Congratulations to the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) and Executive Director Nick Bogaty on the completion of the new .ePub standard. It includes both the previously accepted OCF 1.0 zip-based container standard, as well as the newly approved e-book structure.
Already, we know that Sony and Adobe and others have jumped on board, so this is a significant achievement for the e-book world. It aims to become the flowable e-book text equivalent of the wildly successful Adobe Reader format for fixed page format books. The road is far from determined, however, as the IDPF is sure to face challenges from the likes of Microsoft and Amazon (MobiPocket).
What a great way for Nick to finish off his tenure at the IDPF. As Bill McCoy has
previously shared, Nick Bogaty will be moving into a new position with Adobe. Our best wishes and sincere thanks go out to Nick for his great work.
For those who are interested in the details, here are a couple of excerpts from the IDPF announcement letter to its members:
"I am very pleased to announce that the IDPF membership has elected to elevate the status of the Open Publication Structure (OPS 2.0) to a Recommended Specification, an official IDPF industry standard. The specification can be found at:
http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops/index.htm
Supporting documentation, implementation and tools on the entire .epub standard (comprised of OCF 1.0 and OPS 2.0) can be found at:
http://www.idpf.org/forums"
"There are a number of companies and organizations who have already implemented .epub into their products and workflows. I encourage all IDPF members to continue to promote .epub as the standard file format for digital reflowable publications; doing so will significantly grow our industry."
If the standard becomes popular, then with the addition of a standard interoperable DRM (not a small task), could we finally see hope for true cross platform and cross publisher e-book compatibility for customers? I don't know, but it sure appears that we are a lot closer than we were a year ago!