[silkpag]

Originally Posted by nonsavante

Perhaps even, gasp! thank him? No, some wackjob chases him off while the rest of us sit here like we were at the Coliseum. I'm ashamed. We all have such an attitude of entitlement that it is

Perhaps the audience is silent, 'cuz the something ain't gibing.

Example:

Of course, Nick was talking about native EPUB support with no conversion to a vendor-specific format. You need that if you want to move the same book between, say, a cell phone, PC and dedicated eBook reader device.

Bogaty:

What .epub really gives publishers is leverage. They can say to their vendors and channels, "ok, I'm now only giving you .epub and you better either provide software that reads .epub or provides an automatic conversion from .epub to Y format."

Again, Amazon does provide automated conversion of .epub; has since the beginning. It's an effort to defraud, or at best mislead.

On McCoy:

The post says basically that if you want to sell several thousands copies you still need to get a publisher involved. How that is trashing?

'Cuz it's obviously untrue. Amazon's Kindle store, the only democratic one, has this Stephen Windwalker guy:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/

And he's at 15, 20k books sold by now. In four months. At a set-up cost of $0 (well, maybe he had to buy a Kindle). With no outside help; and apparently no editing. I'll wager his net against any O'Reilly "building .epub" manual you could name.

Then there's the Real Soon Now:

Remember the goal is to make it work well on hand-helds. Yes, with more coding it is possible to handle very long chapters even on the devices and we'll get there eventually, but short runs will work better on all devices and all viewers.

Kindle's been around since December. There was maybe a time, when they couldn't stock Kindle, that it would have been really good to come out with DE for Sony Reader... that time was December. Kindle's in stock, and Adobe's still sorting through issues.

Let's see. We try to use the standard format. There are limitations and gotchas that we have encountered and we spend time documenting and discussing those. Others use a format of their own and in many cases keep all the info to themselves. You are telling me that we are somehow evil and shutting others off?

I'm saying that every single business line of Adobe, the method is pretty much:

• Postscript--"Own" the standard, get folks using it, add enough "extras" to lock in most users to Adobe's software.
• PDF--"Own" the standard, get folks using it, add enough extras to lock in most users to Adobe's software.
• Flash--"Own" the standard, get folks using it, add enough extras to lock in most users to Adobe's software.

Gee, what do you think they're trying to do with .epub?

But nonsavante, what's ludicrous about this whole spiel is that Adobe clearly does not own the standard. The de facto standard is mobipocket; and Adobe is in no position to be veering away from the guidelines or fudding the competition.

Obviously this fact is recognized in other circles. I mean heck, Publisher's Weekly didn't even cover Digital Book 08, despite BEA not being for another week or two, but maybe the silent crowd is reflecting the fact that something about .epub smells not quite right.

If I'm banned, have a day.