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posted by chromas on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the documents-definitely-need-javascript dept.

Daniel Glazman believes that EPUB has reached a technical dead end.

  • It is impossible to aggregate a set of web pages into a EPUB book through a trivial zip, and it is impossible to unzip an EPUB book and make it readable inside a Web browser even with graceful degradation.
  • Despite the International Digital Publishing Forum merging with W3C in January 2017, EPUB continues to diverge from web standards.
  • The EPUB 3.1 specification has been rescinded because it is too costly and complex for the eBook industry to adopt.

Mr. Glazman's solution? The WebBook format. From the announcement:

I have then decided to work on a different format for electronic books, called WebBook. A format strictly based on Web technologies and when I say "Web technologies", I mean the most basic ones: html, CSS, JavaScript, SVG and friends; the class of specifications all Web authors use and master on a daily basis. Not all details are decided or even ironed, the proposal is still a work in progress at this point, but I know where I want to go to.

[...] I have started from a list of requirements, something that was never done that way in the EPUB world:

  1. one URL is enough to retrieve a remote WebBook instance, there is no need to download every resource composing that instance
  2. the contents of a WebBook instance can be placed inside a Web site's directory and are directly readable by a Web browser using the URL for that directory
  3. the contents of a WebBook instance can be placed inside a local directory and are directly readable by a Web browser opening its index.html or index.xhtml topmost file
  4. each individual resource in a WebBook instance, on a Web site or on a local disk, is directly readable by a Web browser
  5. any html document can be used as content document inside a WebBook instance, without restriction
  6. any stylesheet, replaced resource (images, audio, video, etc.) or additional resource useable by a html document (JavaScript, manifests, etc.) can be used inside the navigation document or the content documents of a WebBook instance, without restriction
  7. the navigation document and the content documents inside a WebBook instance can be created and edited by any html editor
  8. the metadata, table of contents contained in the navigation document of a WebBook instance can be created and edited by any html editor
  9. the WebBook specification is backwards-compatible
  10. the WebBook specification is forwards-compatible, at the potential cost of graceful degradation of some content
  11. WebBook instances can be recognized without having to detect their MIME type
  12. it's possible to deliver electronic books in a form that is compatible with both WebBook and EPUB 3.0.1

Compatibility with EPUB 3.0.1 is a good way to start adoption. Now to see if WebBook catches on. The GitHub repository is here.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by hendrikboom on Monday April 23 2018, @12:05AM (8 children)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 23 2018, @12:05AM (#670535) Homepage Journal

    Most ereaders are beyond the owner's control. Their only saving grace is that they are too stupid to be easily suborned by the likes of javascript.

    Does anyone make e-ink tablets that *are* under the user's control? I'd love to use a suitable Linux on one.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by archfeld on Monday April 23 2018, @12:50AM (5 children)

    by archfeld (4650) <treboreel@live.com> on Monday April 23 2018, @12:50AM (#670553) Journal

    My Kindle e-reader will load local resources and can be accessed as a storage device via the USB cable. I get books from private authors, as well as the internet archive, in addition to the publisher controlled kindle library.

    Sources such as Obooko https://www.obooko.com/ [obooko.com]
      or the Internet Archive https://openlibrary.org/ [openlibrary.org]
    Offer various format ebooks for download.

    --
    For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @01:11AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @01:11AM (#670559)

    http://www.onyx-international.com/ [onyx-international.com]

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Monday April 23 2018, @03:20AM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 23 2018, @03:20AM (#670592) Homepage Journal

      Interesting device. But I find it hard to get a clear idea from that advertising presentation just what I'd get if I were to buy one. Is it just a display and input device that happens to have some software inside it to read ebooks and talk to a computer via an HDMI cable? Or does it actually have some programmability?

      And isn't an e-ink display too slow for HDMI data rates? It makesme wonder what the HDMI connection is for other than to be able to say it does HDMI on the web site.

      It talks about being compatible with a lot off operating systems, but I suspect those systems won't actually run on it.

      And it has a quad-core processor. But what quad-core processor. That kind of makes a difference.

      And what's battery life when it's used for just reading books?