Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
A publishing trade group can declare anything they want to be the standard. But that doesn't actually make it the standard.
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You're trying to create an argument by conflating disparate definitions. So, we could argue about this for a month, each of us pretending the other is wrong. Or we could simply define our terms, since this is really a discussion about definitions.
You're talking
de-facto, I'm talking
industry. When I say "standard" I mean IEEE or ISO (or in this case IDPF). When you say "standard" you mean Microsoft-style. Neither of us is wrong. Both definitions are useful, and there's no reason they can't co-exist.
Now, if we're talking
industry standard, epub is clearly the only format that can make any claim to the title, regardless of how much market share Amazon has. If we're talking about a
de-facto standard, the picture may be quite different -- in the US, at any rate.
One further point: there's no reason there can't be more than one standard, under either definition.
--Nathanael