Project Gutenberg going Mobi? - Page 5

jgray · 03-29-2009, 10:21 PM

That is the purpose of the epub format and specification. It was developed by a committee that included some heavyweights and the specification is free to use by all. It has been adopted by quite a few in a relatively short time. The major reason that some have not started using it has to do with greed, lock-in and control (did I hear someone say Amazon?).

cerement · 03-29-2009, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgray

That is the purpose of the epub format and specification. It was developed by a committee that included some heavyweights and the specification is free to use by all.

And it has all the shortcomings of anything "designed by committee" ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgray

It has been adopted by quite a few in a relatively short time. The major reason that some have not started using it has to do with greed, lock-in and control (did I hear someone say Amazon?).

The major reason that most of the big names have not started using it is because they only adopted it for the publicity ... There were already several ebook standards in place with regular usage, major backers, and full sets of tools (LaTeX, DocBook, TEI), but the publishers who "adopted" ePub didn't want to be associated with those groups, but did want to get onto the buzz wagon ...

Kris777 · 03-29-2009, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

actually, PanMacMillan already sells drm-free epub. so do a few others, including the excellent O'Reilly, but these are technical books so not necessarily of interest to the general public.

i'm sure more will follow soon.

I checked http://www.panmacmillan.com but didn't find any information about ebooks for sale - just paper books. How many titles they have in ePub format and where can find it?

wallcraft · 03-29-2009, 11:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kris777

I checked http://www.panmacmillan.com but didn't find any information about ebooks for sale - just paper books. How many titles they have in ePub format and where can find it?

Click on EBooks to the left of the main page. The iphone link on the EBooks page is also relevant because Stanza reads DRM-free ePub. They only have about 20 titles.

garweyne · 03-30-2009, 12:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And I'm saying that the standard is being idiotic. It's not possible to have a unique ID for every ebook file ever created.

Yes, it is. Use a standard cryptographic hash function, for example MD5 or SHA1 (available e.g. in openssl) and it will generate a hex string like 341e5d61ce55df379493267c1926796b1d1fcbb9 uniquely identifying your file content. Unique not only for every ebook file, for every file ever created.

kovidgoyal · 03-30-2009, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by garweyne

Yes, it is. Use a standard cryptographic hash function, for example MD5 or SHA1 (available e.g. in openssl) and it will generate a hex string like 341e5d61ce55df379493267c1926796b1d1fcbb9 uniquely identifying your file content. Unique not only for every ebook file, for every file ever created.

Google MD5 collisions and Shannon's noiseless channel coding theorem

sirbruce · 03-30-2009, 07:13 AM

And I think what kovid is also point out is, regardless of what *Calibre* generates, there's nothing to stop someone from simply copying a file and creating two files with the same unique id. And then editing some of the data in it.

Kris777 · 03-30-2009, 08:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Click on EBooks to the left of the main page. The iphone link on the EBooks page is also relevant because Stanza reads DRM-free ePub. They only have about 20 titles.

I see it now but these books in Mobi and Adobe eReader format, no ePub version available. I hope they will add ePub and produce more titles later

zelda_pinwheel · 03-30-2009, 08:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kris777

I see it now but these books in Mobi and Adobe eReader format, no ePub version available. I hope they will add ePub and produce more titles later

no, they do have some books in epub ; but they call it "Adobe Digital Editions" just to make things easier

(particularly as it's so easy to tell the difference between that and "Adobe Reader" which is what they call pdf.

). not many yet, true. hopefully they're working on more.

Kris777 · 03-30-2009, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

no, they do have some books in epub ; but they call it "Adobe Digital Editions" just to make things easier

(particularly as it's so easy to tell the difference between that and "Adobe Reader" which is what they call pdf.

). not many yet, true. hopefully they're working on more.

understood:

ePub=Adobe Digital Editions
PDF= Adobe Reader

AlexBell · 03-31-2009, 12:35 AM

Getting back to the original topic ...

I still haven't found any PG books in mobipocket format. Are they identified in any way, or is there some way of finding that subset of books?

Regards, Alex

nrapallo · 03-31-2009, 12:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Getting back to the original topic ...

I still haven't found any PG books in mobipocket format. Are they identified in any way, or is there some way of finding that subset of books?

