Antitrust suit against Amazon and publishers dismissed...

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yes, and most, if not all, devices have an app for reading Kindle books, hence, can read Amazon protected books.

I really don't get the distinction many try to make. You are no more (or less) "locked in" by Amazon's DRM on their ebooks than you are by Adobe's DRM on ePubs. Both can be read on almost all of the devices out there. Both require a licensed app to do so. Same-same. Evil Amazon or evil Adobe.

I concede the point that the underlying format of Amazon ebooks is proprietary where ePub is an open standard, but that point is fairly pointless UNTIL you get to DRM-free. And if you're to DRM-free... then you're already past any "lock in" whatsoever.

Besides; open standards are great, but when almost all of the major ePub players have added their own proprietary "features" to an ePub spec from which they've already chosen to cherry-pick what they want (and to ignore what they don't want) ... well, then "open standard" gets a little meaningless, too.

Ideally you should be able to read ebooks using a rendering engine that meets your preferences (setting and flexibility) and purchase ebooks from whatever store provides the best price and service. These are personal preferences and no one company can meet everyones preferences. With competition there should be new rendering engines and books stores and you should be able to easily switch to what you view as better. Without DRM and with a true open standard this would be possible. Adobe at least allowed for companies to develop separate rendering engines and tried to allow for you to be able to buy DRM ebooks from multiple vendors. It was a big play for them to collect $ on every ebooks old, every rendering engine and every store. Both suck but there is a distinction.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'll give you that, too.
But the number of readers affected by the need to "edit" their ebooks has to be pretty tiny, no?

I usually edit to fix the overlarge margins.

KF8 is an other mather, it's also css/html based.

[DiapDealer]

Both suck but there is a distinction.

Not to me there's not. But whatever. There's no requirement for us to agree.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Ideally you should be able to read ebooks using a rendering engine that meets your preferences (setting and flexibility) and purchase ebooks from whatever store provides the best price and service. These are personal preferences and no one company can meet everyones preferences. With competition there should be new rendering engines and books stores and you should be able to easily switch to what you view as better. Without DRM and with a true open standard this would be possible. Adobe at least allowed for companies to develop separate rendering engines and tried to allow for you to be able to buy DRM ebooks from multiple vendors. It was a big play for them to collect $ on every ebooks old, every rendering engine and every store. Both suck but there is a distinction.

The market has decided. The war is over. Amazon have won (at least in English-language markets). ePub is indeed a "standard", but punters don't care about standards - they care about being able to buy the widest range of books, at good prices, from a company with great customer service. Amazon dominate the market because they are good at what they do. If that's a reason to "punish" them, it's a funny world we live in.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The market has decided. The war is over. Amazon have won (at least in English-language markets). ePub is indeed a "standard", but punters don't care about standards - they care about being able to buy the widest range of books, at good prices, from a company with great customer service. Amazon dominate the market because they are good at what they do. If that's a reason to "punish" them, it's a funny world we live in.

I never said Amazon should be punished. I personally think the antitrust suit against Amazon was silly and should have been thrown out. I was responding directly to DiapDialer's post. I personally believe that Amazon's business model is open to criticism even if you believe they're the best alternative in the marketplace today. They might have good customer service but that doesn't mean they are consumer first in all things.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

It's sarcasm

I knew that!

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

**Sighs** I guess that if the "worse" happen, i can use my aura, but that would piss the hell out of me.


True.
Though, at least, ePub can be easily edited.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'll give you that, too.
But the number of readers affected by the need to "edit" their ebooks has to be pretty tiny, no?

Originally Posted by HarryT

And those who do feel the need are probably going to use a tool like Calibre, which makes it as easy to edit KF8 as ePub.

calibre ebook-edit is currently in beta, it gives the same Sigil-like GUI editor to both ePub and KF8.

Basically, the preexisting ebook-tweak has been given a face-lift. It already has near feature-parity with Sigil.

See thread: How to make Sigil live (in calibre)

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

calibre ebook-edit is currently in beta, it gives the same Sigil-like GUI editor to both ePub and KF8.

Basically, the preexisting ebook-tweak has been given a face-lift. It already has near feature-parity with Sigil.

See thread: How to make Sigil live (in calibre)

I don't use calibre. I'll rather use sigil, or edit manually.

The main problem with kpub is being able to remove DRM.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

I don't use calibre. I'll rather use sigil, or edit manually.

The main problem with kpub is being able to remove DRM.

I think that there is a solution in the latest tools, but it's not as easy to use as for Kindle or Adobe ebooks.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I think that there is a solution in the latest tools, but it's not as easy to use as for Kindle or Adobe ebooks.

Noted. I'll know where to look if needed

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

I don't use calibre. I'll rather use sigil, or edit manually.

Any feature that Sigil has which calibre ebook-edit doesn't, you can suggest to Kovid, chances are he'll implement it.

And Sigil is all fine and well, except for the part where it doesn't do KF8. Which I thought was the whole problem.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

You thought the fact that an epub editor didn't "do" KF8 was the whole problem?

In the sense that I was responding to someone who said

True.
Though, at least, ePub can be easily edited.

Why yes, absolutely.

The problem of Sigil not being meant for KF8, thus there being no easy way to edit a KF8, is now solved.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Any feature that Sigil has which calibre ebook-edit doesn't, you can suggest to Kovid, chances are he'll implement it.

And Sigil is all fine and well, except for the part where it doesn't do KF8. Which I thought was the whole problem.

No, the problem with ebook-edit is calibre itself, not the lack of feature. I don't use calibre, thus would have to import the book, edit it, then put it back where it belongs.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

No, the problem with ebook-edit is calibre itself, not the lack of feature. I don't use calibre, thus would have to import the book, edit it, then put it back where it belongs.

Part of the upgrade from ebook-tweak (which "explodes" the ebook so you can edit the individual files) to ebook-edit (which incorporates a GUI with all kinds of nice features) is the ability to run it via the standalone program ebook-edit.exe located in the calibre installation folder.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@mrmikel: It comes as a standalone executable as well called ebook-tweak.exe should be available in the same place as calibre.exe

Just set a file association so you can open .ePub and .azw3 with the program

C:\Program Files\Calibre2\ebook-edit.exe

And yes, you will still have to install the rest of calibre too. But you absolutely do not have to run ebook-edit from within the calibre library.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@Katsunami: I have absolutely zero interest in making a standalone installer for ebook-tweak. There already exists a standalone executable for it within calibre. If there are people silly enough to refuse to use ebook-tweak because they have to *install* the entire calibre package, that is their loss.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Part of the upgrade from ebook-tweak (which "explodes" the ebook so you can edit the individual files) to ebook-edit (which incorporates a GUI with all kinds of nice features) is the ability to run it via the standalone program ebook-edit.exe located in the calibre installation folder.




Just set a file association so you can open .ePub and .azw3 with the program

C:\Program Files\Calibre2\ebook-edit.exe

And yes, you will still have to install the rest of calibre too. But you absolutely do not have to run ebook-edit from within the calibre library.

Ok, tanks for the info.