Overdrive CEO hints Kindle Library launching this Sept

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

No need, your latest statement looks good to me.

Stop changing quotes to fit your warped view of things

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

Link please?

If Amazon wanted ePub, they'd be using ePub.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I know I'm not supposed to say this, but local libraries supporting patrons with Kindles is a really good idea.

I knew you'd come around to seeing things our way.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If Amazon wanted ePub, I'd champion another format.

Not surprising. Not at all.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

I knew you'd come around to seeing things our way.

Stop being so pedantic.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Stop being an ass.

I'm surprised at your language.


edit: I guess he surprised himself.

[ReneAZ]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One change I feel Overdrive should do is set all the library borrowing times to 7 days and let the users change that to 14 days. 21 day borrowing times should be eliminated. Way too long given what we'll be soon facing.

I agree! Phoenix Public Library just recently changed from 21 days to 14 days, and I don't have a problem at all with that. Easy to get a book read in 14 days (unless it's a real dog), especially since it's forcing me to only read one book at a time!!

Looking forward to reading library books on my Kindle! (Although I already read Mobipocket on it, I will have more of a selection).

Rene

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The ecosystem is there to try to trick people into believing that AZW is good.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

a. It's not that difficult to edit an ePub with many chapters/sections/etc. I do it and it's quite easy.

b. Every hear of CSS? You define your blockquote in the CSS and then it's done. Also, not always should things look the same. It depends on how it's wanted to look. Do you see pBooks all looking the same? They don't. eBooks don't have to always look the same.

Done for that book.
But all you have done is define the appearance of the text, you haven't done anything about the content.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Done for that book.
But all you have done is define the appearance of the text, you haven't done anything about the content.

And that's a problem how? The content is the content. What books/eBooks do is define how it looks.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And that's a problem how? The content is the content. What books/eBooks do is define how it looks.

If you define what the content actually is, then you can have intelligent programs that do things with it.
So rather than making poor quality endnotes with hardcoded links, you actually say it is a footnote, and have the reading app display it as such, no matter what the pagination ends up as.

Yet Dion Cassius evidently regards Helvidius Priscus as a turbulent agitator with dangerous democratic ideals,<note place="foot">D. Cass. 66. 12,
<foreign rend="Greek" lang="el">βασιλείας τε ἀεὶ κατηγόρει καὶ δημοκρατίαν ἐπῄνει</foreign>.</note> and he contrasts his violence with the studied moderation, combined with dignified reserve, displayed by Thrasea in the reign of Nero.

You've also defined that the foreign text is foreign, and what language it is, so the reading app can choose an appropriate font.

If you are editing or translating an existing text, and find errors, you can include both the original and the correction, and the reading app can allow you to flip back and forth between them.

Yet there are passages in his writings which leave the impression that, although he may have cultivated a Pythagorean <anchor id="corr14"/><corr sic="aceticism">asceticism</corr> in his youth

For plays, you can encode with each line which character is speaking it. You can actually define what the text means, and do clever things with it.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Most people have no idea what format the books are in, and couldn't care less.
It is a book. It has words, in sentences, in paragraphs. The fact that it doesn't support nice things like dropped caps and flowing around images don't seem to really matter, does it?[/b]

A vast number of books can't be epublished in their original form for the simple reason ePub and mobi don't support their layout and design. It isn't a matter of personal taste determining this, it is in many cases the writing itself. In seventeenth century metaphysical poetry, for example, stanzas are sometimes written in the shape of what they describe. That can't be done reliably in mobi or epub. Most stanza forms through the centuries, from the alliterative verse of Beowolf to Pound's Canzone and the concrete poetry of the twentieth century, can't be presented in the way the authors intended.

It might not matter to you, but it did to Keats.

Prior to ebooks, drop caps, block quotes, multiple indents in stanzas and the like were quite important to writers and readers. No nebulous citation of the consensus averages we call populism, no inductive conclusion as to what people consider important in their everyday reading, can erase a thousand years of cultural practice.

Audiophiles place great importance on hearing a track as it's meant to be heard, without exaggeration by e.q. or dynamics squashing by limiter. A book might seem more abstract than that, but the mere fact many of us prefer eInk to LCD shows we would like the experience of reading to be as true to books as possible and, in many cases over the centuries, layout and design are part of that truth.

A universal format would go a long way toward addressing that, particularly if it were being improved and updated until it could replicate the format of layout-specific books.

As a reader and writer, I would always choose the format that reproduces printed text most faithfully without adding additional problems.

PDF is the most faithful, but it is also the least flexible and therefore hardware-limitations-specific. Therefore the current choice is between ePub and mobi.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

A vast number of books can't be epublished in their original form for the simple reason ePub and mobi don't support their layout and design. It isn't a matter of personal taste determining this, it is in many cases the writing itself. In seventeenth century metaphysical poetry, for example, stanzas are sometimes written in the shape of what they describe. That can't be done reliably in mobi or epub. Most stanza forms through the centuries, from the alliterative verse of Beowolf to Pound's Canzone and the concrete poetry of the twentieth century, can't be presented in the way the authors intended.

It might not matter to you, but it did to Keats.

Prior to ebooks, drop caps, block quotes, multiple indents in stanzas and the like were quite important to writers and readers, and no amount of empiricism or appeal to the consensus averages we call populism can erase a thousand years of cultural practice.

Audiophiles place great importance on hearing a track as it's meant to be heard, without exaggeration by e.q. or dynamics squashing by limiter. A book might seem more abstract than that, but the mere fact many of us prefer eInk to LCD shows we would like the experience of reading to be as true to books as possible and, in many cases over the centuries, layout and design are part of that truth.

A universal format would go a long way toward addressing that, particularly if it were being improved and updated until it could replicate the format of layout-specific books.

As a reader and writer, I would always choose the format that reproduces printed text most faithfully without adding additional problems.

PDF is the most faithful, but it is also the least flexible and therefore hardware-limitations-specific. Therefore the current choice is between ePub and mobi.

And as you just said, neither is good enough. So arguing one versus the other sort of misses the point.

[Prestidigitweeze]

But your point was that such things don't matter. I'm saying they not only matter but stand in the way of the entire enterprise of converting printed libraries to eBooks.

Let's remember what you said in the heat of the moment, particularly when you're taking such care to quote the rest of us:

Most people have no idea what format the books are in, and couldn't care less.
It is a book. It has words, in sentences, in paragraphs. The fact that it doesn't support nice things like dropped caps and flowing around images don't seem to really matter, does it?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

But your point was that such things don't matter.

They don't matter to most users when comparing the current two (popular) formats, on the books that are selling now. Or, as was my point, Amazon don't seem to be losing marketshare by not supporting these features. I agree that neither format is well suited to modelling complex texts.

(My text was in response to: "The ecosystem is there to try to trick people into believing that AZW is good. It's not. There are a lot of things it just doesn't get right and never will. Even a simple blockquote is gets wrong.")

I see that there has been some silly buggering going on with quoting recently in the thread, but I was not involved.