Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I accept what you're saying, Hadrien. I just fear that, in a year's time, we're going to have half a dozen different DRM mechanisms on ePub, and we'll be in a worse situation than we are at present wrt DRM. I know that MobiPocket has technical limitations, but it is pretty much a de facto "standard" at present, being readable on a huge range of different devices, and sold by numerous different eBook stores.
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To create such a DRM mechanism and make sure that it is available for a device, online stores etc... you need a large organisation. I don't think we'll see dozens of different DRM mechanisms. Maybe 2-3 from companies such as Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft or Apple.
The problem with Mobipocket is not just with technical limitations, but also that some things are very poorly implemented in Mobipocket (the format).
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Yes, that's a benefit of it that I absolutely do agree with you about. We need to see ePub supported by a much wider range of portable devices, however, before it's going to become an important player in the market (IMHO). How feasible is it, I wonder, to implement ePub readers on low-power devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, etc? My impression is that, precisely due to the "potential" of the format, that it needs pretty high-spec devices to render it well?
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These days, the average mobile device is getting more and more powerful. The requirements for full ePub support should be pretty much similar than for a good browser (think Safari on the iPhone or Chrome on Android).
Reading systems that provide just basic support (no SVG, minimal CSS etc...) could run on any device. Of course you won't be able to display advanced layouts with such reading systems but for fiction, it should work just fine.
None of the current reading systems are optimized yet, even DE is still working on fully implementing the standard and resolving bugs first.