Daniel Glazman believes that EPUB has reached a technical dead end.
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, 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.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(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.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--