A New Year's reflection on the ePub e-book format

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

An interesting article Bob....

but I am less than delighted by this avalanche towards ePub - until there is dictionary support I shall stay with mobi for as long as possible .....

There is dictionary support in some of the readers such as the 600 & 900.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Dictionary support is not a function of the format as much as of the device.

not how I understand it ....

[adullday]

Originally Posted by ATimson

I suspect that's going to depend on the ePub's source. Simon & Schuster's recent conversion of their old titles to ePub format - which should be trivial for anything released as Microsoft Reader - has resulted in a bunch of ugly, poorly-put together files. It's pretty much put me off ePub on a format, and back to MS Reader (preferred) and Mobipocket/Kindle (if not available as .LIT).

That's understandable. I'm a fan of the epub format, but conversion can take some work if you want to make a commercial quality document. I have several commercial epubs with very sloppy formatting. Calibre was used on at least one commercial epub in my library, and as awesome as Calibre is, it doesn't take away the publisher's responsibility for proofreading. I wonder if some of these publishers have some guy batch converting files without giving the results more than a cursory look.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

not how I understand it ....

Clearly the epub format does not allow or deny it. Dictionary support is not available on the 505 but it is on the 600. The format is not what makes the difference.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Clearly the epub format does not allow or deny it. Dictionary support is not available on the 505 but it is on the 600. The format is not what makes the difference.

There are no usable dictionaries in ePub format. The only format with a large number of commercial dictionaries is MOBI. If MobiPocket were an independent company they would already have leveraged their dictionary capability onto devices using ePub and other formats. Since they are owned by Amazon, this will never happen.

So currently we are stuck with built-in commercial dictionaries (e.g. Sony) or DRM-free dictionaries (e.g. PocketBook). Both work, because there is indeed no need for a dictionary to be in any particular format to work with ePubs. To get generic commercial dictionary support we need some format that dictionary vendors will use that can be licensed for dedicated reading devices.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

There are no usable dictionaries in ePub format. The only format with a large number of commercial dictionaries is MOBI. If MobiPocket were an independent company they would already have leveraged their dictionary capability onto devices using ePub and other formats. Since they are owned by Amazon, this will never happen.

So currently we are stuck with built-in commercial dictionaries (e.g. Sony) or DRM-free dictionaries (e.g. PocketBook). Both work, because there is indeed no need for a dictionary to be in any particular format to work with ePubs. To get generic commercial dictionary support we need some format that dictionary vendors will use that can be licensed for dedicated reading devices.

True I presume, but that's a different answer.

The assertion was that the epub format precluded dictionary support.