Regards, Alex

Try some of the Top 100 EBooks using this link.

zelda_pinwheel · 03-31-2009, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kris777

understood:

ePub=Adobe Digital Editions
PDF= Adobe Reader

exactly.

jimad · 03-31-2009, 03:12 PM

I haven't found many MOBI books at Project Gutenberg, vs "almost all" books there now have an EPUB version. I like the EPUBs -- but I agree that if one is willing to do the work a "hand made" conversion of a PG book to mobi is going to work better. Still, for "coverage" and for one-off reading of PG texts I think EPUB to MOBI via the Calibre command line tool "any2mobi" is a pretty good choice. It does seem to automagically guess the wrong code page frequently though -- does anyone know the parameters to the any2mobi --encoding option?

mikecook · 04-01-2009, 05:51 AM

Seems like I've missed out on all the fun here! I won't jump in on the argument regarding UID's, although I am tempted ;-)

I just want to discuss the reason for the poor quality Gutenberg EPUB/MOBI auto formatted books.

If we're truthful with ourselves, Marcello's work on these conversions is actually a waste time! That doesn't mean I don't think he nor PG are doing a great job, but I believe they are focusing their efforts on the wrong thing.

The current books are somewhat ugly because the source files they have don't use a standard format -- automation needs a standard source format - once you have that, Marcello's job of creating EPUB, MOBI or whatever other format they desire, will be so much easier.

Now it seems that for several/many years there has been discussions within the PG community for a 'Master Format', but the powers-that-be kept refusing. I guess they are now paying the consequences of that decision.

Once you have a standard source format, such as XML based (a 'very strict' ASCII formatting and layout would be okay (the current PG .TXT files are a real hodge-podge), but still not a good as XML), it is relatively easy to convert to most any other format, automatically and with all the correct markup that your new reading system needs.

You may loose out on some hand-coded 'uniqueness' between books, but all that hard work the proofreaders have done can really start to shine.

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03-29-2009, 10:21 PM	#61
jgray Fanatic Posts: 548 Karma: 2928497 Join Date: Mar 2008 Device: Clara 2E & Sage	That is the purpose of the epub format and specification. It was developed by a committee that included some heavyweights and the specification is free to use by all. It has been adopted by quite a few in a relatively short time. The major reason that some have not started using it has to do with greed, lock-in and control (did I hear someone say Amazon?).

03-30-2009, 07:13 AM	#67
sirbruce Provocateur Posts: 1,859 Karma: 505847 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Columbus, OH Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS	And I think what kovid is also point out is, regardless of what Calibre generates, there's nothing to stop someone from simply copying a file and creating two files with the same unique id. And then editing some of the data in it.

03-31-2009, 12:35 AM	#71
AlexBell Wizard Posts: 3,413 Karma: 13369310 Join Date: May 2008 Location: Launceston, Tasmania Device: Sony PRS T3, Kobo Glo, Kindle Touch, iPad, Samsung SB 2 tablet	Getting back to the original topic ... I still haven't found any PG books in mobipocket format. Are they identified in any way, or is there some way of finding that subset of books? Regards, Alex

03-31-2009, 03:12 PM	#74
jimad Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 52 Join Date: Apr 2008 Device: Kindle	I haven't found many MOBI books at Project Gutenberg, vs "almost all" books there now have an EPUB version. I like the EPUBs -- but I agree that if one is willing to do the work a "hand made" conversion of a PG book to mobi is going to work better. Still, for "coverage" and for one-off reading of PG texts I think EPUB to MOBI via the Calibre command line tool "any2mobi" is a pretty good choice. It does seem to automagically guess the wrong code page frequently though -- does anyone know the parameters to the any2mobi --encoding option?

04-01-2009, 05:51 AM	#75
mikecook Enthusiast Posts: 35 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: United Kingdom Device: iPad Mini, Nexus 7, Sony Reader, Kindle, and others.	Seems like I've missed out on all the fun here! I won't jump in on the argument regarding UID's, although I am tempted ;-) I just want to discuss the reason for the poor quality Gutenberg EPUB/MOBI auto formatted books. If we're truthful with ourselves, Marcello's work on these conversions is actually a waste time! That doesn't mean I don't think he nor PG are doing a great job, but I believe they are focusing their efforts on the wrong thing. The current books are somewhat ugly because the source files they have don't use a standard format -- automation needs a standard source format - once you have that, Marcello's job of creating EPUB, MOBI or whatever other format they desire, will be so much easier. Now it seems that for several/many years there has been discussions within the PG community for a 'Master Format', but the powers-that-be kept refusing. I guess they are now paying the consequences of that decision. Once you have a standard source format, such as XML based (a 'very strict' ASCII formatting and layout would be okay (the current PG .TXT files are a real hodge-podge), but still not a good as XML), it is relatively easy to convert to most any other format, automatically and with all the correct markup that your new reading system needs. You may loose out on some hand-coded 'uniqueness' between books, but all that hard work the proofreaders have done can really start to shine.

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