Breaking news!!!!! Sony to sell Epub only

[John Bailey]

Originally Posted by gerraldo

You shouldn't be happy at all, your beloved ePub format now in the hands of Sony and Adobe. Oops, there goes freedom outta da window.

Not really. ePub is an open specification. They can't change it and keep calling it ePub. And there is no logical reason to do so.

This sounds kinda like "Microsoft is now completely switching to Linux!". D'you think this would be good news?! A once free & open format in the hands of some greedy monopolists...

Not quite. More like Microsoft releasing Office for Linux, and opening Windows under GPL.

Monopolies are not illegal. Abuse of monopoly is. And for abuse, you need a reason to abuse it. What is Adobe's reason?

I think this will delay the death of DRM. Which is a bad thing.

But can e-books hang on the periphery long enough for the death of DRM to happen? With such a huge drawback as being tied to one manufacturer from day one, the reality of e-books becoming mainstream in any really meaningful way is going to be an incredibly long and hard struggle? How far would MP3 players have got if they all used a different media type? Only AAC on An iPod, Ogg on a Cowon, WMA on a Creative etc. Not a chance of ever buying legit content directly for your player, and every time you change, you had to convert everything. Major fail.

This removes a huge show stopper to getting into e-books. If the maker stops making, currently I stop reading. with this, there will be others who will make a compatible device, which will allow me to read for as long as Adobe exists. (and I use "I" figuratively, as even with this, I can't see myself stooping to accept DRM)

Read my lips: As soon as a format has DRM, it's neither free nor open anymore!

And you "I like stripping Adobe DRM from my eBooks"-people - in most countries this is considered a crime and like nobody has ever been thinking (me included) the music industry would start sueing single users, they'll be coming after you.

Kind of agree. I'm very much against DRM too. Feel free to check out my posting history. And I am very very anti Kindle because of the level of control Amazon have. There is no such thing as a purchased DRM infected item. It is always rented for the duration of the DRM. But as DRM schemes go, this one is one of the less nasty ones.

And I agree 100%! Stripping DRM is not an answer, it's an excuse. You either use DRM and accept it's transitory nature, or you avoid it and have ownership of the media you buy. There is no middle ground.

Sorry folks, but this is just a smart business move against Amazon and it's all about money & power. Stop thinking of Sony like they're the Free Liberation Front. You're just changing one lock for another...

Agree completely. But there is no Big Book of Dirty Tricks that companies get the day they float on the stock market. And there is no obligation to screw your customers at every opportunity. Sometimes it is possible to do something that benefits everybody. It can even be deliberate.

Naturally, they can still do something stupid and blow the whole thing, but from what I have read, that would require a significant change of plans between now and then.

Only a total fool would ever attribute such a move to any kind of altruism. It is pure self interest. Sony can't compete with Amazon's "in" with the publishing industry. So...

Option 1) get the Sony reader on the Kindle store.. No chance!
Option 2) get a better book store.. Unlikely. If not impossible.
Option 3) Establish a default book format that everybody uses. Possible, desirable, and it grows the market. I think we have a winner.

Also, no need to maintain the manager software, or take responsibility for any DRM problems. They just sell the reader, and leave the rest to a neutral party. In this case, Adobe. Who will hopefully start making a Linux reader.

This is as close to the perfect system as we are likely to get for now.

Company A makes the reader.
Company B makes the DRM.
Company C sells the media.

All want to maximise sales, all gain from working openly together, and all have a vested interest in the others playing fair. Not perfect, but for now, it is a big step forward.

The other option is to let Amazon (or someone else) become the gatekeeper. Because as much as I hate it.. The reality is that DRM is going to be around for quite a while to come.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

It obviously does not make the ebook unreadable if the page number is in the margin, but an ePub does not have to have a wide right margin (or any blank right margin at all). In some ebooks the page number is over the text (note that it can be anywhere vertically on the screen, but always near the right edge) and you can't easily read the word underneath the page number. On the Opus, it may be possible to read the word underneath the page number since the page number is so faint.

You're right, of course. In the case of this book, I deliberately set a 13pt right margin to leave sufficient room for the marginal number.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Question: What happens with the LRX books one has already bought if the new firmware does support only the epub format?

Will Sony offer a solution for that problem or will you be forced to have an older Sony still supporting LRX to be able to read your purchased books? Ah, the glory of DRM!!!

This aside, I think that Sony 's move should be applauded!

I suspect the LRX will continue to be supported on the new devices for the foreseeable future. The 300 and 600 will support LRX and LRF I am confident of that.

Dale

[amjbrown]

Originally Posted by ahi

I suspect that unless they stop using Adobe's software... and develop their own, ePubs will probably continue looking as well-nigh unreadable as they do today.

- Ahi

I have only been using my 505 since February, but I have bought almost exclusively ePubs, and I still don't really understand what the objections over ePubs are. "Unreadable" is just plain wrong. It is true they are not fully justified, and the page number is superimposed (in a smaller font) sometimes over the text which is displayed in a slightly greyer tone than normal. I find neither a problem, and have yet to discover a word that has been made illegible by the page number issue.

