This is an impressive quality I would love to understand.

Because the programmers writing it are doing it as a labor of love. And since it's under the GPL license they can use existing art, such as Fbreader as a starting point. (They don't have to totally reinvent the wheel.)

There are working answers, even commercial ones. For example, I have a Cybook Gen 1 (LCD) running WinCE 5.0 as an OS and Mu-book as it's reader. Both are commercial software, and together they will read .txt, RTF, HTML, and I think non-DRMed mobi. Pictures, italics, bold, call to other files, no problem. But it cost money. Now maybe you refresh screen problems working with e-ink, I don't know (booting and such) and that was available in 2006.

The Hanlin software isn't bad, and I don't gain much more from the current OpenInkpot, but I like it better. The rest of the e-book world doesn't give a Dead Rat's Nether Region about good firmware, they're too busy trying to build Monopolies... (and yes I mean Kindle, Sony, Cool Reader, CyBook, Jetbook, et. al.)

The rest of the e-book world doesn't give a Dead Rat's Nether Region about good firmware, they're too busy trying to build Monopolies... (and yes I mean Kindle, Sony, Cool Reader, CyBook, Jetbook, et. al.)
:rolleyes:

I would say they are just trying to make money primarily which seems to be quite normal if you have to pay employees and shareholders. Sonys firmware might not be the best but it is definitely rocking stable for the average customer.

Question. Would not their shareholders best be served by firmware that provided a maximum of format compatibility. Would this not provide a better product for a wider variety of purchasers? More purchasers, more money. As I point out, this isn't a technology issue, it's a philosophical issue.

Instead, we see all effort put on a proprietary format, with other formats being limited in number and crippled in performance, usually to support a corporate proprietary download service. And the worst offenders of this are Amazon and Sony.

Question. Would not their shareholders best be served by firmware that provided a maximum of format compatibility.
Obviously not. You are implying that the manufacturers you've mentioned are stupid.

As I point out, this isn't a technology issue, it's a philosophical issue.
Businesses don't care much about philosophy when it comes to profit and loss accounting.

Would this not provide a better product for a wider variety of purchasers?
Better? What means "better"? The average customer don't care much about the ebook format wars. But yes, maybe their products would be better for a lot of their customers if they would support a wider range of ebook formats. But as you know customer satisfaction is only one of many factors when it comes to managerial decisions.

Instead, we see all effort put on a proprietary format, with other formats being limited in number and crippled in performance, usually to support a corporate proprietary download service. And the worst offenders of this are Amazon and Sony.
At least Sony supports many formats (including ePub with and without DRM) either directly on the devices or via conversion. Amazon offers a conversion service.

Good firmware requires Skilled programmers who are given time to work out the bugs. The people with the know how don't come cheap, so you either get people who aren't as good or just don't give the good guys all the time they need to make a better product. These companies don't really want to invest too much money on something that is essentially still a niche market.

1- It is very very early in the evolution of ebook readers as gadgets. Realistically, *nobody* knows what features *really* matter at a market-wide basis. Not in absolute terms. Device usage models are not fully understood. I.e., do people *really* need to carry a full library on their reader, maybe in a 16GB SD card? If not, how many *will* they carry? Are file-system style folders really needed? Or would a sophisticated database/bookshelf be better? How many font sizes? How large should large get? How small should small get? How much value is there in doing 2 page-landscape? How much real-world value is there in supporting arbitrary font faces? Each of those questions require software answers. Answers that take code and code takes labor to produce. This labor is *not* cheap. And the answers available are not definitive; all they have is educated guesses. The business is still too small for spec-sheet engineering or taking the kitchen sink approach.

2- It is very early in the evolution of ebook readers as gadgets and (unless we're talking Kindle) sales volume is running in the tens of thousands per year for the specific branded models. Maybe in the 100K range for some specific hardware platforms. (Sony sales as of a year or so back were quoted at around 25K if I remember correctly; BeBook would only brag of selling over 25K in the last year as of May.) Total available revenue is very small for any of these gadgets so unless they're supported by a company with flush pockets there is only so much money they can throw at the firmware. (And the only such in the business to date is Amazon. And they're obviously being very careful; witness the periodic shortages in the Kindle line...)

