February 2011 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: Kindle Previewer and EPUB to MOBI Converter
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

jim said: > Just playing around with Amazon's Kindle Previewer > ... > and I notice that you can ask it to display an EPUB file, > in which case it compiles that file into MOBI format ok, that's nice. we already had kindlegen to create .mobi from .html, but the hassle of backconverting an .epub into something you could feed .mobi was often an ugly chore... so it's nice of amazon to release this converter into the wild. (they've had it for their own use for some time now, which is why they were willing to accept .epub as input for their d.t.p.) > Now if we book developers only had a reliable way > to compile HTML to EPUB -- so that we can preview > what our HTML will look like on EPUB and MOBI devices. gee, jim, i know how you're _trying_ to change the subject, and all. but you have walked right into the quicksand here. because my tool lets "book developers" create an .epub... by simply clicking a button. along with .html and .mobi... with all of those output formats being converted from the .zml master-format which is very simple to create and edit. in other words, i give people what you are asking for. and i require far less of them than you would require. (you'd require them to do .html, while i do it for them.) so yes, indeed, i expect "book developers" will use my tool to generate a "canonical" version of their .html, .mobi, and .epub files, which nondiscriminating users "just download". but i also expect that they will make the master-format .zml file available to their end-users, so that those end-users can use my tool to make e-books customized to their preferences. you might think you can force your files on people. i think that if i give them the power to customize, they won't settle for the files you forced on them. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

ok, i sure hope jim swings by today... jim, i was just checking, and you know what? nook can read .pdfs just fine... so can kobo... and so too with a number of other e-readers. (but long run, those others are likely goners.) so if the people who own these machines can quickly and easily create .pdfs _customized_ to the exact specifications of their preferences -- as they can, with the tool i've developed -- .pdf ends up as a very useful format for them... maybe someday your kindle can do that too... on the whole, though, one has to be impressed with the universality amazon has attained with its .mobi format. it created viewer-programs for all of the major platforms, and they all sync well, so even though amazon chose _not_ to adopt the "e-book standard file-format", it sure hasn't hurt their uptake. nobody comes close to their share. i've been waiting for literally 2 years to post this. since 2 years ago, tim o'reilly (yes, that one), said: > I have a bold prediction: Unless Amazon > embraces open e-book standards like epub, > which allow readers to read books > on a variety of devices, the Kindle > will be gone within two or three years. > http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/22/kindle-oreilly-ebooks-technology-breakthro… see the glaring mistake he made? that the only way readers could "read books on a variety of devices" is if amazon "embraced an open e-book standard". oops... a lot of people think tim o'reilly is a very smart guy, and i'm not about to argue with them, but we need to acknowledge that he made a very stupid mistake with this "bold prediction" of his, and it is the same very stupid mistake that _lots_ of people have made -- including one guy who used to post here a lot -- which is that if you have "an open e-book standard", all sorts of magical things will happen automatically. well, guess what, they don't. and furthermore, a good number of those "magical" things can happen even if you _don't_ choose to use a file-format that's "open" or "standard" or even both. in such a case, you need to apply the elbow grease, which is exactly what amazon did, and it _worked_... it worked _big_time_... self-published authors are now making some extremely big money on amazon. a 27-year old kid (i'm old enough to call a 27-year old woman a kid, yes, i am) has sold _half-a-million_ e-books through the various e-bookstores out there, the big bulk of 'em through the amazon kindle-store. she only made $.35 each on some of those sales, but she made $2 a piece on the others, so she's closing in on her first million dollars as a self-published author. and she had never sold a book before april 15, 2010. and many others have reached other levels of success. konrath, one leader, made $64,000 the last 2 months, and looks to make up to a million bucks in this _year_. so it's clear to everyone that the kindle is not "gone"... not by a longshot... it's here, big, and in your _face_... so now tim o'reilly has egg on his face. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

in case any of you were wondering why sony decided to stir up a little anti-apple spin soup on february 1st about apple's in-app purchasing, it's because apple has had a press-conference announced for some time for february 2nd about ...in-app purchasing. i'm not sure why all of the observers who were commenting on the issue all over cyberspace didn't acknowledge that, but hey, you know, when the elephants fight, the little animals just run and hide. anyway, let's see what apple says on groundhog day, ok? oh, by the way, the press conference is being jointly held with rupert murdoch, which is a big blatant warning you better plug your nose, since this crap is gonna smell really, really bad. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

oh crap... anyway... that's what i get for e-mailing stuff between my account and my girlfriend's account... -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Morasch＠aol.com 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

by the way, when i opened that e-mail in my iphone, and clicked on the link to the .pdf there in my iphone, it opened up the .pdf in safari just nice and slick like... the native .pdf reader isn't all too accommodating in its capabilities, but the readability of the page was good... i did a screenshot and uploaded it to my site: > http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/jjngle-iphone-image.jpg never been much of a fan of .pdf, but it's impossible to deny that it's ubiquitous... -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Feb '11

01 Feb '11

ho hum, and yet another day goes by where jim fails to answer any of the hard questions, or provide any material for our competition... oh well, maybe we'll have better luck tomorrow. at any rate, here's my .pdf for our exercise: > http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/jjngl.pdf this is the "quick-and-dirty" version, which authors will use on an every-day basis to put out a clean copy of their current work... it's still pretty complete, with user-specified font, fontsize, margins, colors, run-heads, footers, metadata, linked table-of-contents, all of the usual rot that i usually mention... but a few of the spacing issues are wonky... plus it's lacking some of the polish niceties, such as widow/orphan control. (and crikey, hadn't even brought that up till now, had i?) another thing that i hadn't mentioned before is the ability to control chapter-end orphans. those are the worst kind, to have one or two or three lines sitting _all_alone_ on a page at the end of a chapter. don't wanna have that! there were 3 such cases, fixed, in this version. if anyone has any feedback, i'd love to hear it. anyway, jim, hope to hear from you tomorrow. i'd like to get your ok on the current .html file, so i can regenerate the .mobi and .epub files... don't keep me waiting, or i'll track you down... -bowerbird

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