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Old 01-12-2012, 04:38 PM   #37
BWinmill
Nameless Being
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul View Post
And you see one of the problems with open standards, they take too long too formulate and make available. Yes ePub 3 might do everything you need, but it isn't available. iOS/Android apps are available now, and KF8, which is the closed-format equivalent, is now available to start working on.
There are also different types of open-standards to consider with. Android libraries, the Java programming language, the PDF specification, and so forth are largely defined by a single body. On the other hand, they are also open. (At least in the case of Java and PDF, where there are multiple implementations and support on a broad range of devices. I do not know how open Google is to reimplementations of the Android libraries.)

There are also various reasons why committee based open standards progress slowly. The failure to reach an agreement and even outright sabotage are big in the picture. On the other hand, you don't want standards progressing too quickly because a big point of standardization is interoperability across both vendors and time. For example: it is unlikely that KF8 will ever operate on first and second generation Kindle. Amazon doesn't care, because they want to sell new products. However, when interoperability enters the picture you do have to care and stable standards over long periods of time is the easiest way to do it.
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