ZDNET: Apple sabotaging ePub?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Lurk mode off:

So.... Idpf did not protect their own standard? That's stupid.
Apple took the standard, adapted/ subverted it and made it into an Aplle-only format, while they are part of idpf? IMHO, that's without honor, but as you say, maybe where there's money, there is no honor. Matinee that's the reason why I'm not filthy rich.

It seems that companies, in the end, are just incapable of working together on a standard, and then trust in their *product* to seek stuff, instead of trusting in their *lock-in*.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

So.... Idpf did not protect their own standard? That's stupid.

What is there to protect?
At its most simple, it is HTML in a zip file, with some manifest files.
Are you going to try to patent that?
None of the added extras are something that couldn't easily be done in a very slightly different way if needed.
Microsoft .lit was HTML in a wrapper. mobi is HTML in a wrapper. ePub is HTML in a wrapper. None of it is rocket science.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Apple took the standard, adapted/ subverted it and made it into an Aplle-only format, while they are part of idpf?

No. Apple has done nothing with the standard. .ibook is not .epub.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

No. Apple has done nothing with the standard. .ibook is not .epub.

I didn't say they did anything to the standard, but they took it as a start for their own format.

It'd be the same as if I am a very big company, and you plus 5 other people are small(er) companies. We are working together on a product (with the intent to sell it, and then make money), and at 90% completion, I, as a big company say:

"Thanks for the work dudes. I'm going to take ALL our work, add some stuff here, change some stuff there so it becomes incompatible with your stuff, and then I'm going to sell it all on my own. And I can do it because I'm big."

That's honorless.

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I didn't say they did anything to the standard, but they took it as a start for their own format.

It'd be the same as if I am a very big company, and you plus 5 other people are small(er) companies. We are working together on a product (with the intent to sell it, and then make money), and at 90% completion, I, as a big company say:

"Thanks for the work dudes. I'm going to take ALL our work, add some stuff here, change some stuff there so it becomes incompatible with your stuff, and then I'm going to sell it all on my own. And I can do it because I'm big."

That's honorless.

Umm.

EPUB is released under an open license and in open formats. The express intent of open formats is to be used in this manner.

I don't understand why people are surprised when open protocols are extended. This website you're on right now exists solely because people took open protocols and extended them.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Redcard

Umm.

EPUB is released under an open license and in open formats. The express intent of open formats is to be used in this manner.

No, they aren't. An open format is "open" so people can implement and use that format for free, to guarantee interoperability and make sure the format stays available far into the future. The possibility to extend an open format is only a possibility, not an express purpose.

I don't understand why people are surprised when open protocols are extended. This website you're on right now exists solely because people took open protocols and extended them.

Of course an open protocol or format can be extended; that is no problem, if the extended format stays completely backwards compatible, and also free and open. This is not the case with the iBook-format, though.

And it would be good if the extensions are standardised, or you'll have 5 formats that all read the original spec, but when an extension is used, the formats become incompatible. Then you get something like HTML-hell, caused by Microsoft and Netscape in the 90's, which took 15 years to solve.

I hope the eBook-companies learned from that mess.

[kovidgoyal]

It's simple, what Apple should have done is:

1) Used EPUB 3

or

2) If using EPUB 3 was not possible because it lacked some functionality (which I highly doubt, by the way) they should have released a document saying:

We are using this format named "ibook" it will differ from epub 3 in so and so ways, because epub 3 does not allow us to do such and such. Publish a specification for the extensions so that they can be used by other people without needing reverse engineering. Work with the IDPF to get their extensions standardised in the future.

That is the bare minimum they needed to do. Really, they should also have built some graceful degradation into their extensions so that .ibook could be used with epub 3 readers without too much loss of functionality.

That is how you support an open specification, while still retaining the ability to innovate.

Instead they chose to take whatever they needed from a community standard, build undocumented, proprietary extensions on top of it and not give a hoot for interoperability. That is parasitic behavior, pure and simple.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

It's simple, what Apple should have done is:

1) Used EPUB 3

or

2) If using EPUB 3 was not possible because it lacked some functionality (which I highly doubt, by the way)

I strongly suspect the opposite: that ePub 3 does too much. There is no ePub 3 viewer in existence at the current time. Apple simply wanted a format to support interactive multimedia books - the kind of thing that's currently done with book Apps. ePub 3 would have been an "over the top" solution for this. I know you'll disagree, but I think they've taken the right approach here. To have only implemented a small subset of ePub 3 features, and then to have claimed that iBooks was an ePub 3 viewer would have been vastly more misleading than the solution they've adopted, which is to make no claim that these files are ePub files.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I strongly suspect the opposite: that ePub 3 does too much.

Then they could have said so. ibooks is a strict subset of epub3. Ibooks viewer programs will continue to support this strict subset of epub3. And defined exactly what that subset is. There is no epub 2 viewer in existence at the current time, either. That does not mean that every tom, dick and Apple should feel free to keep creating new ebook formats.

[Katsunami]

If epub is too full-featured to be used for interactive books on a powerful tablet, then what use will it be on a small ereader? To be honest, I think that a subset of html and css is MORE than enough to create ebooks for simple reading. You said you liked my first ebook very much; I used... What..... 5 html tags, and 10 lines of css code or so.

Edit: Eh? No epub2 viewer either? Then what is everybody using now; epub1?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Then they could have said so. ibooks is a strict subset of epub3. Ibooks viewer programs will continue to support this strict subset of epub3. And defined exactly what that subset is. There is no epub 2 viewer in existence at the current time, either. That does not mean that every tom, dick and Apple should feel free to keep creating new ebook formats.

The reason that I don't personally see this as an issue is that these books will replace book Apps, which are equally iPad-specific. I'm afraid we're just going to have to disagree about this.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The reason that I don't personally see this as an issue is that these books will replace book Apps, which are equally iPad-specific. I'm afraid we're just going to have to disagree about this.

Then they really should not have been called books. Perhaps .ibookapp, or .ibapp

I'm willing to wager whatever you like that people are going to expect .ibook files to be convertible to other book formats. They are going to have the (very reasonable) expectation that an .ibook behave like a book, not like an app.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I'm willing to wager whatever you like that people are going to expect .ibook files to be convertible to other book formats. They are going to have the (very reasonable) expectation that an .ibook behave like a book, not like an app.

People may have that expectation, but it's a flawed expectation. The whole point of this tool is that it's for producing interactive books, something that you just can't do with ePub 2, Mobi, etc. Hell yes, I'd be the first to agree with you that it would have been wonderful if Apple had produced a fully-fledged ePub 3 reader, but I just don't think that's a practical commercial proposition at the current time. I completely understand where you're coming from on this.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by HarryT

People may have that expectation, but it's a flawed expectation. The whole point of this tool is that it's for producing interactive books,

That may be the point of iBooks Author (though even there I'm betting that people will use it to create non interactive books as well), but I am not actually complaining about iBooks Author, I'm complaining about .ibook, the format.

If Apple had released a tool called iBooks Author that created .app files that you published only through the apple app store, you would not have heard a peep from me.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I strongly suspect the opposite: that ePub 3 does too much. There is no ePub 3 viewer in existence at the current time. Apple simply wanted a format to support interactive multimedia books - the kind of thing that's currently done with book Apps.

Is there some rule saying that an epub3 file has to use all the things that epub3 can use?