[Format Support] *.ORB eBooks

[DJwa163]

Request:
Can you please implement *.ORB support in next version of Calibre?

ORB File Format:

Ref: MobileRead Wiki - ORB

Recently, publishers do not release PDF format, especially LWW, they release a new format called ORB. This format is claimed to be "more friendly than EPUB/CHM because it looks like print book!"
ORB is a format used by the Original Book Reader. This is a proprietary format but the eBook reader that can be freely downloaded.


But, in reality, it has been utterly inconvenient nuisance, due to lack of a good reader with some must-have functionality.


Reader

The only reader is available at Original eBook | A New Era in eBook Reader | ORB Reader | Read ORB File

Its a very basic reader, created by a group of non-professional developers.
It doesn't allow text selection/ copying/ search & print multiple pages...
Its very inconvenient that publishers are boasting on a format, for which there's no good reader available. Its hypocritical...


It is a fixed format eBook reader that claims to support reading like a regular book. The reader is currently only available only for Windows but a Mac OS X version is planned.

The format

The internal format to this file is SWF files inside a ZIP container. You can rename the .orb extension to .zip and unzip the contents. The files inside may have a .gau extension however the extension can be changed to .swf and then read using any SWF tool.

The Kurst Renderer can be used to convert the files to images in PNG format that can then be viewed using an image viewer. See SWF for information on this renderer.

For more information

Discuss this format in our forum


The Copyright-Conspiracy behind innovating a new format:
Ref:
Book Reader | Software Architecture

"Create an simple ebook reader and a new extension of file!
One swf file is a page. (You can try converting PDF to swf by http://www.swftools.org/). Remember that one swf is only 1 page
I will manually do these works: First, rename all ".swf" file to ".gau". Then, create a ".meo" file for bookmark. Finally, compress all to an zip file and rename zip to ".orb" (means Original eBook, new file type).
When open the "orb" file by the new reader, it will extract all file to a Windows temporary folder. (I'm not good at software developer but i see that "EPUB" file is also a zip file, i dont know the Reader extract it or not). Then read .gau files like swf files. It will display pages like common PDF reader (Adobe, Foxit).
Some function of reader:
-Zoom, go to page
-Rotate (you may not include this function)
-Bookmark
-Print "

They intentionally excluded "text selection" function!!!