Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Whereas I don't think the id should be changed. There's an argument for the existing id to be made to validate within the new format's rules, but that might not be possible given all the schemes that epub2 allows. However in my opinion, id-changing decisions should always be firmly in the content creator's camp and not an algorithm's. I certainly wouldn't recommend that an epub2 to epub3 converter automatically generate a new book id by default. Let alone attempt to alter the scheme used.
Something like this would be better in its own ID-related Edit plugin, I think.
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Oh, really? Why? To me, the unique ID serves to identify a particular file, meaning not only the book text but also all the meta-data and other info not visible to the reader. So I suppose the question is how many changes can you make to a file and still say it is the same file (identified by the same unique ID)?
Or maybe the question is, does the uuid serve to identify a file in a particular state (meaning, a specific text, with specific meta-data, specific format, specific structure...) like an ISBN identifies a specific edition of a book, or is it meant to be able to track the evolution of a file however many times it's modified? But then you could end up with 100 radically different files all with the same "unique" ID, that doesn't seem logical to me...
If I change the format from epub2 to epub3, at the very least some structural changes are made and the meta-data changes, but presumably other significant changes will be made as well (in my case for example, I will use new CSS including some elements not used in epub2, the file will be divided differently, the internal structure will change, some text may be added...)... If (hypothetically) I referenced a file by its ID expecting to get an epub2 with a certain number of characteristics, but the file in question turned out to be an epub3 with a different internal structure, styles, maybe some extra text, I would be surprised; if I were expecting the epub3 file with the extra text, and got the epub2 instead, I'd be disappointed. Plus there is theoretically the question of compatibility... for the moment backwards compatibility is fairly good but it will likely become more of a problem as the format evolves; if you have a file that started out as an epub2 but then it gets upgraded to an epub 3.1 and then later to an epub (say) 5, is it still logical to identify it as the same original file?
I may be overthinking this, in which case I apologise, but I have been turning it around in my head since yesterday and it is kind of an interesting philosophical question to be honest
(like the story of the carpenter who says "I love my hammer, I've had it for 50 years and it will last 150 more; I replaced the handle 3 times and the head twice and it's never failed me, they don't make quality like that anymore.")