On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 05:05:09PM +0200, Carlo Traverso wrote:
Is PG ready to accept Epub as submission format? (i.e. one submits a valid epub from which the other formats are derived)? If so, one can target Epub, otherwise at best one is forced to submit HTML or txt that converts not-too-badly with current PG tools, and this migh be extremely challenging.
Carlo
From everything I've seen about ePub, adding static ePub files to
I don't think we're ready for this except in rare cases where ePub is the best format for display for a particular item (we just released a book where PDF was the best format, believe it or not). The challenge is that when books are fixed, someone (typically the whitewasher, seldom the original submitter) needs to regenerate all the files from that book. Since there is not yet any standard processing stream to generate static ePub files, this makes it hard for fixes (to HTML & text) to be applied to ePubs. I would, of course, love to see something become our "standard" conversion tool, usable by anyone. Right now, the closest for PG is Marcello's software to build the cached ePub files. It's wonderful and functional, but is it ready for all envisioned purposes? I think not, due at least in part to shortcomings of the input HTML. ALL that said, maybe I am too hung up on automated or semi-automated methods. It *is* the case that an ePub can yield plain HTML, which could be edited and zipped up into a new ePub (without too much trouble). Is there enough benefit in such ePubs? Are there good examples of hand-crafted (or automated, but using different software than is used on the gutenberg.org server) that are far superior to the alternatives? Having a single master format, from which all subsidiary formats can be derived, has been a long-time goal. This has not yet been viable for most titles, despite valiant (and productive) efforts with HTML and TeX. the collection would be a net increase in the effort needed to apply fixes (i.e., it would be one MORE format to deal with by hand, not a generated format that would be very little extra work to generate). There are lots of people involved in creating, managing and fixing eBook files, and there is certainly room for any experiments that people can think of. My response isn't intended to quell such effort, rather to state that given the current state of things, I don't think ePub is a great candidate for a new static file format for the PG collection. -- Greg