[Today's guest post is by Keith Fahlgren. - Liza]
The three ePub specifications (OPF, OPS, and OCF) include a lot of detail on ebook metadata and markup, but do not include a technique for describing covers. Despite this omission (a fix is being discussed), there are some widely adopted approaches for marking up covers that will [...]
If I say that a document is in “XML”, I’m not really saying anything very specific. All I’ve told you is that the document has some text wrapped in various angle-brackets, and that those angle-brackets are “well-formed.” A well-formed XML document just means one in which the angle-brackets open and close in a predictable [...]
One of the great things about sitting on 30,000+ ePub books (as uploaded to Bookworm) is the ability to look at what’s happening in real-world ebook production. Today I’m examining file size, which is useful if you happen to be doing resource planning for a cloud-based ebook reading system.
Smallest 1.6 kilobytes
Largest 233 megabytes
Total # [...]
Since Bookworm has support for video you may want to experiment with creating your own video ebooks. Here’s how to do it and still create a valid XHTML 1.1/ePub.
Assuming you have a Flash movie called Creative_Commons_-_Get_Creative.swf and a containing XHTML page called chapter-1.html, put this in your OPF:
<!– Flash video [...]
This is an experimental new feature but of course a very cool one: Bookworm can now display and play ePub books with embedded video.
Whether the video will actually play depends on the epub file’s formatting and the capability of your web browser. Bookworm also needs to register the particular file type.
Supported video formats:
MP4
OGV
SWF
In later [...]
Apropos of the Harlequin announcement of Carina Press, I’ve compiled this list of DRM-free publishers.
I asked about this on Twitter once and eventually stumbled on this great list of scifi, fantasy and romance publishers who distribute DRM-free books. I haven’t validated the list and don’t know if all are still in business.
But I also [...]
Mike Cane hates ebook indexes. He’s right — that kind of index is worse than none at all.
I happen to believe a good search feature is valuable and in some cases can replace an editorial index (for example, if the requested term is infrequent in the text). But if a publisher spent the money [...]
I wrote these to automate a really common task: zip up an ePub (properly) and validate it. It expects a local install of epubcheck.
Install these functions in your .bash_profile. This should work on any Unix-like system including OS X.
Zip up an ePub file
function epub()
{
rm -f $@; zip -q0X $@ mimetype; zip -qXr9D $@ *
}
Call this [...]
Since these technology areas are relatively new I thought I’d point to some of the resources that have been supremely valuable to me in developing an offline web app:
Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
by Jonathan Stark
By a happy coincidence this in-progress book from O’Reilly is running on the Open Feedback Publishing System I [...]
I was extremely pleased to participate in the Internet Archive’s BookServer announcement and press event. (The Register has the best coverage, but also see CNET and ReadWriteWeb).
Our part of this open ecosystem is Ibis Reader, an in-development digital reading system for a range of internet devices that provides access to books both online and offline. [...]