Reality check

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Ortep

Do you have control over the electrical power companies?

Do you have control over the medical world?

Do you have control over the Internet?

I heavely rely on these resources. I think it is the same with you. Sometimes there are only two options. Use what is available, or don't use it at all and live with the consequences

Like my Pappy used to say (and it's true for most things in life), "You pays your nickel and takes your chance."

[tribble]

Originally Posted by Ortep

I can choose from several power companies also. But that makes no difference. It is only an adminstrative matter. They sell me energy, not the way to get it. The powerlines I cannot choose, the voltage I cannot choose, the frequency I cannot choose. There are much better options than 240 Volts 50 Hz. But I cannot get them. I'm completely stuck with them. And so are you. We have no control.

And I can also choose my doctor and hospital. If I have the time do do so. In an emergency they bring me to the nearest place (as they should). And some insurance companies only let you go to certain hospitals and certain doctors. But the treatment is always according to protocol. A protocol I have no control over (I don't want to, they know better what to do than I do)

The internet is as it is. I cannot change that. I'm not talking about the data, but about the way it works. I have no control over the way data is sent around the world. I can choose my ISP. But there are only two ways it can reach my home. By cable or by phoneline. The cable is a monopoly. The phone is not. BUT it is the same problem as with the powerlines. I can choose my ISP. But not the copper lines. I have no control over them

The way you look at the internet is that you can change the information on it. That is thru. But that is also the case with books. The mobi bookformat is as the way it works. The story in the book is what you can influence

And now you confuse open systems with standards. If you wanted, you could make your own electricity and make it a standard. And i am not saying a standard has to be the best that is out there, but with a standard, you can have in case of energy for example severlas sources of energy, that contribute to the whole. You can be a source yourself, when you know, how to contribute. Everyone can connect to the powergrid, because they know how, and there is a standard which allows to interconnect the grids. So while you cannot choose the standard, you can choose the means to connect and what sources you use. And you could participate yourself. So the system is not controlled by a single entity.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tompe

Actually I do not think you should support proprietary formats but I do not see MobiPerl as a support of MobiPocket. For me the important format is what you archieve the book in and that should probably be something like epub. So Mobipocket can be used to convert from MobiPocket to some suitable base format. Convertingt from HTML to Mobipocket ör manipulating MobiPocket files I see just like something you do for your current display device and just a practical way to solve a problem that exists now.

Certainly I agree with you that Mobi should be regarded as a terminal format, not a long-term storage format. That's why, when I create books, I always store the original source files (text, HTML, or whatever) in addition to the converted book. I may not be able to read my MobiPocket files in 20 years' time, but I'm sure that I'll be able to convert the source files into whatever I'm using at that time.

[Ortep]

Originally Posted by tribble

And now you confuse open systems with standards. If you wanted, you could make your own electricity and make it a standard.

I was reacting to somethings that rlauzon wrote:

Joking aside: using any resource you do not control for something that you rely on is not a good idea.

That remark is so general that you better stop breathing. Because you have no control over the oxygen supply. You can only hope it is always there.

Sometimes something is beyond your control, no official standard but a de-facto standard. It does not matter if it is open or closed then. It simply is there.

Of course everybody is free to create an open source ebook format. One can hope that it used. I won't use it, because there are no books available in this format.

Today the most common format is some version of mobi. It works good enough for most people. Can it be impoved? Yes! Will this process go faster when it is open source? Probably. Do people care? Most of them won't. It only has to work. Even is Mobipocket' stops today the books will still be there. I can make them, you can make them.

If you don't like the current 'standard' don't buy books in this format. But I think you'll have to go back to p-Books

The reality is that a lot (most) of things in this world are outside your circle of influence. And if you have to stop using all those things, live will be very difficult if not impossible

[Snuffi]

I'm not really bothered that much by using a propriertary format because everyday I'm using a thousand things which are proprietary and beyond my control. The example with the car going only on Ford gasoline is not quite accurate: How many parts of a car you buy can you actually decide on? I highly doubt that you get a say on what type and make of air bag Ford used in manufacturing your car.
So, while I have no objections to using proprietory formats if there is no "open" alternative which meets my demands I do prefer to use "standardized" formats (someone already pointed out that that is something gotten mixed up). And if something is standardized it is usually just a question of time until there is some kind of converter into or out of this format (if there is only so much you can keep secret in a standard or it wouldn't be a standard).

What I consider a lot more dangerous is the use of various DRM formats for eBooks. It breaks my heart to think that every book I bought might become unreadable for me once my device stops working and I decide to buy another brand. I find it highly annoying that the book industry seems to have slept through the last couple of years and missed completely what direction music and film is going. People do not want to buy everything again everytime they change their devices, at least not as long as the price is that high. If they charge me 99 cents per book I'd be more willing to re-buy them if I change devices or - if they want to maintain current prices - they company I buy books from should be obliged to change all my DRMed books over to another DRMed format so I could continue using them ( I think Adobe is trying something in that direction but there is a long road ahead).

