I'm not sure if this news was posted here, but since I'm excited about the idea, I copy the announcement here. Please note I'm not in any way affiliated with the project.

To coincide with the first launch of ePub books by a major publisher (http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/07/30-oreilly-titles-now-available-as-ebook-bundles.html), Liza Daly is happy to announce the open beta of Bookworm (http://bookworm.threepress.org/), a web-based reader for the ePub ebook format.

Unlike most other ePub readers, Bookworm allows for full use of stylesheets and images, which is especially critical for technical books which include HTML tables and code samples.

More information in the original post (http://blog.threepress.org/2008/07/15/bookworm-an-online-epub-reader/).

On a related note, a mobile version (http://blog.threepress.org/2008/07/18/mobile-bookworm-launched/) of the reader was released a few days after.

Hello everyone, I'm the author of Bookworm! Please feel free to make suggestions about the site -- it's in active development and I'm always looking for feedback.

Hello everyone, I'm the author of Bookworm! Please feel free to make suggestions about the site -- it's in active development and I'm always looking for feedback.

There is a wiki entry on Bookworm. You might want to fill it out a bit. It is currently pretty slim.

Dale

I do believe that Sony Connect for the PC will read ePUB. It is free.

I do believe that Sony Connect for the PC will read ePUB. It is free.

Are you sure? I think it uses Digital Editions to actually read ePUB and so far I don't think Sony even sells ePUB. Adobe Digital Editions is free.

Dale

Are you sure? I think it uses Digital Editions to actually read ePUB and so far I don't think Sony even sells ePUB. Adobe Digital Editions is free. See Sony's Windows ebook Reader (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26908). The first two screenshots are for an ePub, and the Sony version seems to be using the PRS-505 version of Digital Editions rather than the Desktop version. They are obviously very similar, and both are free.

What I like about Bookworm is that it is close to a complete implementation of ePub from someone other than Adobe (it does not fully support SVG though). Its downside is the requirement for a web browser and Internet connection.

See Sony's Windows ebook Reader (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26908). The first two screenshots are for an ePub, and the Sony version seems to be using the PRS-505 version of Digital Editions rather than the Desktop version. They are obviously very similar, and both are free.

Don't you have to install DE either way... to Register the PC/Reader and download the ebooks. Or is this built into the Sony software now?

BOb

Don't you have to install DE either way. I have not tried Sony's Windows reader on a DRMed ePub - my tests were with DRM-free ePubs. I already had ADE installed, so I don't know if Sony's Windows reader requires ADE to read DRM-free ePubs.

I'm guessing it doesn't support page breaks since it uses a browser engine for rendering?

[QUOTE=DaleDe;268408]Are you sure? /QUOTE]

No, not now. I cannot find the file I thought was ePUB. I remember it was a file I couldn't download to my 500, so I opened it up in the eBook Library (2.2.00.18100/BR)--and I thought to myself, wow, neat; this is ePUB. But I pursued it no further. Apologies.

You must understand, though, my memory has been discombobulated by reading too many MR threads.

I'm guessing it doesn't support page breaks since it uses a browser engine for rendering?

It doesn't break pages except at the XHTML file level, no. It's possible I'll do a different UI in the future which renders just to the visible screen level but it's not a priority right now.

What I like about Bookworm is that it is close to a complete implementation of ePub from someone other than Adobe (it does not fully support SVG though).

The only way in which I explicitly do anything with SVG is if the ePub includes content with inline img tags that have .svg targets. This was the case with Adobe's test ePub document that was widely circulated. Neither Firefox nor Safari were able to handle that at the time I tested it (June 2008) so for those targets I re-write the ePub to link to it as an external resource. This works natively in both those browsers; I'm not sure about IE 7.

I'd love to see some other examples of ePub+SVG in the wild so I could improve the experience. If you have one please consider sending it to me.

It doesn't break pages except at the XHTML file level, no. It's possible I'll do a different UI in the future which renders just to the visible screen level but it's not a priority right now.

I'm guessing you don't plan to write a standalone EPUB reader? Because that's something on my TODO list, that I will be happy to shed :)

I'm guessing you don't plan to write a standalone EPUB reader? Because that's something on my TODO list, that I will be happy to shed :)

Nope, I don't do GUIs. The only sensible thing is to start with WebKit, though, or you'll end up with something like Stanza that only supports a subset of tags.

(I do know that the One Laptop Per Child project has a very strong interest in a standalone, open source ePub reader. If you'd like me to put you in touch with them sometime just drop me an email.)

Nope, I don't do GUIs. The only sensible thing is to start with WebKit, though, or you'll end up with something like Stanza that only supports a subset of tags.

(I do know that the One Laptop Per Child project has a very strong interest in a standalone, open source ePub reader. If you'd like me to put you in touch with them sometime just drop me an email.)

Yeah, it would be based on Qt WebKit, calibre already has an LRF viewer. ANd the new viewer will be a viewer for LIT, MOBI and EPUB. It's not going to be standalone though as calibre has a lot of infrastructure that I will take advantage of.

I'd love to see some other examples of ePub+SVG in the wild so I could improve the experience. Adobe's EPUB Best Practices Guide (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/digitalpublishing/epubs/EPUBBestPractices-1_0_3.epub) has one stand-alone SVG file (in the OCF section near the start) which Bookworm (via FireFox) links to an external viewer, but the guide also recommends using SVG and the viewbox atribute for cover pages - and its cover page is in-lined using this approach. The graphics parts of the cover page are not displayed by Bookworm. Most "commercial" ePubs ignore this "best practice" and use a bit-mapped image for the cover page, probably because no common ebook format except ePub supports SVG (so publishers need a bitmapped version anyway).

The first example I saw is Cyclones (http://adedemo.com/Title-XHTML.asp?InventoryID={E65D43EA-E29C-400A-9037-9C3669DE7B65}) from Adobe's sample library (and Wikipedia). It is image heavy, and a few of the images are SVG. This really shows that ePubs don't have to be conventional ebooks, but like most of Adobe'd examples it isn't standard conforming.

Thanks. Now that I know there's interest I'll get working on improving the SVG support.

For SVG+ePub: http://www.hindawi.com/epub/2008.421650.epub

Bookworm now supports DTBook ePubs. In additional, all books in supported languages will now have their complete text available for search.

Details here: http://blog.threepress.org/2008/11/05/bookworm-now-has-full-text-search-and-dtbook-support/