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 [...]
This is the first in a series of posts describing some of the lesser-known features in the ePub spec. Many of them aren’t implemented by any readers, yet, but can provide some interesting functionality.
The first is “fallbacks.” As ePub developers know, only a small handful of content types are supported by the spec: [...]
Most of the time, command-line users will be able to run the epubcheck Java binary without issues. But sometimes mysterious problems occur — this happened to me on OS X before upgrading to Snow Leopard. So while it’s a bit awkward, you can use the remote epubcheck API combined with some XSLT to [...]
Our web tool for using the open-source epubcheck validator got a quick refresh:
Now includes epubpreflight results
EpubCheck’s lesser-known companion checks for additional issues like content documents that exceed 300K, which can’t be loaded on the Sony Reader. The complete (short!) list:
Content files that are empty or are >300k
Image files that are empty or are >10MB [...]
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. [...]
(You may be interested in the earlier article, When to embed fonts in ePub files.)
Font selection
Font formats and licensing are complicated. The ePub specification recommends that book designers and reading system implementers use OpenType fonts when possible (although TrueType fonts remain more common). If your font ends in a .otf extension, it’s an OpenType font. [...]
First, let’s be perfectly clear:
The ePub specification supports embedded fonts.
Embedded fonts are supported through use of the CSS2 @font-face rule.
Reading system support
As of September 2009, the following readers do support @font-face:
Adobe Digital Editions
Sony Reader
Implicitly, any reading device which uses the Adobe reading SDK should have the same behavior, though [...]
Thanks to Martin Jenny for a lovely “traditional” style for ePub Zen Garden, using embedded fonts for the headings (use Safari 4 or Firefox 3.5).
There was a sizable crowd and some good questions from the audience at our eformats talk at AAUP. I had to do half the presentation cowboy-style — no slides, no notes — when my USB drive turned out to be Mac-formatted and the slides had to be recovered from email. Thank you Kate!
The [...]
Bookworm has its second home in Italy: Simplicissimus Bookworm. Here’s their announcement.
I helped out with the installation but the very competent folks at Simplicissimus will be managing it from here on. Best of luck!