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