from Hacker News

IDPF, EPUB Standardizing Body, Has Combined with W3C

by rhythmvs on 2/5/17, 10:09 PM with 46 comments

• by rhythmvs on 2/5/17, 10:59 PM

  I believe it a good thing that the EPUB standard will henceforth be further developed by and within the same body that develops the standards on which EPUB relies. After all, EPUB is “stripped down html5” anyway. As a developer of Web-based html5 books, I can certainly see the benefits of becoming enabled to re-use my static html and css ‘as-is’ and repackage into EPUB-based books for offline consumption by e-readers.

  But there’s some fierce objection against the merger of IDPF into the W3C [1][2], the key (?) argument being formulated as:

  > “The W3C is focused on promoting the Web, but eBooks are not websites. When the IDPF is gone, who will advocate for readers?”

  Maybe a fair point, but I don’t think I can agree. While it is true indeed that reading long-form content like books requires enduring focus, and that having to read them in a browser where linkbait always is luring to have you click away into a never ending feed of distraction, the problem is not the underlying technology.

  [1] http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-...

  [2] http://futureofebooks.info/

• by jathu on 2/5/17, 11:39 PM

  When I was making a simple EPUB app for my own use [1], I found it surprising that many publishers don't follow IDPF standards. Most do, but there are a significant amount that mix and match all sorts of rules.

  [1] http://jathu.me/bisheng/

• by nivals on 2/6/17, 6:03 AM

  This is good news. Making fully baked ePubs for the first few versions of the B&N Nook was more art than science due to some of the problem with ePubs.

• by chris_wot on 2/5/17, 11:09 PM

  I guess I've never really understood the need for ePub when PDF is now a standard. I'm sure I'm missing something, the question is: what is that thing?