Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake
B&N and Adobe can't mess with their setup nearly as easily, as it's been licensed to other device makers and thus harder to make more arbitrary changes to.
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Methinks you put too much faith in epub's annointment as a "standard".
Look at how Apple and Kobo mess with epub and get away with it.
Amazon messes with epub, calls it KF8, and gets away with it.
Apple isn't even pretending they intend to go their own way; their new format name is .ibook, not epub, even though it *is* epub, messed with.
epub is *not* a standard; it is a spec.
And it is a spec with no enforcement power behind it, to boot.
If you look at the history of epub (and oeb before it) epub is at heart a *publisher* workflow format not a consumer product. What people tend to think of as the "epub standard" is actually an Adobe-proprietary product.
Believe as you will, about the value of epub as a "standard", but don't be surprised if by this time next year, the current four-way DRM splintering of epub becomes a five-way forking of the internal plumbing.