3- Add up the first two items: high cost of labor and uncertain value of features in a low volume business and there are clear limits to just how much coding effort a commercial venture can devote to supporting/improving their product. And, guess what? If you look at the OI website, their biggest need today is contributing coders, not revenue from donations. Not terribly different from the commercial guys, is it?

Now, as to the OP question: the best answer I've found is that OI seems to be built off a very very stable Linux kernel whereas the Hanlin-supplied kernel used by most of V3 variants has... issues... that have not been addressed because the focus appears to be directed more towards book format support than maximizing stability.

There is a dangerous trade-off going on here; supporting a lot of formats attracts a lot of legacy users, folks that have been doing ebooks since the last century, but it also increases the complexity of the firmware and raises expectations from the buyers who start wondering "why is feature xxxx only supported on this format when I need it on that one?" OI gets away with it by simply exposing the bundled readers (FBReader and Coolreader) and letting the user choose. Which is a way of, ahem, passing the buck. ;-)
(Smart, too.)

If you look at the current-gen offerings, Sony and Amazon have chosen stability over flexibility and broad format support, relying instead on external converters to address legacy format users. The second-tier vendors, iRex, Booken, the Hanlin OEMers, have chosen to go for broad native format support. All run Linux but all rely on inhouse mods of the reader apps/parsers, whether first or second tier.

OI is trying for a middle ground of sorts, nailing down the kernel first, and relying more on general-availability Linux tools for the readers and, so far, not going to extensively into product-specific mods. This to me makes sense; cover the basics first and let the market shake down a bit to see what is really needed on a long-term basis.

So far, its working nicely.

2fjtorres: Wow. Thanks for analysis. I couldn't anticipate how smart I am. All the accidents and unexpected events were the part of Big Plan, inevitably leading to Success :D

2fjtorres: Wow. Thanks for analysis. I couldn't anticipate how smart I am. All the accidents and unexpected events were the part of Big Plan, inevitably leading to Success :D

But what is your secret?
O great Russian genius!

Our little secret is jekhor, our beloved kernel hacker, who nicely done all the kernel stuff.

Any chance you could sic him on a LIT parser? ;)

Our little secret is jekhor, our beloved kernel hacker, who nicely done all the kernel stuff.

The international fan-club of jekhor would love to read an interview of his almighty Highness!

2fjtorres: Wow. Thanks for analysis. I couldn't anticipate how smart I am. All the accidents and unexpected events were the part of Big Plan, inevitably leading to Success :D

Successfully making a virtue out of necessity is not a common achievement.
Credit is due for recognizing the strengths of Linux (i.e. it comes with a broad diversity of pre-developed tools that can be adapted to new devices and environments) and adding value where value is most needed.

OpenInkpot is a good product in good hands.
(Just try to resist the siren song of infinite ports (aka WingZ disease), will you?) :)

Any chance you could sic him on a LIT parser? ;)

Kernel hacker writing LIT parser? OMG!

(Just try to resist the siren song of infinite ports (aka WingZ disease), will you?) :)

Umm.... Link to the "wingz disease" please.

:)

Sure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix_Wingz

Basically, Wingz was once, for a short-time, the best spreadsheet on the planet.
So proud of their work were the developers, that they decided to port it to every Unix platform on the planet, *indiscriminately*. (Word Perfect did the same thing but they were big enough to be able to do both--infinite ports and update the mainstream releases.)

So, while their competitors were coding improvements to their products, Informix was busy porting. And porting. And porting. They ended up with a product that ran everywhere, including platforms nobody used anymore, but was no longer the best anywhere.

Think of it as an object lesson in thinking a software project is "complete" or "finished" and losing sight of where the market is going. Context matters.

Doesn't seem a risk for OI--your roadmap looks rational--but given the current state of the ereader business the port-everywhere trap is a faint possibility; there are going to be dozens of new ereader gadgets showing up in the next year or so and the turnover in platforms is going to be fierce. Some products that look like viable targets one day are going to be irrelevant a few months later, even products built off excellent hardware or from big name vendors. Think of the PC business in the mid 80's or the MP3 player business in the late 90's; a Darwinian explosion of "100 vendors each looking to get 5% of the market". :)

Long story short: if the industry goes as I expect there will be a strong tempation to be everywhere and your resource allocation skills are likely going to be tested.

But since that appears to be well in hand... :)