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: 2) by Arik on Monday April 23 2018, @11:45AM (1 child)
Should be set by the user, not the book.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @02:27PM
That's idiotic. Those should be set by the book with the reader being able to override it if need be.
Depending upon the content of the book, the font size shouldn't always be the same, if you're looking for more of a light breezy read, then something like Times New Roman 10, is a great choice, but if you're reading something where you need to read slower or you need a larger font, you'd want something else. Then there's computer manuals where they often times use multiple fonts to differentiate between book content and what you actually type at the prompt.
In short, the people making most of these books do spend time considering the needs of the readers when setting those defaults, if don't let them do it, then all sorts of weird things can happen. What's worse, is that you may not even be making the correct choices for an enjoyable read, but if it defaults to something from the publisher, you can easily go back and forth as appropriate.