Quote:
Originally Posted by llasram
We won't see all the benefits of that until publishers drop DRM, but it's still better than any other e-book format on the market.
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While you are obviously more well-versed in the whole backend/format side of things, when you say "better" do you mean better because publishers appear to accept it, or better because it is 'technically' better?
When I was looking into what makes BBeB, I stumbled over
a blog post by Bill McCoy, the General Manager of ePublishing Business with Adobe Systems Incorporated.
It had this interesting tidbit:
Quote:
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My viewpoint is that BBeB is simply one of the best of a number of what I would call "compiled from XML" derivative formats. The vast majority of eBook content that is not PDF starts life as OEBPS XHTML-based XML. But no eBook reading systems directly consume this XML. ETI uses a minimal ZIP-based container file wrapper. Microsoft Reader's .LIT format encodes the OEB content into a DRM-protected container file. Mobipocket and Sony BBeB can be created via a "compile to bytecode" process on the OEB XML source. BBeB has some additional capabilities that overlap into the sphere of final-form paginated PDF, and the Japanese Librie supported a print driver creation utility as well as (naturally) strong support for the Japanese writing system. But given the nature of the 6-inch Sony Reader screen, and the presence of PDF on the device, I expect the BBeB-based eBooks for sale in the U.S. to be reflowable, and the results of the OEB translation pipeline.
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He goes on to predict "in the long run I believe the momentum behind interoperable XML-based formats is unstoppable." but still, I thought his views on BBeB were interesting.