
EPUB 3.1 Standard Update - ingve
https://rdeltour.github.io/xmlprague2016-epub31/#1
======
koralatov
I'm a big fan of EPUB because it's a pretty neat example of the Unix
philosophy "worse is better".

A proprietary or custom format might have been more suited to creating e-books
(drop-caps, for example, would probably have been easier), but using HTML and
CSS as the basis means it's open, easily understandable, and pretty simple to
make corrections to e-books or even begin making your own.

The fact that a teenager with a little bit of interest and a small amount of
knowledge can play with an e-book, then view the results on real devices, is
hugely appealing. I realise that they could also be making a website, or doing
`real' programming, but to some people the ability to correct typoes in
_Ender's Game_ or reformat _Dune_ to their preferred layout is just so much
more appealing and empowering. When I started playing making websites at age
14, I'd have killed to be able to use those skills to make an e-book.

~~~
rpgmaker
In spanish there are communities that take paper books, digitalize them and
release them in epub format. Books that probably will never see an official
digital release, which surprisingly, is the fate of many classic books (it's
improving but the spanish digital book market isn't as vibrant as the one
Amazon created for english titles). The best community I've found has a huge
manual that in essence works as an editorial blueprint of how your epub must
be constructed and formatted in order for them to accept your digitalization
of a book and release them under their label, which in effect makes this site
a clandestine digital _publisher_ of sorts. After you submit a title they have
editors that review it, etc. and all of this is done by volunteers online.
It's just awesome. There's no need to debate the legality of this site of
course but if I was 14 today, with the free time I had back them, I'd
definitely be geeking the hell out of that manual and digitalizing some of my
many paper books. If there is a heaven, a special place must be reserved for
all those guys that make that community work, if you ask me. Anyways, I
haven't found similar communities in english although I assume there must be
some.

~~~
i336_
I'm sure there are some Spanish-speaking people that would appreciate knowing
the URL to this hub, and a few more who wouldn't mind being aware of its
existence so they can reference it, etc.

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r3bl
EPUB is, without any doubts, my preferred ebook format. I knew it was an open
format standard, but I have never taken a look at what's under its hood. After
I took a look at this presentation, I'm going to dedicate this evening to
exploring the format, its advantages and its disadvantages.

Unfortunately, I am not able to find any reasonably good looking Linux client
for it, so I usually use ebook-convert command that comes with Calibre to
convert my books from PDF to EPUB and vice versa.

~~~
sdfin
During your exploration, did you find something about why amazon's kindle
doesn't work with EPUB?

~~~
steve19
Practically speaking it matters not. Calibre can do pretty lossless
(practically speaking) conversions between formats. The limitations/features
of ebook readers have a much greater influence on how a book looks than the
format.

I love the status-quo where Amazon pretends that their DRM is not hopelessly
compromised and I get to strip the DRM from the vast quantities of ebooks I
purchase there. I would much rather they keep turning this blind eye than
adopt epub behind a more effective DRM scheme. That would be a huge loss to
me.

When my e-ink kindle can support high-resolution color images, smooth and fast
LCD-like scrolling etc. then I might care about epub features, but while I
don't want or expect more from my kindle than a paperback, I am quite happy.

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itcrowd
FWIW: navigation is done using the arrow keys on your keyboard or swiping when
on mobile.

~~~
koralatov
It never occurred to me to use either, so I used the spacebar and backspace to
move forward and backward.

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wodenokoto
I dabbled with converting a Japanese text to an ebook and adding furigana to
it. However, I couldn't find a free tool that supported generating 3.0 epubs,
so I thought, it's mostly HTML, how hard can it be to just do it manually.

Very hard, I must say. The are all sorts of meta files that doesn't seem to ad
anything to this format, but are somehow required.

~~~
themodelplumber
So did you complete the book? I always appreciate some helpful furigana.

~~~
wodenokoto
No. I could generate / write the html, but I couldn't for the life of me
figure out the xml (I think there's another type of files required too) meta
data. I looked at a few books and tutorials and it just looks like gibberish.

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dredmorbius
I have a dream ... that some day there will be a _standard structured document
format_ for publishing. And ePub is very, very, very nearly it. May well be,
I've only been kinda keeping tabs. And yes, I'm a huge fan.

My one biggest frustration (noted earlier here) is that the Linux ePub client,
fbreader, _doesn 't have a way to specify a maximum content line length_.
Margins, sure, but not _content_. Result is that reading full-screen on a 16:9
display is ... kinda pessimal. Small issue, but one of those "pay attention to
details" items that matters.

From the preso (nice layout there, by the way), Metadata: I'm in love. This is
something that I'm familiar with via hNews and Readability. _Structured
information in documents_ would be really, really peachy.

I've got a long-standing rant on the browser world, which is entirely flipping
falling down as a _content presentation tool_ , for numerous reasons. Among
the reasons for _tab_ proliferation, I'm realising, is _really piss-poor
content management tools_. As I'm in the midst of a large research project,
with some 1800 articles curated and another thousand-plus books and documents
(mostly PDF, but a mix of other styles), _being able to reliably extract
title, author, publisher, date, etc., information_ would be quite valuable.

[https://redd.it/256lxu](https://redd.it/256lxu)

Some things HTML is rather pointedly missing:

1\. A footnote / endnote / sidenote native capability. I've mucked around
creating a sidenote implementation, but as a native element it'd be useful.

2\. A native hierarchical threaded discussion structure. The fact that every
last online Web forum (HN included) is re-implementing tin / mutt (and doing
it _wrong_ ) is ... depressing.

3\. A hell of a lot more thought to accessibility. From font/colour/size
choices to support for text-to-speech and speech-control systems, I'm
developing a growing awareness through the community I'm currently supporting.
ePub with its simplified presentation may be a win here.

4\. Equations. Not always needed, but support for something at _least_ as
powerful as LaTeX would be quite useful.

5\. Annotations. A lightweight mode of interacting with content would also be
helpful.

That said, very happy to see progress.

