ePUB format could potentially take off - ipad support

[forfear]

epub format could potentially take off with support on more 'jesus' tablets like the recent announcement on the ipad. what do you think?

i don't see any major advantages of the format at the moment, but I think i need more time to read about it.

[RamonS]

Possible, but I am currently hung up on the question why there is a new format with every gadget coming to market. This is unsustainable and really shouldn't be encouraged.

[forfear]

Possible, but I am currently hung up on the question why there is a new format with every gadget coming to market. This is unsustainable and really shouldn't be encouraged.

me too.

[LTinker68]

Possible, but I am currently hung up on the question why there is a new format with every gadget coming to market. This is unsustainable and really shouldn't be encouraged.

me too.

Remember Beta? Or more recently, HD DVD?

[RamonS]

Although, in case of BetaMax or even more in case of Video2000 those formats were tremendously better than VHS. VHS recorders could be produced cheaply because the technology used was cheap. Video2000 was able to record 8 hours on a single tape with stereo sound before stereo broadcasts existed, there were also no stripes or flickers when fast forwarding or going reverse. Beta is still around, in slightly modified form as DigiBeta, the tape standard in broadcasting. Those tapes are excellent. You can wrinkle them up and poke them with a screw driver and they still play fine.

So, yea, maybe the question should be what a new format does better than all the others. Not what it does different, but what does it do better. Just look at Microsoft's XPS, touted as the PDF killer it the readers now slowly start to work acceptably on W7. Microsoft publishing all its documents as PDFs and only a few in XPS tells the rest of the story.

Anyone knows what ePUB does better than eBook or PDF?

[Frits]

The most important difference where ePUB is better than PDF: ePUB is reflowable by design, PDF is not; PDF was designed as a sort of electronic photocopy, and is rather rigid. Of course, nowadays you can create reflowable PDFs by tagging them, but many people don't, and there are too many PDFs around that do not allow word wrapping.

ePUB works very well on e-reader devices such as the B&N Nook or the Sony Readers. Many e-readers have 5- or 6-inch displays, and don't display untagged PDFs very well: either you need to zoom until the font becomes too small to read, or you need to scroll around a lot.

ePUB and PDF were designed for different purposes, so I don't think it's fair to say that one is better than the other. Is .XLS better than .DOC? That depends on what you want to use it for. It's not like the Video2000 / BetaMax discussion.

ePUB has been around for quite a while, and is the standard format for many online bookshops (like PDF, it supports DRM). The other important e-book standard in the Western world is the .mobi format, supported by Amazon.com and the Kindle. In Russia, .fb2 is a de facto standard. Now, this is an area where you could have this Video2000 / BetaMax discussion: these are all e-book formats that serve similar purposes. But I would PDF out of this discussion; it's something different.

[Andrew]

iPad and iPad-like devices are not limited to one single standard (as far as I know), so I'm not sure this is the same as betamax / VHS at all. Anyone should be able to write an app that can read whatever format you want to use.

[RamonS]

The question remains that if the HAT is the right tool for ebook publishing. I think Flare is doing well with focusing on online help specifically at the moment rather than being the publishing tool for everything and everyone.
I am not that versed in the ebook market, but are there any significant numbers of users? Look at tablet PCs, yea, they are around for a decade now, but nobody really needs not wants them. Not sure if the iPad (what a horrible name!) is going to change that.

[Frits]

I am perfectly happy with my 6-inch e-reader. I can take lots of book with me, and read whatever and wherever I like. The eInk screen is an excellent replacement for real paper and ink, and in my opinion much better for reading than backlit LCD or LED screens. BUT: I use my e-reader for reading fiction. I would not want to read the kind of technical documents that I write on this device. The images (screenshots etc.) would become too small. Colors are replaced by greyscales (color eInk is not on the market yet). And the slow refresh rate of the eInk screen makes it unsuitable for quickly browsing a text or looking up things.

A larger e-reader or tablet (say 10 inches or more) would be OK for technical documentation. But on devices of that size PDF also displays well. So, in other words, there is no good reason (yet) for a HAT to support ePUB.

