I love Moon+ Reader Pro. How will Moon and other popular e-reading apps fare—now that the International Digital Publishing Forum is headed toward a merger with W3C, the Web standards organization?
That’s just one of the questions that ebooklovers, small publishers, app developers and librarians ideally can ask IDPF officials at an open meeting and Webinar on the planned W3C merger. The time is 12:30-2 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, January 18, and the place of the physical meeting is New York City (at Digital Book World even thought you won’t need a DBW pass to get in).
“In person attendance is encouraged,” the IDPF says, “but remote participation will be available.” So Web visitors can ask questions? If they can’t, this feature should be added. On my mind right now:
- Will there be easy conversion in both directions between the IDPF’s current ePub standard and the newer Web-integrated formats, and for how long will the conversation efforts continue, as standards evolve?
- How will stand-alone books fare? Must everything ultimately be Web-dependent? If nothing else, consider the privacy implications, not to mention the ability to own books for real.
- Also, how about small publishers and self-publishers? The existing IDPF has not given them a free, full-powered WYSIWYG app to create ePub files from Word-style applications. Post-merger, will this be on the agenda? Via the Readium spin-off, the IDPF created a promising reference app for e-reading, but I’d have preferred something more ambitious.
- How will libraries fare? So many are now tethered to OverDrive, which has built its business around the existing ePub standard. Will the new changes be disruptive to libraries? Steve Potash, head of OverDrive and one of the main people behind ePub, opposes the merger. Keep in mind, of course, his vested interest in the status quo.
I myself will support the merger if the interests of ebooklovers, libraries, small publishers and developers of apps like Moon+ Reader Pro are adequately protected. IDPF Executive Director Bill McCoy would do well to reassure us with specifics.
Among my other concerns is traditional, encryption-based DRM. Certain publishers love it. I don’t want it to jeopardize the Web as we know it. The W3C musn’t kowtow to DRM zealots.
What’s more, I hope that the IDPF-W3C combo will care more about watermarking technologies and less about DRM for commercial content when precautions are felt necessary. In fact, Bill himself was a big advocate of watermarking, aka “social DRM” (these days I prefer the term “watermaking,” since we’re talking about tracking of bootlegged copies—different from actual DRM).
Some pro-IDPF/W3C merger points:
- I like the idea of ebooks becoming more a part of the fabric of the Web as long as standalone, non-networked books can also flourish. I’d like to be able to read future ePub books from my browser without any need for an extension. Meanwhile I’m glad to see that Microsoft’s Edge browser already can read ePub without one.
- Also, given the stinginess of many publishers toward the IDPF, the new merger could breathe new life into ebook standards. I just want them to be done right without needless complexities for ebooklovers, librarians and app developers like Moon+ Reader Pro.
- ePub standards reflect W3C standards, and perhaps the merger will result in faster, more efficient standards-creation.
- W3C has cared about accessibility, just like the IDFC, and ideally there can be further improvements with more resources available. What’s more, the combined organization shouldn’t just put out standards. It should aggressively lean on ePub developers to create readers with such options as all-text boldface and even the ability of users to install their own fonts.
- Likewise encouraging is the possibility of the book world becoming a little less Amazon-centric. The clout of W3C could help in this regard. Already you can submit books to Amazon in ePub, but Amazon really needs to make it a final format, not just one available for production purposes. Perhaps the merger can at least slightly increase the chances of this happening.
Related: W3C and IDPF ratify plan to merge—but is it wise?, by TeleRead Editor Chris Meadows.
teleread.org 
The development of eReading and eWriting platforms. I think that IDPF/W3C should and will offer support and prototypes (e.g. Readium) for developers to work from and backward compatibility should be a non-negotiable element in the resulting standards. So, for example, an eReader such as Apple’s iBooks.app can render ePub 2 and 3 plus Apple’s own “multi-touch” books. BTW, Apple also offers a WYSIWYG authoring tool (iBooks Author) that can output ePub 3 as well as PDF and multi-touch books. This demonstrates feasibility but mustering the will to work in these areas will require some promise of reward.That depends upon what readers are willing and able to do. IDPF/W3C will propose but it will be others to enable those proposals.
LikeLike
@Frank: Exactly. In the end, it all boils down to “will.” I take it for granted we’ll start with forward and backward compatibility. It’s the future I’m worried about. I’d welcome reassuring statements from the IDPF, complete with mention of time periods. Ideally, compatibility will be eternal. Beyond that, I want the new incarnation of the IDPF to lean hard on developers of browsers and dedicated readers to implement the standards to the max. If nothing else, the IPF should commit itself to rating the more popular apps and dedicated hardware ereaders by compatibility with past and present versions of ePub on an ongoing basis. I prefer to see the commitments made before the absolute finalization of the merger. Thanks very much for caring about these issues, Frank. Too much discussion of the book standards is from the perspective of content creators versus that of consumers. We need balance! Both groups count!
LikeLike
The difference between eBooks and web-based content. Whenever I encounter something on the web that I want to refer to repeatedly over time, I turn that content into an eBook using either Apple Pages to create an ePub 2 book or Apple’s iBooks Author to create an ePub 3 or “multi-touch” book. The reason I do this is because the web is ephemeral and eBooks are much less so. If you’ve ever revisited a forum on a topic of interest only to find that all or part of it is no longer viewable, you know what I’m talking about.
I try to make these eBooks independent of network availability and the persistence of whatever business model puts it up on the web. This can be challenging because many of these content purveyors work very hard to prevent me from encapsulating that content into a form that serves my needs better that what they provide. This is especially the case with video. They want to be able to count my every access of that content as long as they deign to make it available. Advertising lives on the eyeball count.
This is the contest: a system that will evolve into a pay-per-view form versus a system that will best serve the needs of content consumers.
Once an eBook is created, it should be readable in any standards conforming eReader, including those that are web based such as the no longer available Ibis Reader. Readium.js makes another, better Ibis Reader possible. What’s missing is that no one has yet come up with a compelling reason to build it.
The dichotomy that exists today need not persist. There can be an ephemeral web and a persistent web (eBooks as snapshots).
LikeLike