Is ePub, ePub or ePub?

We are only just really starting to get into the interoperable digital world we all seek but already cracks are surfacing and more importantly it is not difficult to envisage some further issues moving forward. Unfortunately we are not all experts in the detail, nor are many experts across the full range of issues and technologies and most importantly the experts often miss the commercial and cultural aspects in their search for technical utopia.

Yesterday I was sitting in our Pune office in India when I received an email which I am not saying is right or wrong only that the author is someone who I respect when it comes to digital file manipulation. His objective was to highlight that ePUB for iPad is different from ePUB for ADE and SonyReader and raise some areas for consideration. The mail was quiet detailed and extensive so I have just listed some of the issues raised.

1. The ePUB for the iPad needs a new-standard CSS for iPad-ePUB which will generically apply colour for Part/Chapter/Sections/Noteboxes/CodeListing and others. Fairly straightforward but not required until colour was delivered.
2. Image/Graphic format: iPad-ePUB supports JPG and PNG formats, but PNG (transparent) is recommended. Transparency of images helps’ if a coloured Notebox has an inline equation then image will not render white-patch of inline equation image.
3.The graphic dimension requirement is different for as images which occupy 25% or 40% of the page need more scaling as compared to Sony/ADE. This applies to cover dimension too.
3. Special Character support is extensive for iPad-ePUB as compared to ADE and SonyReader. This means that the iPad can render more characters as text as opposed to image.
5. iPad-ePUB does not work on XSL-stylesheet as ADE and SonyReader does. iPad-ePUB entirely works on CSS.

Although iPad-ePUB can be viewed on ADE but will not display colour enhancements in SonyReader (because of its grey screen). We can’t assure 100% cross-compatibility of ePUB between iPad and ADE/Sony, as the owner of respective specifications also don’t claim this cross-compatibility.

We already have DRM diversion as Apple, Amazon and Adobe go their separate ways. We still have multiple format s with Amazon, Blio, epub, Apple epub, Adobe ebook and obviously these will develop different versions and be open to different interpretations.

What we need to remember is that its not just the consumer that is faced with the question of interoperability but also the publisher and aggregator who has to hold and maintain them. Someone who invested early in digital files may now have to revisit these in order tomake them comply with the new demands. The recent change from 1.03 to 1.05 version of epub is a classic example of such a change.

The one thing we all want is interoperability.

Three Cherries and You Win

Everyone is familiar with the ‘one armed bandit’ or slot machine. Three cherries, or three of a kind and you win, two cherries and a pear you don’t.

To many today’s the ebook download world is a one armed bandit. As the market adopts epub we can effectively put that cherry on hold and pull again.

The next row is DRM and getting a cherry here is not easy or has implications. Adobe has the cherry but the implications on the next row – the device, may be significant and if there are only cherries in the row then that stops there maybe being three pears or three of anything but cherries.

Next we have the device row. This is where we have to match up to the format and the DRM. Today we can have three pears tomorrow only cherries may prevail in the download world.

We must remember this is a one armed bandit and although they usually have three rows this one has to have four and must include the consumer. Some today will supply epub files to a service who will convert these to their own delivery and DRM. The publisher sees three cherries but the consumer sees three pears. Most one armed bandits pay out differently according to the fruit.

When the price of the device drops below $100 dollars then it is easy to see the market but today at $300 plus this is not the case. Online still offers three cherries and more flexibility as laptops shrink in size, weight, cost and wireless broadband becomes ubiquitous. Online is where today’s digital action is.

Is there such a thing as Standard?

Standards have always been open to variation. Going right back to our days with ecommerce EDI, tradacoms and later the EDIFACT standards often differed between trading partners. The basic schema and semantics were the same but the actual interpretation and use of individual fields could vary. We all adapted and built or used front end conversion services that could normalise the data.

When we moved into the digital content world, we all understood format wars were a necessary evil and often wished them away. They often fed consumer apathy and indecisiveness. After all we have all bought technology that soon became obsolete. We remember the old 8 track, the Sony Walkman, we lived through betamax versus VHS wars and much more. Often one standard or format dominated but the logic as to which was going to win was not always done to the best technology or the best format but down to factors often outside of these.

We now have print on demand services which are now becoming pivotal to certain publishing programmes such as vanity publishing, short cycle print runs and academic. So is one print on demand file the same as another? Can you take a file created for one service and automatically use it on another? Unfortunately not, but the differences although often minimal are still a change. Files created for one service are not truly generic.

Today we have digital books that can be formatted in several different ways; Microsoft Reader, Mobibook, Adobe ebook, etc. We have added digital rights management encryption that can be applied to protect the content and have a myriad of devices that can render the files. So what happens with open formats such as OEB and epub? Well the reality is that they are often both open and proprietary. There are exceptions and the most well know of these is MP3. Not the best format technically but one that is able to be played on almost any device and through a vast number of software players. The fact that makes this possible is lack of DRM on MP3.

OEB (Open Ebook) has long been used by many as an open digital standard. Are all OEB files the same? No, and many aggregators have their own interpretation. Its derivative epub is now being heralded by many as the new dawn and a truly open standard, but today there is only one DRM service that can encrypt it and only one player that can render the encrypted download. Will others follow – almost certainly? Will they be the same in their encryption and rendering requirements - almost certainly not.

iTunes built an empire on the service, the player and a proprietary format. Audible has built an empire on a proprietary format and DRM operability on many players. Both are now seen to have helped open up the market but also restricted it.

Today we have Mobi and Amazon and epub and Sony. Sony appear to have dropped their previous proprietary format and see epub as a more acceptable industry way forward. Adobe’s PDF based ebook reader is still a major force and will be dominant in the market but as we shift towards the mobile device market then the ability to reflow text and chunk files would indicate that the tagging formats of Mobi and epub will come to the front. However, DRM remains the key to the downloadable file world and the mobile platform the real battleground.