7" ereader with physical page turn buttons and an eink Carta 1300 screen

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

What ePub3 features are you using? Curious what I am missing out on.

The major one is producing children's books (and a few YA/adult books) which are fixed layout. Accessibility features and graphics layout are also places where ePub2 does not have great support. ePubs making use of Javascript are a more minor use but still handy to have in your toolbag. I've edited/formatted several ePub3 with audio/video but again a relatively niche use and one that I personally still feel would be better addressed as an application.

For the most part for the average fiction novel, it is relatively trivial to have code that supports both ePub2 and ePub3 such as adding a NCX navigation document paralleling the ePub3 HTML navigation document. It's a bit more work but once you know what is needed, mostly copy/paste. Once you start getting past those relatively simple uses, maintaining ePub2 compatibility becomes painful. Likely the main reason that ePub3 took so long to gain traction.

[Sirtel]

I'm also curious, which epub3 features do you use for personal reading, not for creating/editing ebooks for other people? Because most of us don't do the latter.

[DNSB]

As I said, for fiction novels, there is not much difference. However using ePub3 features when editing my personal books is great practice for when I edit/format ebooks for others.

I use accessibility features, graphics features, rem instead of em (check the differences between them), etc. Once you get used to using ePub3 features such as figure, figcaption, section, etc., it does make creating a structured ePub that is accessible easier. Then you can get enthused about using media queries to allow a more consistent experience across different devices/apps. Even the epub:type semantics (footnote, frontmatter, chapter, etc.) can be very useful.

On yet another hand, I've started using two CSS stylesheets reminiscent of Vellum where one is selectors and the other is media queries. Yes, it was more work to set this up but now I basically insert both stylesheets and go from there.

Where I need to, I can and will create an ePub3 with as close to full ePub2 compatibility as I can and a fair chunk of my work for others requires that. OTOH, one author who is doing children's books uses FLO ePub3 with some scripting. This requires a very different workflow.

The nice part for me is that since I am retired, I can pick projects that I find more interesting. Much like one client in my other sideline where we parted ways when I would not modify their firewall rules for the staff's convenience. If you want your network to become someone else's property, include me out.

[Sirtel]

Thank you.

As I said, most of us don't create or edit ebooks for others, and unless one has a specific disability requiring some accessibility feature, it seems that for ordinary novels most epub3 features are pretty much irrelevant. Personally I convert all my books to epub2, as I don't need the epub3 stuff and I don't want to make things more complicated for my personal use.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The major one is producing children's books (and a few YA/adult books) which are fixed layout.

What's the advantage of fixed layout ePub3 over using a very modern version of PDF, such as PDF 1.8 or 2.0?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

What's the advantage of fixed layout ePub3 over using a very modern version of PDF, such as PDF 1.8 or 2.0?

Relatively few mobile PDF viewers support audio and/or video content. As for scripting support, again very poorly supported on mobile apps often with the developers citing security concerns.

For the most part, at this time, the author's preferences make an ePub3 and iOS/iPadOS's builtin Book app their target of choice. Children's books are a specialized market and pick an adventure books a niche within that market. There is also some audio/video content within the books which looks good on a iPad (likely on a iPhone as well but I use an Ipad for testing).

I'm going to need to borrow the James Webb telescope to see the topic of this thread since the grand MobileRead tradition of thread drift has swept us away.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Relatively few mobile PDF viewers support audio and/or video content. As for scripting support, again very poorly supported on mobile apps often with the developers citing security concerns.

For the most part, at this time, the author's preferences make an ePub3 and iOS/iPadOS's builtin Book app their target of choice. Children's books are a specialized market and pick an adventure books a niche within that market. There is also some audio/video content within the books which looks good on a iPad (likely on a iPhone as well but I use an Ipad for testing).

I'm going to need to borrow the James Webb telescope to see the topic of this thread since the grand MobileRead tradition of thread drift has swept us away.

As an IT professional, I can say that I DO NOT want Javascript in my books. And my reading app has the option to disable Javascript. I will always turn it on.

Javascript is the #1 reason PDFs are as insecure as they are.

But I can see why it's in there for some use-cases.

One thing I noticed with ePub3 vs KOReader…

I have one ePub3 book. When I load it into KOReader and try to change the font it will not change unless I also turn off styles. I see the same issue with other ePub readers that don't support ePub3 properly. In Apple Books, which has full ePub3 support, I can change the font and not have to turn off the formatting.

Now, I'm sure that the book may be an ePub3-only file. Perhaps if it had ePub2 support, that would work.

Still, it would be nice if KOReader fully supported ePub3.

[apastuszak]

To swing this back around topic, I think this is the list of ereaders that meet the list and are currently being made:

1. PocketBook Era Lite
2. Boox Go 7
3. Bigme B7 Pro
4. Nook 4 Plus

My takes:

1. The Era Lite - It's slow. I'm enjoying mine, but only because KOReader is so much faster than the stock experience.
2. The Boox Go 7 I will not touch with a 10-foot-poll. It's running a discontinued version of Android. And this thread just taught us that ePub3 files can contain Javascript. Well, all you need is one "AI slop" ePub3 file you either bought from somewhere or downloaded for free and there you have your attack vector.
3. The BigMe B7 Pro at least runs a supported version of Android (14), but just barely. And it's expensive and has cellular — probably why it's so expensive —. Has a feature I don't need and a price point I don't like.
4. Not a bad choice. You can side load KOReader. But they block off access to most of the storage and you need to root it to get into that storage.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

2. The Boox Go 7 I will not touch with a 10-foot-poll. It's running a discontinued version of Android. And this thread just taught us that ePub3 files can contain Javascript. Well, all you need is one "AI slop" ePub3 file you either bought from somewhere or downloaded for free and there you have your attack vector.

I convert all my epub3 files to epub2 before loading them on my ereaders. Presumably this would remove any javascript.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I convert all my epub3 files to epub2 before loading them on my ereaders. Presumably this would remove any javascript.

It should. That doesn't help with PDFs though. They can contain Javascript. What do you use to convert ePub3 to ePub2?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

It should. That doesn't help with PDFs though. They can contain Javascript. What do you use to convert ePub3 to ePub2?

Calibre.

[cgsmom]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

To swing this back around topic, I think this is the list of ereaders that meet the list and are currently being made:

1. PocketBook Era Lite
2. Boox Go 7
3. Bigme B7 Pro
4. Nook 4 Plus

My takes:

4. Not a bad choice. You can side load KOReader. But they block off access to most of the storage and you need to root it to get into that storage.

I am not sure that is true anymore. I have sideloaded over 400 books to my GL4+ and it still says I have 25.19 Gb available.

It is stock, no KOReader and not rooted.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by cgsmom

I am not sure that is true anymore. I have sideloaded over 400 books to my GL4+ and it still says I have 25.19 Gb available.

It is stock, no KOReader and not rooted.

On the Glowligjht or your computer when you plug it in?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by apastuszak

On the Glowligjht or your computer when you plug it in?

Nooks with 7.8“ screens don't have limited storage. Smaller ones do.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Nooks with 7.8“ screens don't have limited storage. Smaller ones do.

Well, that's interesting.