Comments for ePub Books

Comment on O’Reilly are now selling ePub books! by Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:03:27 +0000

If you just buy the print book then you will pay $8 more … the cheapest version they sell is the electronic version

But I do get your point.

We are still in the early stages of all this e/p choice, but perhaps in several years time we might receive the electronic versions for free when we buy the printed book.

Comment on O’Reilly are now selling ePub books! by Keith Fahlgren

Keith Fahlgren — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:30:37 +0000

Or you could get the printed book for only $20, a savings of 50%!

Comment on Do you want to read ePub books on your iPhone? by Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:40:23 +0000

I can’t argue with you that Stanza needs to be more compliant with the standard, I’m sure Lexcycle will be working toward this, but I still see this as a great step forward for ePub.

We should see Mobipocket later this year and perhaps even Adobe DE will get ported, but in the meantime we don’t have a reader (that I know of) on the iPhone for reading ePub formatted books.

Stanza may not be perfect but it does get ePub out there…this has to be a good thing.

Comment on Do you want to read ePub books on your iPhone? by Keith Fahlgren

Keith Fahlgren — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:48:33 +0000

While Stanza might be useful for fiction, the fact that it doesn’t even support the most trivial elements of real markup (headings, tables, etc) mean that it isn’t a usable generic ePub reader. I’m waiting for something that actually supports the standard.

Comment on What image formats are suitable for ePub? by Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:58:31 +0000

Thanks for the comment Marshall. What you say about the potential for reading devices to render SVG at a less optimal speed makes a lot of sense, particularly if we listen to the discussions going on around the net (I’ll try to dig up some links to these). Adobe themselves recommend breaking up your eBook file in to chapter size chunks to help with the speed.

If I was to start using SVG then I think I would want to create interesting images, and by their very nature, these will be quite complex. Perhaps for the near future we should stick with good old raster images.

Comment on What image formats are suitable for ePub? by Marshall T. Vandegrift

Marshall T. Vandegrift — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:46:25 +0000

It’s a several years-old, well-received format maintained by the W3C with many existing and interoperable implementations. The OPS specifically states that SVG scripting content “must not” be used by authors and “should not” be rendered by reading systems, which essentially makes SVG purely an XML-based vector graphics format. The only issue I see is that SVG rendering can be complex and may be slower than optimal on portable devices.

Comment on Web-based ePub Reader - Testers Needed by Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:50:22 +0000

Thanks for the notice Liza, I’m now signed up and eager to listen in on the progress.

It would also be interesting to knowing if you will be optimising your reader for mobile devices. This could be a great for all those web connect devices such as the iPhone.

Comment on Web-based ePub Reader - Testers Needed by Liza Daly

Liza Daly — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:12:44 +0000

I’m now encouraging people to join the discussion list for this project if they’d like to be involved: http://groups.google.com/group/bookworm-discuss

or if you are curious but just want to follow any major announcements, a low-traffic, announcement-only list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bookworm-announce

Thanks to everyone who’s already responded!

Comment on A New TEI Converter Available for ePub Developers by Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:17:08 +0000

Thanks for the comment and link to the article Keith. I actually made a post on the DocBook converter yesterday but no fret, it’s always good to read what others are saying.

When I was researching which format to use as my master, I learned O’Reilly were using DocBook, I just didn’t know in what context. It’s certainly interesting to hear that you are using it in your regular book production pipeline.

Comment on A New TEI Converter Available for ePub Developers by Keith Fahlgren

Keith Fahlgren — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:19:47 +0000

Similarly, DocBook to .epub tools have now been released.

Comment on A New TEI Converter Available for ePub Developers by Liza Daly

Liza Daly — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:18:38 +0000

Done!

Comment on A New TEI Converter Available for ePub Developers by Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:57:34 +0000

If it’s gnarly TEI you want then you should probably sign up to the TEI-L mailing list, I’m sure there would be some very willing people who would be more than happy to provide you with all the gnarl you need

If there is anyone out there who has some down and dirty TEI files for Liza to experiment with then pop along to threepress.org/contact, there is an email address where you to contact Liza directly.

Comment on A New TEI Converter Available for ePub Developers by Liza Daly

Liza Daly — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:29:39 +0000

What I’d really love are some gnarly (but valid) TEI documents to work with. The XML versions of the Gutenberg files are so lightly tagged that it’s difficult to extract any interesting metadata from them, and I’d like to see what Digital Editions does with tables, embedded figures, and the like that have come through the TEI-HTML stylesheets.

Comment on A New TEI Converter Available for ePub Developers by Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:22:15 +0000

Many thanks for the update Liza, and also the pointer to your own gut2tei converter. I’ll be having a good look over that come the weekend.

Comment on A New TEI Converter Available for ePub Developers by Liza Daly

Liza Daly — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:14:25 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation, Mike.

I’ve just updated that blog post to reflect the fact that I’ve moved the repository and downloads for tei2epub to a new project in Google Code meant to house standalone epub tools: http://code.google.com/p/epub-tools/

There is a slightly updated version of the tool bundled here: http://epub-tools.googlecode.com/files/tei2epub-0.2.zip

My test TEI documents are also converted from Gutenberg’s content, although I went directly from books marked up here in the Gutenberg DTD to TEI, rather than starting from plain text. That stylesheet is available here: http://code.google.com/p/threepress/source/browse/trunk/data/xsl/gut2tei.xsl