|
Did you actually read the part about fragmenting the marketplace? Allowing html as a core media type, means that your html using epub will no longer work with the installed user base of epub3 e-readers, and furthermore any epub3 that used html can not be made to be backwards compatible with epub2 anymore. Given how slow adoption of epub3 has been, the standard marketplace would then have to split epubs into those with html and those that cannot for no added benefit.
Also xml parsers form the backbone of the epub publishing toolchain. Forcing epub producers to completely retool if html is allowed, as it would break tools that depend on open and close tag pairs, would break many regular expressions, etc.
So the result is added costs, delayed uptake, multiple versions of epub2, epub3 e-readers made obsolete, more user confusion.
The only advantage claimed for html is that it is easier to write by hand but few do that, and since you can import html into Sigil and Calibre to get it serialized as xhtml, what is the point? Why break everything and end up with no benefit?
Who is going to pay for all the extra software development costs to move from xml parsed toolchains to full html parsers? Who is going to reimburse all the users of e-readers that are now obsolete? Who is going pay to rewrite their e-reader software and firmware update costs for those that can still be updated? And all for what ... to add a new buzzword to their marketing?
Keeping the epub spec as xhtml is the only sane path forward.
|