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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- The EPUB 3.1 specification has been rescinded because it is too costly and complex for the eBook industry to adopt.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:
- one URL is enough to retrieve a remote WebBook instance, there is no need to download every resource composing that instance
- 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
- 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
- each individual resource in a WebBook instance, on a Web site or on a local disk, is directly readable by a Web browser
- any html document can be used as content document inside a WebBook instance, without restriction
- 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
- the navigation document and the content documents inside a WebBook instance can be created and edited by any html editor
- the metadata, table of contents contained in the navigation document of a WebBook instance can be created and edited by any html editor
- the WebBook specification is backwards-compatible
- the WebBook specification is forwards-compatible, at the potential cost of graceful degradation of some content
- WebBook instances can be recognized without having to detect their MIME type
- 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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 23 2018, @02:08AM (13 children)
It is quite possible that I never see anything on the web as the author intended. I long ago blocked web fonts. I see absolutely no reason why I should download some special font, just to read something. Documents render quite well, for the most part, without web fonts. I did install Google's collection of fonts after an article here on Soylent. The collection seems to make some difference, here and there, but I never cared enough to dig in to it.
Bottom line, I don't need web fonts. My machine can cache enough fonts to make any document readable, including cyrillic and Asian fonts. If ever I need Hebrew, or some obscure language that I've never read in my life, I can install suitable fonts directly onto my machine.
Do my documents look exactly like the one the author produced? Who knows? Who *really* gives a damn, other than the author? That author has no authority to decide that I must have some frivolous font before I can read his documents. That entire web font nonsense is frivolity taken to extremes.
Paranthetically - using web fonts probably enables someone to track who is reading what.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @04:21AM (12 children)
Typing a comment via a modern, high-end mobile Android phone is a clusterfuck.
The Web sucks, and SoylentNews proves it over and over.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday April 23 2018, @04:29AM (6 children)
Typing a comment is just typing plain old text. And SN uses a plain old text input box that existed since the dawn of the web. If Android doesn't handle that well, that's not a failure of the web. It's a failure of Android.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @04:47AM (5 children)
Seriously. Are you people fucking braindead? What's wrong with you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @05:23AM (4 children)
Ah, I see, you've run out of arguments.
No, wait, you never had any actual arguments to begin with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @05:36AM (3 children)
Are you braindead, too?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 23 2018, @06:06AM (2 children)
Yes, we are all braindead, except for you. You are the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. Only you can save us from ourselves. ALL HAIL THE UNBRAINDEAD ANONYMOUS COWARD!!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @06:43AM (1 child)
All of the AC's points still stand.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @10:31AM
Well, since that AC had no point, that's vacuously true.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Monday April 23 2018, @04:33AM (4 children)
Typing anything on any "smart" phone is a clusterfuck. Likewise any tablet. If you need to type, get a keyboard.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @04:53AM (1 child)
SoylentNews adds a whole 'nother layer of hell.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kazzie on Monday April 23 2018, @09:24AM
Given that you keep posting here, does that make you a masochist?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday April 23 2018, @07:17AM (1 child)
Typing anything on any "smart" phone is a clusterfuck. Likewise any tablet. If you need to type, get a keyboard.
Hats nit true, the worm predictor get sit right often enough too bee useless. You don't heed yo tripe so many skerries in the retinitis.
(To be fair, the predictor on my phone allows me to type the above sentence correctly* using 56 keystrokes, instead of 111. I've often wanted a word predictor like that in my word processor, but I'm not a touch typist. In any case, typing is rarely the problem, it's all the other UI elements and processes around an input field that make the experience suck.)
*That's not true, the word predictor gets it right often enough to be useful. You don't need to type so many letters on the keyboard.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday April 23 2018, @08:03PM
Yes, but you really need to proofread carefully.
When life isn't going right, go left.