Epub coming to the Sony Store on 11 December

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by valkyriesound

It mentions that any "redownloads" would only be available in ePUB? So if I upgrade my PRS-500 with the new firmware and redownload all my books in ePUB I'm good, yes?

Should I be able to share these older ePUB books I purchased with my irex 1000?

Help me.. I'm confused. ePUB and adobe DE are the same or different formats?

Thanks!

Adobe Digital Editions is the name of the software used to view ePub and PDF both with or without DRM. But if the PDF has DRM, you do need ADE to view it.

ePub is an eBook format that can have DRM or not.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ginalola

Forgive me if I post this in the wrong thread, but can anyone tell me why Sony is not allowing the choice of the old format and the new. Fictionwise and many other ebookstores offer various formats. I am one of the folks that likes the books formatted without full justification. I would love the choice of the format we have now.

For one, to get more books, it is a lot easier for publishers to only have to support ePub then to then also have to support LRX. And it means that onwers of devices that support ADE can also use the new Sony store.

[fugazied]

Very good moves by Sony. With the nook and Sony devices, Amazon is starting to look a little old and haggard. Kindle 3 better have some good features!

[dreams]

Originally Posted by hmgreen

I have the Sony Reader 600 (upgraded from a PRS-505). When I got it and downloaded the latest software for the Sony Library on my Vista Based PC it NEVER worked. It would spontaneously freeze or shut down and I couldn't download books. After MANY calls to Sony Tech Support and more uninstall/reinstall/reboot cycles than I care to even count they and I gave up. I am now using very successfully the 2.5 version of the software and all is stable.

Now we have the 3.1 version coming out to support the Daily Edition and Win 7 (neither of which I plan to acquire).

So.... will I need to install this update to use my Reader, current books,and download future books or can I stay with "Old Faithful" vers. 2.5? Will this create a problem with ePUB? I assume that the only users needing a firmware update are those 505 owners who never did it (I did on that one) and I assume the 600 is already ePub compatible.

Any insight anyone can provide will allow me to sleep at night! Thanks!

I, too, would like to know if anyone has any information about this. Thank you.

[dhbailey]

I got the impression from the e-mail that we'd all have to install the new software to work with the new bookstore.

[ShellShock]

Originally Posted by Harmon

My question was not about the meaning, but rather, why is there an issue? See my edit to the post you responded to for my take on it.

I think the issue is that the Sony readers do not give us the choice. I would be quite happy to purchase epubs that use left justification, if I could then edit them to use the full justification style. For this two things need to be possible:

Remove DRM (ahem)
The reader obeys the full justification style.

OK there is something else too:

Get right of the pesky page numbers in the right hand column already!

Who ever thought that was a good idea? They interfere with the main text, especially if you like narrow margins like I do.

[grooks]

Next week will also bring an update to the Sony Library software. v3.1 will add support for Windows 7 and Mac OSX 10.6

I don't think installing the new software is a requirement to purchase epub books from Sony. It simply adds support to newer operating systems.

[joblack]

Damn it I have to send it to the USA (from Europe) to flash it for epub support.

Any chance somebody provides a flashable new firmware so I can skip this costly and inconvienent procedure.

What happens with the earlier bought (lpr/lpx) ebooks on the device? Can I reload them as epub-files?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Harmon

What is the "full justification" issue?

Edit: Oh, I see. My own two cents is that it usually doesn't bother me, but if given a choice, I do not want full justification. It leads to stretched out words, or big spaces between them.

It probably started being used for newspapers; the columns are easier to read if they have crisp edges, and having those edges lets the columns be placed very close together. Even if the space between columns is less than sometimes happens between individual words, the meanings don't get jumbled because the eye stops at the edge of the column.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by joblack

Damn it I have to send it to the USA (from Europe) to flash it for epub support.

Any chance somebody provides a flashable new firmware so I can skip this costly and inconvienent procedure.

What happens with the earlier bought (lpr/lpx) ebooks on the device? Can I reload them as epub-files?

I suspect it is more than a simple flash. Some have said that some of the eBook memory is now gone. The earlier eBooks continue to work I believe although I do think you will be able to replace them if you wish.

Dale

[kfarmer]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

[/indent]No you are of course correct. But, to pick another nit, why would they use ™ if they could properly use ® ? I very much doubt this is a registered trademark in the US or they would use ®.

BOb

So they don't have to change all their backstock of publications? If (TM) simply means "we claim this mark" and (R) means "we claim this mark, and it is certainly registered", then for purposes of saying "we claim this mark", you can use either, and for simplicity's sake just use (TM) after registration if it's conveying the information needed (specifically, "you probably want to check with the government registry before thinking of making a product with this mark"). (R), in this case would just mean "we're saving you the time in research .. don't bother using this".

IMHO

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by Harmon

My own two cents is that it usually doesn't bother me, but if given a choice, I do not want full justification. It leads to stretched out words, or big spaces between them.

Not necessarily. Naive justification algorithms do this. Smarter ones, those with hyphenation look very nice. AFAIR desktop ADE does this now*. It's more than reasonable to assume that if the Sony Readers get a firmware update for the Adobe Mobile SDK that renders the epub files, this more advanced form of automatic justification will be present.

*I just checked and I may be wrong. It's possible I've mixed it up with something else.

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Basically, epub on Sonys won't display as fully justified.

i.e. paragraphs will look like:

aaa aaa aaa aaa
aaaa aaa aa
aaaaaa aaa aa
aaaa aaa

Instead of:

aaa aaa aaa aaa
aaa aaa aaa aaa
aaa aaa aaa aaa

Full justification aligns both the right and left edges of the text.

Based on your example, I think the fully justified version would look more like this (i.e., with gaps between words) on the Sony Reader:

aaa aaa aaa aaa
aaaa    aaa    aa
aaaaaa   aaa  aa
aaaa            aaa

[lilac_jive]

I'm going to be really sad to see full justification (and basically the whole way the LRX is formatted) simply because that is what I'm used to. Glad I bought my books now.

Also, put me in the group of those questioning whether or not I need to download the new software. The email I got makes it sound like you do, but you never know if that's the case or not.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It [justification] probably started being used for newspapers

Justification has been used long before Newspapers, e.g.

King James Bible (1611 AD)
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti...TextID=kjbible

And before printing (1230 AD)
http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/pages...cfm?so_id=3280

In Arabic (1108 AD):
http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/pages...fm?so_id=10504

And even Cuniform! (ca. 2000 BC)
http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/result.p...xt=eq&size=100