Should this change in the future, I dont think it will be very difficult for MadCap to add support for ePUB. An ePUB file is nothing more than a zip file containing a css and xhtml files (and a few other things), so it's not too far removed from Flare's format.

By the way, there is an excellent free and open-source e-book management program, called calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com), that among other features can convert between a large number of e-book formats, including PDF and ePUB.

[RamonS]

What disturbs me the most about the eBook readers is the in your face DRM. At any given time and at free will the publisher or distributor can rip the eBook right out of your hands. With a real book that is a bit difficult and given the stellar cost of readers and eBooks I advocate for paper when it is about books.

[Frits]

You're absolutely right about the DRM. To complicate matters, there are currently two incompatible DRM systems, and the license terms are such that an e-reader can support only one at the time. In practice this means that if your e-reader allows you to read DRM-ed books from Amazon, you cannot read books brought from B&N (and most of the rest of the world), and the other way round. It seems Apple is going to make this worse by adding their own DRM system.

However, it's quite easy to remove the DRM from an e-book, although that may be illegal in several countries.

There's lots of cheap and even free legal e-books available on the net without DRM. No, you won't find a legal copy of the latest Dan Brown or Stephen King for two dollars, but there's more than enough that's worth reading, at least for me. I did not spend a single penny on books with DRM yet, but have more books available now than I can read in the rest of my life.

[RamonS]

Leaves the question how many books you read at the same time. My guess is that typically one reads one after another, so carrying around 200 "books" doesn't really make much sense unless the reader is much small and lighter than the actual book or the eBook is way cheaper than paper. This may be different when working with reference books and encyclopedias somewhere in the armpit of nowhere...which is probably the only time you'd run out of batteries, hehe.
Maybe I am too conservative in my views, but will we end up like the great Gatsby and be forced to buy faux books for our library?

[Frits]

No, I cannot think of a "business case" that justifies carrying around 200 novels. I read one book at the time. But the reader fits in my pocket, whereas a large paperback or hardcover book does not. Also, I travel quite a lot, and used to carry lots of books in my suitcase. Now, my e-reader reduces the risk of access baggage fees. And the e-reader gives me a chance to try out novels by authors who publish their books (or at least the first chapters) for free on the Internet. In the past it happened too often that I spent money on a paper book that turned out not to be as good as I expected.
The e-reader may not be cheaper than paper, but it is a lot cheaper than the book cases I would need to store the physical copies of the books I have on my reader. (Moreover, my wife would not allow me to buy to those book cases...)
So, for me the e-reader is a good solution. But for others it can be different. And it's good we have a choice. I don't think the paper book is going away soon.

[Sara@PAS]

We're just getting into publishing .epub format, and so far it looks like InDesign is our best starting place, but we like Flare, use it a lot, and I know it's got the basic building blocks for xml and xhtml that epub uses.

Any plans to create an epub output option from Flare?

[Andrew]

I'd contact your MadCap salesrep about this if you want some kind of answer.

If epub is important to you, you should submit a feature request.

[forfear]

I'd contact your MadCap salesrep about this if you want some kind of answer.

If epub is important to you, you should submit a feature request.

I strongly second that!
If its important and worth time and effort for an epub format, let it be known. Dan out

[sperkins]

Hi guys,
I'm gleaning whatever wisdom you've provided here for my sister and bro-in-law, who want to convert a book that was written in Word to an ePub format for Amazon. The two problems are:

1. What converts Word files to ePub without starting over from scratch? and...
2. Photos are a big part of this book. Are you saying that Amazon ePub books can't support that?

And you're right that it might not be too much of a stretch for Flare to support ePubs, if there is a demand for it.
Thanks for your suggestions,
S

[Nita Beck]

The original post is pretty old and at the time Flare did not support ePub.

Starting with Flare 8 (if my memory serves), ePub is supported. You can read more about it here (in the Flare 9 Help): http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... B%7C_____1