[wmaurer]

Originally Posted by tompe

I do not really care about a Mobipocket created version but I would really like to see the specification. But I suspect that the specification is their implementation in some respect so they will probably never release a specification.

Reverse engineering as its problem but in this case a lot of information is available so I do not think there are any significant bugs left concerning the format. A new reader implementation mighy change that.

Your work has been greatly appreciated, and I'm now extremely happy that I can convert mobi files to a non-terminal format (I'm safeguarding my ebooks in anticipation of a radicial evolution of formats). Would you, along with others who have spent so much time reverse engineering, be willing to document the format? If not, I wonder if you'd mind me assisting by reverse engeering your tools in order to produce such documentation? Would this documentation be suitable content for the MobileRead wiki?

-Wayne

[tompe]

Originally Posted by wmaurer

Your work has been greatly appreciated, and I'm now extremely happy that I can convert mobi files to a non-terminal format (I'm safeguarding my ebooks in anticipation of a radicial evolution of formats). Would you, along with others who have spent so much time reverse engineering, be willing to document the format? If not, I wonder if you'd mind me assisting by reverse engeering your tools in order to produce such documentation? Would this documentation be suitable content for the MobileRead wiki?

I am waiting for igorsk documentation I tried to write the Perl code so that it would be easy to understand the format. If there was a wiki page or something I would help to document the format.

[wmaurer]

Originally Posted by tompe

I am waiting for igorsk documentation I tried to write the Perl code so that it would be easy to understand the format. If there was a wiki page or something I would help to document the format.

There is a wiki page that has been created by one of the MR moderators at https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/MOBI; it looks to be an ideal place for such valuable documentation.

[Boeboe]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Yes. It's called the Public Utilities Commission.



Yes. Several agencies regulate the medical world on my behalf.



Yes. I can control what systems I access and how. I can control what systems access my PC.

good read, it has been a while since I've read such an amusing post

It's kids like you that give the open source community a bad name...
Just use the frikkin' mobipocket format and quit complaining about problems that can be EASILY resolved with solutions you refuse to use for whatever ridiculous reason that might be.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Boeboe

good read, it has been a while since I've read such an amusing post

It's kids like you that give the open source community a bad name...
Just use the frikkin' mobipocket format and quit complaining about problems that can be EASILY resolved with solutions you refuse to use for whatever ridiculous reason that might be.

Oh, so you can easily solve all problems. Please send me the specification of the huffdic compression scheme then. I need it to do a clean room implementation of it in Perl.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Boeboe

good read, it has been a while since I've read such an amusing post

It's kids like you that give the open source community a bad name...
Just use the frikkin' mobipocket format and quit complaining about problems that can be EASILY resolved with solutions you refuse to use for whatever ridiculous reason that might be.

Please don't call anyone a kid like that. It's not nice.

[nekokami]

Yes. DRM and formats are always a heated topic, but let's try to keep away from personal attacks, shall we?

[Boeboe]

The solution to his problem is there: the mobipocket creator. If he refuses to use it for whatever reason, that is his problem. To keep complaining about it is just childish behaviour imo.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Boeboe

The solution to his problem is there: the mobipocket creator. If he refuses to use it for whatever reason, that is his problem. To keep complaining about it is just childish behaviour imo.

You're certainly entitled to hold that opinion, but there's really nothing gained by expressing it in a belittling manner. In fact, the main thing that name calling does is undermine the legitimacy of the arguments of the name caller.

All we're asking is that the discussion be kept on a mature, respectful level. No one is suggesting that everyone agree on everything (far from it!), only that the disagreement be polite.

I've been around this forum for just over two years now, and the main thing that has kept me here is that this community is so very different from the vast majority of on-line discussion forums in that it's not a venomous snake-pit full of people saying things in print that they'd never consider saying in person.

The ability to have intelligent discussions on a variety of topics is one of MobileRead's greatest strength, and, consequently, something we value pretty highly.


It's easy to get ... over-involved in some of these discussions (DRM and proprietary formats are probably the very best examples of that sort of topic), and it's happened to all of us. It's just important to sometimes take a breath and remember that sometimes we're getting more excited than we mean to be.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Boeboe

The solution to his problem is there: the mobipocket creator. If he refuses to use it for whatever reason, that is his problem. To keep complaining about it is just childish behaviour imo.

So you should have to by a Windows license to be able to solve whatever problem you have?

I also have a lot of things I want to do that you cannot do in MobiPocket creator. For example I need to find all MobiPocket files on my disk that does not have author information specified. How do I do that in MobiPocket creator or how do I do that without knowledge about the data format?