I want to throw something in the mix. Kobo's proprietary format produces books that
are ePubs, and, in fact, they are ePubs that some have said are much closer to being fully ePub3 compliant than pretty much anything out there. At one point. it was assumed the Adobe would do the "heavy lifting" to create ePub 3 compliant software/renderer for for the parallel ePub format we commonly think of when we say "ePub".
This has not been the case.
Now take a look at:
http://readium.org/readium-foundation-announced
Quote:
Readium.org Launches Open Source Foundation, EPUB 3 SDK Project
MARCH 25, 2013
Paris Book Fair (Salon du livre) March 25, 2013 (PRESS RELEASE) – The Readium.org open source initiative today announced its evolution into a formal consortium of member companies fostering a community of open source projects for digital publishing. Also unveiled today was a new Readium SDK project to develop an EPUB® 3 rendering engine optimized for native apps on tablets and other devices.
Initial members of the new Readium Foundation include ACCESS, Aldiko, Bluefire Productions, Baker & Taylor, Benetech, Bokbasen, DAISY Consortium, Datalogics, De Marque, DILICOM, eBook.de, Eden Livres (a joint venture of Gallimard, La Martiničre and Flammarion), Editis, Evident Point, Feedbooks, Firebrand Technologies, Hachette Livre, IDPF, Izneo, Kobo, LIA (by Italian Publishers Association), Mantano, Numilog, Rakuten, Sony Corporation, TXTR, and Vibal Publishing House.
Readium.org was launched in 2012 by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and supporters in order to develop a browser-based reference implementation of the EPUB 3 standard. Its initial project has matured into a popular Chrome browser extension (available on the Chrome Web Store), which supports all EPUB 3 functionality. The codebase has been adopted as the nucleus of several browser-based “cloud” readers, including the new Bookshare Web Reader, and the project will continue on that vector as “Readium Web”.
Today marks the public announcement of a new “Readium SDK” open source project that is developing implementation of EPUB 3 for native applications, optimized for high performance on resource-constrained mobile devices. Kobo made a substantial donation of code and architectural leadership to help seed the Readium SDK project. Several other supporters have also begun contributing resources and expertise, including Bluefire Productions, Evident Point, and IDPF.
To oversee both projects, and to undertake other future activities to develop commercial-grade open source technology to accelerate industry-wide adoption of EPUB 3 and HTML5, over two dozen leading companies in the global digital publishing industry have joined together to form a new membership-based nonprofit Readium Foundation. Readium Foundation is vendor-neutral and open to all, and will operate transparently to improve completeness and consistency of support for EPUB 3 across implementations. Each of the founding member companies has committed to significant financial and/or development contributions.
Quotes from members about the launch of Readium Foundation and Readium SDK are available at http://readium.org/foundation_sdk_launch_quotes.
About Readium.org / Readium Foundation
Readium Foundation (Readium.org) is a Delaware non-profit membership corporation (501c(6)), established in 2013 to develop commercial-grade open source components to advance digital publishing for EPUB and the Open Web Platform. To learn more about Readium SDK and Readium Web, access source code and other resources, and learn how you can participate in the Readium.org community, visit http://readium.org .
Readium and the Readium logo are trademarks of Readium Foundation. EPUB is a registered trademark of the IDPF.
|
I don't know the full implications of this, but it occurs to me that what we have always thought of as ePubs (which was really Adobe 's take on the earlier ePub standard) is, in the new world of ePub3 compliance, on the verge of going the way of the DoDo, and that what we think of as kepubs, are part of (and perhaps leaders in) the new world of ePub 3.
Looking at the article above, note who is involved in this. Also note that Kobo apparently donated a whole lot of code for this project. I have no idea what the future is going to look like, but I suspect that Kobo has a better idea of that future than we might think.
I also suspect that Kobo won't be doing much in the way of development for the current Adobe based ePubs. I am willing to bet that they have learnt from this thread that a sizeable number of people do not want addons to that, but I am also willing to bet that the adobe epub is going to go away, at some point. And not just for Kobo devices, but across the board.