On 2012-10-11 00:07, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
jeroen said:
your desire to try to improve them is commendable...
I will continue then...
a lot of hacking is being done in the reader-programs to offset the major lack of power in those hand-helds.
Agreed, but I have a feeling this is a passing phase, and things will sort out in a few years time. (Although I just read about a 10-dollar, ultra-low powered eBook reader that has no rendering engine at all, just memory for pre-rendered pages).
none of the people who make e-books for a living will have anything to do with calibre, not even to just "read".
But everybody in the "scene" of pirated books is using it. (Maybe those two facts are related) I know it wrecks my books...
nook for p.c. is also quite squirrely, and sadly, so is a.d.e. (if it weren't for its d.r.m. lock-in which locks in libraries, a.d.e. would have no customers at all; readers hate a.d.e.)
Fully agree here...
there is really only one .epub platform that matters at all, at least at this time, and that's apple. so you need to test on an ipad. i recall you dissing apple, as proprietary, and i understand that. but if you wanna go where people are...
Well, the main reason I personally dissed Apple (and I've owned several of their machines before, and still have a Mac 512k in the attic), is that I believe the deliver a very bad _service_ to their customers. Technology wise, their machines are good. I will try to do some testing on iPads then (enough friends who have them).
the other thing that most people would have to think about is whether their .epub converts nicely to .mobi by kindlegen. because kindle is where the vast majority of people are now.
I will try that one. On this side of the Atlantic, kindle isn't as popular as ePub, but still, most PG "customers" are in the US.
but since you're working from a master-file, you should not chain your conversions. instead, write mobi-friendly .html. and feed _that_ to kindlegen. separate it totally from .epub.
Chaining conversions is a pain, that is what I complained about several times.
that will also allow you to generate another version for kf8.
For that I will need the spec of both. I thought it was pretty closed, but maybe there are some pointers.
don't listen to anyone who tells you that kf8 is just like .epub. to put it bluntly, they do not know what they're talking about. .epub has an .xhtml base, whereas kf8 jumped up to .html5. (people will tell you .epub3 does .html5; don't believe them.)
ePub3 is the xml-variant of html5, but ePub3 isn't there yet.
so if you don't want to -- or cannot -- handle a thing yourself, you need to just tell people "sorry, you cannot have that now"...
I think that should be answer to some of the complaints, with a proper explanation of the state of technology. Jeroen.