New Kindle Format 8 (HTML5)

[Daveoc64]

Originally Posted by Zeebra

Is this new format rolling out to all eInk Kindles as well or just the Fire? I assume it's backwards compatible with the current Kindle format? (is that a stupid question? I don't know much about formats)

Amazon says that it'll be available on "Latest Generation" eInk Kindles. You could take that to mean either the models they currently sell (which includes the Kindle Keyboard/Kindle DX), or just the recently announced Kindle and Kindle Touch.

It's very unlikely that the original Kindle or Kindle 2 will be updated to support the format. It's also quite unlikely that they'll update the Kindle DX.

The Kindle Keyboard (3rd generation) is a big grey area. Although it's not the latest and greatest model, it's still on sale prominently (more prominently than the Kindle DX) and has the biggest install base of all of the Kindle devices to date. Note that it's featured in the banner at the top of the product pages I linked to above.

What Amazon has said is that when Publishers deliver their books to Amazon for publication, the tools Amazon provides will produce both a book in the new format (KF8) and the current book format.

That should ensure owners of older devices can still read the books, but they wont experience some of the newer formatting features (this could mean that some books aren't available on older devices if the publisher/Amazon decides the book needs the new format to work properly).

Amazon has confirmed that the format will work with the Kindle Apps and presumably the Cloud Reader (which of course is running inside a web browser that supports all of the HTML5/SVG/CSS3 features the new format provides).

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Zeebra

Is this new format rolling out to all eInk Kindles as well or just the Fire? I assume it's backwards compatible with the current Kindle format? (is that a stupid question? I don't know much about formats)

The Kindle Fire first for sure. But after that.. this is the official wording at this point:

Q: Will KF8 capabilities be available on all Kindle devices?
A: Kindle Fire is the first Kindle device to support KF8 - in the coming months we will roll out KF8 to our latest generation Kindle e-ink devices as well as our free Kindle reading apps.

If your device doesn't support the new format, you will only have access to the regular mobi format for your purchases (when delivering or downloading your content).

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Not unless there is a font for it. Simulated small caps look just that, simulated. But when you have a proper small cap font, it does look good.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

You may need to embed a font that actually has the small-cap variant, but from the list of supported tags and CSS attributes:

Simulated will be just fine for me. I know currently it doesn't look right on the Kindle. It caps but the size is the same which I believe is a Calibre conversation issue but with the new format it'd be nice to see more formatting yet I don't want to embed anything. I have to fix my epubs now removing all font references, background colors because Mantano will show them if not.

Still the new format sounds interesting as long as mobi is still supported and the new format converts as good to other formats.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Still the new format sounds interesting as long as mobi is still supported and the new format converts as good to other formats.

That's a good point. Amazon is probably not going to publish a spec for the binary format, so bright people will have to reverse engineer it. Might be complications with that.

Still one hopes that gutenberg, feedbooks, etc. will offer the new format, even if it can't be easily converted.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm looking forward to drop-caps, embedded fonts and true CSS support. Let's face it... Amazon was never going to pay Adobe to license their Adept DRM, so true epub support was always a pipe-dream in my opinion. There may have been some added benefit for personal documents by supporting drm-free epubs, but otherwise, epub support just didn't really make much business sense (regardless of how much I and others would have welcomed it).

So it seems Amazon decided to completely leapfrog the current ePub specs and go directly to something that delivers what ePub3 has been promising. The difference being that Amazon devices will be delivering that type of content (ePub3-like) as early as this spring. That may actually put pressure on the IDPF to completely finalize the ePub 3 specs, because I'm guessing that the other eReader manufacturers are going to be scrambling to have ePub3 compliant devices/apps hitting the market around the same time that Amazon's K8 format hits select devices. Everyone benefits in my eyes. Except those that are obsessed with visions of "one format to rule them all."

The ePub spec does not require ADEPT DRM. You can roll your own, which is what B&N did with the nook. So Amazon could have easily added their DRM to ePub and just used that.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

The ePub spec does not require ADEPT DRM. You can roll your own, which is what B&N did with the nook. So Amazon could have easily added their DRM to ePub and just used that.

But why would they? What would that have changed/gained? There would still be no inter-operability with other epub devices unless you removed the DRM first. And once you remove the DRM... there is no inter-operability issue anymore.

[wallcraft]

I had not previously heard of ruby annotations

<rp> Used for the benefit of browsers that don't support ruby annotations
<rt> Specifies the ruby text component of a ruby annotation.

