThoutReader format.

The possible alliance with OpenReader is great news for readers, writers and publishers–everyone interested in e-books as a serious medium. Significantly, the OpenReader format will be not just for books, but also for digital editions of magazines, newspapers, academic journals and other publications. What’s more, OSoft is deeply committed to our concept of readers being able to own books genuinely, as opposed to losing them when proprietary Digital Rights Management schemes fade away and new hardware appears.

Common views on DRM

OSoft’s people harbor the same feeling toward DRM as do the leaders of the OpenReader Consortium do. OSoft is not a DRM cheerleader and takes pride in offering free content without DRM and in not forcing the technology on publishers who does not want it. If, however, content-providers insist on DRM, OSoft can serve it up in good faith and in the least intrusive way and allow readers to use it on a bunch of their own machines. Below, see a note from OSoft mentioning some DRM specifics. Among OSoft’s DRM-related features are “Increasing levels of protection depending on publisher needs including authentication, authorization, subscription, and timed keys.”

The issue of DRM standards for the OpenReader format has not been settled, but OSoft’s approach looks most interesting. OSoft already enjoys the trust of some leading publishers, obviously, and that should help OpenReader as well.

New coding muscle for OpenReader

This should be a born match. Jon has a strong vision from a technical perspective of what the reader software should do, and I have my opinions as a grumpy end user. Our possible alliance with the Tacoma-based OSoft should give us the coding muscle to help realize our vision while also benefitting from the brainstorms at OSoft. ThoutReader already allows such feaures as the ability of human readers to share their impressions of books–some of the very stuff that our feature set requested. What’s more, OSoft shares our philosophy of allowing users to create their own content easily. OSoft even intends to create a template that works with OpenOffice.

To address the obvious question, the OpenReader Consortium will be delighted if other software companies follow OSoft’s example and enter into negotiations with us. OpenReader, after all, is an open format. The more companies, the merrier. Our anticipated arrangement with OSoft will be nonexclusive and certainly will not substitute for the creation of a reference implementation of OpenReader. We’ve already been in touch rather informally with Bill McCoy, an open-minded executive at a highly relevant part of Adobe, and if his company or Microsoft wants to do an OpenReader conforming to standards, we certainly will be thrilled. As we’ve made clear to OSoft and Bill and others, we would prefer to introduce OpenReader in a way that respects users of existing products. For example, we would be delighted if a new version of Microsoft Reader appeared with the ability to read both older files and OpenReader files. OSoft assures me that ThoutReader could include this dual approach. Among the most popular proprietary readers, Microsoft Reader is probably the most respectful of earlier standards-setting work, so a dual version might be feasible technically. As for Adobe, it is a leader in SVG-related technology, a key component of the OpenReader vision.

The OpenReader expected to be released next year will not include all features (an issue to be addressed in the near future). But it will appear on all virtually major platforms–Windows, Windows CE, at least one popular version of PalmOS, Mac, Linux and even UNIX. “For an OpenReader,” Mark says, “that’s what you’d want.” The programming language used will be either Perl or Python.

How it happened

Our contact with OSoft itself came about as a result of the recent TeleBlog mention of the ThoutReader, where I praised the product’s advertised capabilities while expressing concern about the existence of yet another room in the Tower of eBabel. It turned out that OSoft President Mark Carey and CTO Gary Varnell wanted a good standards-based approach, so Mark called me.

During our several hours of telephone time yesterday, I shared with Mark my concerns about ThoutReader’s inability to run on such small devices as PDAs. Mark said OSoft already plans to introduce a version addressing that very issue. What’s more, he intends to include a host of features to optimize the interface for PDAs. In look and feel, the ThoutReader you can download today is nothing like the one you’ll be running next year on your PDA or tablet. I’d encourage you to try it. As a sample book, OSoft will convert Jon’s My Antonia file.

We’ll welcome input from content providers, librarians, the open source community and others as both the OpenReader format and related software continue to evolve.

So speak up about what you want, and via our expected relationship with OSoft and other companies, we’ll do our best to oblige. Of course, our email lists for people interested in our standard and our reference version of OpenReader will continue, and we’ll welcome participation from qualified people in the standards setting process. You don’t have to be a hardcore techie. We are also keen on hearing from tech-hip publishers, for example, whether book-related or not, as well as from librarians and others. The dialogue can start by email (davidrothmanNOSPAMPLEASEpobox.com), phone (703-370-6540) or the comment box below.

Reminder of the obvious: This is a blog entry reflecting my personal perspective, as opposed to being an official press release. I’d encourage Mark, Gary and Jon to add their own opinions in the comment box if they’d like to make points beyond those mentioned here. Mark writes a most readable blog of his own–a great way to appreciate his company and its philosophy– so you may also find relevant thoughts there.

Note: “ThoutReader” is trademarked. Also, Mark tells me he prefers it as one word.

Source material: Reproduced with Mark’s permission, here are some bullets he emailed me yesterday. Please note that the indentation is mangled.

Here are some interesting facts concerning the ThoutReader™ your readers might be interested in:

- OpenReader is in discussion with OSoft to develop a working OpenReader model using OpenReader’s standards and OSoft’s ThoutReader™ framework.

- OpenReader is looking at adopting ThoutReader™’s encryption technology. This has been a huge barrier to entry in the development of an open standards reader. In OSoft’s case, the encryption is embedded into the downloaded package, not the reader itself. This provides for the proliferation of the open standard reader (which is open source) and the customization of various forms of DRM which are not. This means:

o User registration key that is minimally invasive and allows a user to view their content on any applicable device they are using

o Increasing levels of protection depending on publisher needs including authentication, authorization, subscription, and timed keys

- The ThoutReader™ is an open source (GPL 2.0) cross-platform documentation platform (written in Java) that allows users to browse, search, bookmark, and append all of their documentation at the same time.

- The ThoutReader™ is being re-written in a non-Java cross-platform language that supports PDAs.

- OSoft has agreements in place to distribute books from O’Reilly, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, Manning, No Starch Press, Signate, and is in the process of finalizing an agreement with Pearson.

- In addition to the technology related books on OSoft.com, OSoft is also working with a major publisher to beta-test a customized version of the ThoutReader™ for off-line electronic content of all subjects in Colleges and Universities.

- The ThoutReader™ is XML based and XSLTs can transform a 1,200 XML formatted book (with images) into a ThoutReader™ package in less than 7 seconds.

- OSoft is working on creating templates so users can easily create their own content using a pre-defined list of tags that the Reader will render. This list will be expanded with the implementation of the OpenReader standards.

- Biggest challenge is getting a documentation standard written, distributed, and adopted that is pure XML based. The ubiquitous PDF is unstructured and does not render into XML very well.

- You may find these OSoft blogs to provide other, insightful information.

o Documentation Trends and Truisms

o What’s the Value of an eBook?

o What’s this about PDF?

- ThoutReader Testimonials: http://osoft.com/store/infocenter/osoft_profile.php?section=11

If I think of other things I will send them off to you.
Mark
Mark D. Carey
President
OSoft.com
mcarey@osoft.com

 
9