epub 3 readers availability?

[S3ZAi]

Hi everyone,
been out of touch for more than 2 years.

But somewhere in 2012 I remember reading a book on epub 3, it was called simply "What is epub 3?" and that got me very excited.

So now I want to start reading more on my reader again, I was wondering: Are there already epub 3 readers? If not, is there any news on when they will become available? I am planning to buy a kindle or a sony reader, but will wait and dust off my sony pocket reader if it's a matter of just months.

Thanks for any help.

[davidfor]

The current Kobo ereaders all support epub3. The demo books I have tried worked well, but, I have never seen an epub3 book for sale.

[fjtorres]

Nothing supports epub3 fully or even mostly.
Many promises, no delivery. Not even the adobe reference implementation.
Indications are it is at least a year away.
Unless your're into math-heavy technical papers you won't see much benefit from it when it finally appears, anyway. The really useful aspects have already been grafted to the propietary formats like iBook, kepub, and kf8.
Get whatever reader appeals to you but don't hold back over epub3. It's not a meaningful discriminator.

[S3ZAi]

Ok, so, as long as I have my ancient sony working, why should I buy a new reader? Well, that's a question I'm asking myself now.

The only reason I wanted epub3 was because of how it handles notes, the possibility to open notes in-text, without having to go to the notes at the end of the text and then manually return to where you were, which takes me out of my reading flow every time.

But yesterday I was checking out a new version of amazon kindle, and one of the things they were advertising was precisely that, notes will open in a pop-up window and one can close it after checking it out. So, I am now considering to get one of those kindle tablets, instead of a kindle e-reader. Then I could read texts without notes on my old sony reader and read texts with a lot of notes on the kindle and also use kindle for other purposes. Sounds like a plan to me. Especially if I can get one of those very high resolution new ones. But I've read some complaints about blueish edges. Hmmm.

Anyway, thanks for your answers, I appreciate it!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by S3ZAi

The only reason I wanted epub3 was because of how it handles notes, the possibility to open notes in-text, without having to go to the notes at the end of the text and then manually return to where you were, which takes me out of my reading flow every time.

But yesterday I was checking out a new version of amazon kindle, and one of the things they were advertising was precisely that, notes will open in a pop-up window and one can close it after checking it out. So, I am now considering to get one of those kindle tablets, instead of a kindle e-reader. Then I could read texts without notes on my old sony reader and read texts with a lot of notes on the kindle and also use kindle for other purposes. Sounds like a plan to me. Especially if I can get one of those very high resolution new ones. But I've read some complaints about blueish edges. Hmmm.

Anyway, thanks for your answers, I appreciate it!

The new version of the Kindle Paperwhite also supports "popup" notes.

[6charlong]

Kobo's Aura HD does popup footnotes too. It also has a larger, 6.8 inch high definition screen and uses the kePub format mentioned in fjTorres's post above. It's lighter than the Kindle Fire HDX which is worth considering if you do much reading. You don't mention how large your library of ePub books is, but it's worth noting that the Aura HD has a copy of the Adobe rendering engine in addition to the more advanced ACCESS engine so you can read ePubs straight out of ADE.

Calibre has plugins to reformat your ePubs into either AZW3 or kePub formats but it only works with files that have no DRM. One more thing to consider.

[markom]

Originally Posted by S3ZAi

Ok, so, as long as I have my ancient sony working, why should I buy a new reader? Well, that's a question I'm asking myself now.

The only reason I wanted epub3 was because of how it handles notes, the possibility to open notes in-text, without having to go to the notes at the end of the text and then manually return to where you were, which takes me out of my reading flow every time.

But yesterday I was checking out a new version of amazon kindle, and one of the things they were advertising was precisely that, notes will open in a pop-up window and one can close it after checking it out. So, I am now considering to get one of those kindle tablets, instead of a kindle e-reader. Then I could read texts without notes on my old sony reader and read texts with a lot of notes on the kindle and also use kindle for other purposes. Sounds like a plan to me. Especially if I can get one of those very high resolution new ones. But I've read some complaints about blueish edges. Hmmm.

Anyway, thanks for your answers, I appreciate it!

If it's OK with you, you can use tablet or another e-ink reader simultaneously for quicker reading of the notes at the end of page/chapter/book, while reading the main text on e-ink reader.

I also use tablet simultaneously with e-ink when there is need for quicker handwriting, color detection, better or quicker dictionaries ...

[robko]

Once you've used popup notes I don't think you could ever go back to another method. Kobo has had them in their kepub format for a long time and Kindle has finally decided to copy it

[susan_cassidy]

It doesn't really seem to me that notes format would have anything to do with the epub standard. More like an implementation detail on the ereader.

[S3ZAi]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

It doesn't really seem to me that notes format would have anything to do with the epub standard. More like an implementation detail on the ereader.

Well, you could read about it for free, if you would like to learn more about it:
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022442.do

The book is for free, it's only a dozen pages or even less if I remember correctly, you just have to sign up for a free account at O'Reillys.

Next to notes implementation being improved, there were quite some interesting features promised, for example, it would be much easier to implement other media formats within books, because epub3 would be based upon html5, instead of older html versions.

For example, one could write in a book that the main character is walking into a pub and let the reader play bar music. This would be revolutionary for how we experience fiction. But also one could write a historical book and mention a speech by Churchill and let the reader actually play the speech at the moment one opens that chapter. It was also promised that it would be easier to implement photos and even movies into text.

One of the main reasons to get excited was also that epub3 would help people with reading/writing disorders, with excercises etc. For example for dyslexics. And it would help improve literacy in harder to reach groups in society.

You can also check the epub webpage itself: http://idpf.org/epub/30

It's sad that some other technologies are progressing like crazy, while the reader format is being hold back, I'm guessing by some bigger companies. (Anyone remember Apple fixing ebook prices? http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/6/470...nction-against )

To be honest though, for me most interesting at the time were the notes, so I'm happy at least some companies are showing some improvement there.

Thanks for all the input and the comments!

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

Calibre has plugins to reformat your ePubs into either AZW3 or kePub formats but it only works with files that have no DRM. One more thing to consider.

calibre also has the plugin-that-must-not-be-named, or rather, the plugin has calibre...

Google Apprentice Alf.

[barutanseijin]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Nothing supports epub3 fully or even mostly.
Many promises, no delivery. Not even the adobe reference implementation.
Indications are it is at least a year away.
Unless your're into math-heavy technical papers you won't see much benefit from it when it finally appears, anyway. The really useful aspects have already been grafted to the propietary formats like iBook, kepub, and kf8.
Get whatever reader appeals to you but don't hold back over epub3. It's not a meaningful discriminator.

I would say that vertical layout for Asian languages is a pretty big deal. I don't mind reading horizontally for a few pages, but for articles and books, i want it vertical. epub3 supports vertical layout. It's a useful & meaningful feature.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by barutanseijin

I would say that vertical layout for Asian languages is a pretty big deal. I don't mind reading horizontally for a few pages, but for articles and books, i want it vertical. epub3 supports vertical layout. It's a useful & meaningful feature.

Which has already been implemented separately.

[HarryT]

Both iBooks and the Kindle support it. Any others?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Both iBooks and the Kindle support it. Any others?

Kobo and Sony have Japan market readers. Kobo uses different firmware from what they use in the west. Not sure about Sony.
Part of the reason why epub3 implementation flows as fast as glass is that it isn't indispensable to the objective of making money.