Quote:
Originally Posted by elminster
Hope I didn't miss the topic too much (?)  |
A little bit, but it helps to illustrate the situations we have now - Annotation is an afterthought for the vendors.
I can also "synchronize" the annotations between ADE and Mantano (Android), but it's not as seamless as I would like. It works, but with quirks that scream "immature technology". And as you're aware, drawing/freehand is not supported.
Although I don't like being locked to a single vendor, Amazon's Whispersync at least handles textual annotations quite well. Of course, getting it done within the same company (or team) is usually easier than getting it done between many companies.
That's why we need a standardized way that's well-thought and more generally accepted, be it (preferably) a defined, or de facto standard. The Adobe format is a good start but it's lacking in many aspects, and while it's supported on some platforms it's (IMO) far from being a "generally accepted" one.
Few days ago I got a reply from ASTRI (
http://www.astri.org/), one of the companies involved in the standardization process for annotation in EPUB. They told me work is
getting started at "EPUB 3 Work Group and NISO standard organization" (
http://www.niso.org/topics/ccm/e-book_annotation/).
BTW, they also told me their proposed standard is free and open for any vendor to use. But I'm not sure if any vendor besides themselves is going to implement it anytime soon, understanding that it may not be the final standard used by EPUB, and as long as annotation is considered an afterthought by the vendor (which, BTW, is possibly the direct result of lack of user request, and I don't understand why people don't ask for it more...)
Cheers.