From Wikipedia

Ruby characters (ルビ?) are small, annotative glosses that can be placed above or to the right of a Chinese character when writing languages with logographic characters such as Chinese or Japanese to show the pronunciation.

This suggests that Amazon is serious about Eastern Asia as a market for ebooks.

The whole ePub is the prevailing format in the USA argument is incorrect. Although it is true that more reader devices and eBookstores use ePub than any other format in the USA, far fewer eBooks are sold with ePub formatting than with mobi formatting. All the major USA book publishers claim that 67% of all the eBooks they sell are sold through Amazon. That translates to 2 out of every 3 eBooks being sold with Amazon formatting (mobi). If Amazon wants to change their format to whatever, it is clear that they will set the standard that others can follow are not. They are the BIG dog on the block and whatever format they use will become the leading standard, like it or not. I'm just thankful they are starting to move away from mobi, and even if it isn't ePub it looks like a much better format than mobi.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jswinden

The whole ePub is the prevailing format in the USA argument is incorrect. Although it is true that more reader devices and eBookstores use ePub than any other format in the USA, far fewer eBooks are sold with ePub formatting than with mobi formatting. All the major USA book publishers claim that 67% of all the eBooks they sell are sold through Amazon. That translates to 2 out of every 3 eBooks being sold with Amazon formatting (mobi). If Amazon wants to change their format to whatever, it is clear that they will set the standard that others can follow are not. They are the BIG dog on the block and whatever format they use will become the leading standard, like it or not. I'm just thankful they are starting to move away from mobi, and even if it isn't ePub it looks like a much better format than mobi.

World wide, ePub is #1. You cannot just count the USA. You have to take into account eBooks from all over the world.

[Daveoc64]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

World wide, ePub is #1. You cannot just count the USA. You have to take into account eBooks from all over the world.

Is there any proof for this though?

Amazon controls a huge amount of the market outside of the US.

There's certainly no single company with a wider share of book sales.

[Serpentine]

Originally Posted by jswinden

The whole ePub is the prevailing format in the USA argument is incorrect.

Does it even matter?; you're arguing for walled gardens. You call mobi a standard, which in itself is quite ironic.

The idea behind epub is that it reuses standard formats - zip, xml + html, jpeg and png. Formats that are friendly, well understood and have good libraries for working with them. This allows easy component reuse and toolchains as well as editors to work natively with the file(s). This is why people like them - this is why other reader vendors like them. Think Android.

If it is used by the largest player or not is a pointless straw-man argument - people want what they want, in this case it's dependent on desiring something that is portable, easy to use and has a good native toolset. Why do they want this? The reuse allows them to better convert other formats into this new container with a certain degree of certainty.

DRM talks are pointless too, people do not care about the implementation, rather the content of the container and if the DRM has constrained the container in any way. Amazon also will have accepted that the DRM will be cracked in any case.

In short the real issue is more that Amazon want to keep other book stores out of the device, while other vendors accept that their stores can not compete directly, and as such desire 3rd party bookstores to help increase coverage.

[Zeebra]

So after reading through this thread and reading up a bit on formats I realize that for the average user who only reads novels (like me), these changes don't mean much. I mean there hasn't been a book I've read that I could say I wish had drop caps or some other fancy formatting technique. As long as you're reading text only, the existing format is good enough.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Zeebra

So after reading through this thread and reading up a bit on formats I realize that for the average user who only reads novels (like me), these changes don't mean much. I mean there hasn't been a book I've read that I could say I wish had drop caps or some other fancy formatting technique. As long as you're reading text only, the existing format is good enough.

But once you do see better formatting, you'll want it more often. You don't know you want it till you have it.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Zeebra

So after reading through this thread and reading up a bit on formats I realize that for the average user who only reads novels (like me), these changes don't mean much. I mean there hasn't been a book I've read that I could say I wish had drop caps or some other fancy formatting technique. As long as you're reading text only, the existing format is good enough.

there's only one extra feature i'd like to see supported by mobi. thats paragraph right indentation so things like a embedded letter can be done well in the text. yes, i know there are work-a-rounds using images

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by alansplace

there's only one extra feature i'd like to see supported by mobi. thats paragraph right indentation so things like a embedded letter can be done well in the text. yes, i know there are work-a-rounds using images

That's not a work around. That's just a kludge that doesn't work properly.

Mobi doesn't support blockquote. And when they want to use such, it just looks so wrong to have a larger left margin with the same right margin.