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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  • The EPUB 3.1 specification has been rescinded because it is too costly and complex for the eBook industry to adopt.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.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday April 23 2018, @04:45AM (2 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday April 23 2018, @04:45AM (#670620) Homepage
    Why is everyone pretending that PostScript doesn't exist.
    PS docs were *nothing but* executable content. The problem is the APIs accessible to that executable content. If it's nothing more than laying out information on the page, then it's fine.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @05:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @05:21AM (#670629)

    The Open XML Paper Specification [wikipedia.org] is probably what you want; my cursory reading suggests it's simply a declarative page-layout language.

    Though it's an open standard, it was was developed by Microsoft, who seems to remain its main (though lukewarm) proponent. So, there's that.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Monday April 23 2018, @06:08AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Monday April 23 2018, @06:08AM (#670636)

    When Postscript printers talked over serial ports it was safe enough to let them execute untrusted code. Basically just do a full reset to a known internal state between jobs and you are good. Once they got network ports the risk jumped, smash the stack and an attacker can escape to your internal network.

    This proposal mandates the full HTML/CSS/DOM/JS web stack implemented in a viewer trusted by everyone except the owner due to the DRM requirement. This is more like adding a full network access library to Postscript. And if you don't believe there is ill intent here, make a proposal to add a mandate that a book must default to no access to resources not bundled in the book itself without the client throwing a request for user authorization that clearly states what access is being sought and the information to be transmitted. See how fast the proposal gets shot down, because OF COURSE they intend to insert web trackers to track every page viewed, how long it was viewed, insert ads, etc. If it can't implement a Kindle Unlimited clone nobody will want it.