I find ADE on my Mac slightly better in terms of presentation, but that does have the advantage of a 24" screen. After that, Sony wins over every other ePub renderer I've tried.

My one LRX (not available in ePub) actually looks a bit "cheap". The font is different, the line spacing is not quite so tight. Those are just personal preferences, but I cannot accept that ePubs are "unreadable"

amjb

[Faenad]

I'm very pleased with this news.
I also guess that if Sony is to switch completely their store to Epub, they will update the 505 to improve ePub rendering.

I am in the market for a second reader, this will simplify considerably my choice as all the new readers I was considering (Pocket Pro, Opus, Sony, etc. will be using the same format).
So my wife and I will be able to share our library.
Now I only have to wait for the reviews of all these devices


Now let's hope that tomorrow Amazon announce us that they will do the same

[ahi]

Originally Posted by amjbrown

I have only been using my 505 since February, but I have bought almost exclusively ePubs, and I still don't really understand what the objections over ePubs are. "Unreadable" is just plain wrong.

Technically wrong.

Originally Posted by amjbrown

It is true they are not fully justified, and the page number is superimposed (in a smaller font) sometimes over the text which is displayed in a slightly greyer tone than normal.

None of my yellowed and dog-eared second-hand sci-fi paperbacks that I purchased from used bookstores for $1 - $2 Canadian dollars have issues like that.

I'm glad to hear though that your enjoyment of the device, that you paid $200 - $300+ dollars for, is not at all impacted by the issue you point out.

The next best thing to quality is being satisfied with the lack thereof.

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Just so we can all see what we're talking about, here's a photograph of my Opus. If you look very, very closely, you can just see the page number at the top right corner. Sorry, but to my mind anyone who thinks that makes the book "unreadable" is nuts .

You are welcome to refer to me as a Macademia Nut--the King of Nuts!

- Ahi

Ps.: Is the page number always in the top corner? Or is it more often wherever the hell vertically in the margin space?

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by ahi

Is the page number always in the top corner? Or is it more often wherever the hell vertically in the margin space?

The purpose of the on-screen page number is to indicate exactly were the "page" starts (accurate to one line of text). So they can appear anywhere vertically on the screen. This makes more sense when it is a "physical" page (e.g. from the paper version of the book) than when it is Adobe's "character count" pages.

I don't regard the page numbers as annoying enough to stop using ADE, but they can disrupt the flow of reading. I don't understand why Adobe does not include a option to toggle the page number display on and off. This is one of the many indications that mobile ADE isn't designed to be used. It is designed to appeal to the producers of ePubs, not to readers of ePubs.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

The purpose of the on-screen page number is to indicate exactly were the "page" starts (accurate to one line of text). So they can appear anywhere vertically on the screen. This makes more sense when it is a "physical" page (e.g. from the paper version of the book) than when it is Adobe's "character count" pages.

I know this... I was hoping to get HarryT to say so too, since he curiously decided to showcase a very uncharacteristically subtle example of the page number... and not so subtly implied that I am a nut.

The page number's actual presence is far less distracting/annoying than the fact that its position on the actual DAMN page being shown keeps changing after every page turn.

Admittedly... like so many eBook problems, this one could probably most readily be remedied by abandoning the delusion that you can design one file for ideal viewing on all devices... and design specifically for a given device, for which then you can properly synchronize ePub's imaginary pages to the actual shown pages. That is, until somebody changes the font size.

- Ahi

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ahi

Ps.: Is the page number always in the top corner? Or is it more often wherever the hell vertically in the margin space?

Nope. Just happened to be at the top on the completely random page that I photographed.

[yekim54]

I received two Sony Connect gift cards for Christmas but have not used them yet because I did not want to tie myself into the LRX format. This is good news for me as I will finally use the cards to purchase some ePub books from Sony!

I may have missed it in this long thread, but when will the ePub books become available at the Sony store?

[HarryT]

"By the end of the year".

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Nope. Just happened to be at the top on the completely random page that I photographed.

I'm fairly certain a lot fewer people would have a problem with this feature if the position of these (almost always pointless) page numbers was consistently in the top corner, out of the way.

As it is, they jump about vertically quite a bit--making your photo give an incorrect impression to those who do not already understand the feature.

- Ahi

[HarryT]

As you see from the photograph, the Opus also displays the page number in the status bar at the bottom of the page, so to have duplicate page numbers in the margin seems completely pointless. Let's be careful, however, to distinguish the shortcomings of the reading software from the ePub file format. There's certainly nothing in the ePub standard which mandates displaying marginal page numbers; it's just that the ADE software (for some odd reason) does so.

[amjbrown]

Originally Posted by ahi

I'm fairly certain a lot fewer people would have a problem with this feature if the position of these (almost always pointless) page numbers was consistently in the top corner, out of the way.

As it is, they jump about vertically quite a bit--making your photo give an incorrect impression to those who do not already understand the feature.

- Ahi

But ePubs have a fixed number of pages - regardless of how much zooming you do. So they can't appear in the same place on every displayed "page" on the reader. I actually really like this feature. In low light I might zoom in a step, on an LRF the book seems to get a third bigger. That feels wrong!