Firmware Updates

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So really, lets get Adobe to lean on ALL the manufacturers and make them update.

That's the problem though. The only way Adobe can lean on the manufacturers is to put tems in the license stating that they can pull it if they don't keep up to date. I don't think any manufacturers would agree to those terms. There's not much Adobe can really do about it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

But as I made clear in my post, it is no longer possible to buy ebooks from Sony's own store and have them display in the same way as the ebooks that Sony sold to us when we bought the device, and on which we may very well have based our purchasing decisions. I bought the PRS-505 partly based on how well it displays ebooks with full justification etc; these books so happened to be LRFs; now Sony have unilaterally decided they will not sell LRFs anymore I feel they are obliged to ensure its replacement is as least as good when it is rendered on the device.

You're getting a little confused. Sony have never sold LRF files, only DRM-protected LRX files. Several other sites do sell LRF books, eg Baen and Fictionwise, and they still do. Hence my comment that you haven't lost anything in the way of LRF support.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

That's the problem with the current eBook industry, the "standard" keeps changing and there aren't any guarantees.

The ePub 2.0 standard was set in September 2007, and hasn't changed since. What precisely are you referring to?

(Oh right, you mean the CSS support is often poor. You know, I think I mentioned the problems with CSS in another thread didn't I....)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

That's the problem though. The only way Adobe can lean on the manufacturers is to put tems in the license stating that they can pull it if they don't keep up to date. I don't think any manufacturers would agree to those terms. There's not much Adobe can really do about it.

That's the problem. Adobe isn't doing anything about it. So what we have is an old version of ADE that publishers have to adhere to or they will have a lot of customers upset that the eBooks they bought do not work properly. If everyone that used ADE updated to the newest version, then thing would work better and we'd all be better off.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That's the problem. Adobe isn't doing anything about it. So what we have is an old version of ADE that publishers have to adhere to or they will have a lot of customers upset that the eBooks they bought do not work properly. If everyone that used ADE updated to the newest version, then thing would work better and we'd all be better off.

What is needed hold in one word : standard !
(And get rid of drm).

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

The ePub 2.0 standard was set in September 2007, and hasn't changed since. What precisely are you referring to?

I meant the "standard" for what format eBooks in general are sold in.

PDF, Mobipocket, LRF, ePub, Kindle... etc.

Buy a reader that supports Mobipocket, for example, and guess what... a couple years down the road Mobipocket is killed off and replaced with something else (ePub). There's no guarantee that your reader will be updated with new formats. Who knows, maybe a couple years down the road ePub will die and we'll end up with yet another format being popular.

[HarryT]

We basically now have ePub ... and Amazon. Although other formats are still available (most notably PDF) it seems to be rapidly declining.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

We basically now have ePub ... and Amazon.

Sure, but what about next year?

[HarryT]

Hopefully next year Amazon will see the light and also switch to epub .

Well, we can always dream .

If you're saying that another standard may take over from ePub in 2011, I think that's rather unlikely. Whatever format the Apple iPad uses will probably grab some market share, but I honestly can't see it displacing ePub as the dominant standard - not, at least, next year.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you're saying that another standard may take over from ePub in 2011, I think that's rather unlikely. Whatever format the Apple iPad uses will probably grab some market share, but I honestly can't see it displacing ePub as the dominant standard - not, at least, next year.

ePub wasn't always the dominant standard. It replaced other things, and it's probably likely that other things will replace it. Maybe not in 2011, but how about 2012, 2013... etc. Until all of the Publishers/Retailers agree on a single standard (yeah right), this will probably continue to happen.

[HarryT]

Don't you think it's a little unrealistic to expect any standard to last forever? As long as the "old" standard can easily be converted to the "new" standard, that's really all that matters. Eg, I previously read Mobipocket format books; now I read ePub. Mobi books can be easily and losslessly converted to ePub.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I meant the "standard" for what format eBooks in general are sold in.

Ah, fair point

Who knows, maybe a couple years down the road ePub will die and we'll end up with yet another format being popular.

I really don't think that's going to happen. More, even if it did it's almost certain that any new standard is going to be XHTML/CSS or XHTML/XML based, and hence fairly trivially transferable with ePub.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Don't you think it's a little unrealistic to expect any standard to last forever?

That's exactly my point. There's no expectation that any format will last forever, and also no guarantee from an eBook device manufacturer that their device will support future formats. That's one of the risks that we accept when buying a device.

[Teddman]

There's forever, and then there's three years or so that Sony's bookstore has been online. And as I posted on page 2, there was actually a guarantee of sorts that Sony's LRF/LRX format would continue to be supported by Sony's readers and stores, per their press release.

I don't think anyone would be complaining if Sony simply updated their reader firmware so that it correctly supported ePub. Replacing a native format with an inferior format (as displayed on their readers) is a bad business decision any way you slice it.

[etienne66]

Originally Posted by Teddman

There's forever, and then there's three years or so that Sony's bookstore has been online. And as I posted on page 2, there was actually a guarantee of sorts that Sony's LRF/LRX format would continue to be supported by Sony's readers and stores, per their press release.

I don't think anyone would be complaining if Sony simply updated their reader firmware so that it correctly supported ePub. Replacing a native format with an inferior format (as displayed on their readers) is a bad business decision any way you slice it.

It isn't so much that epub is inferior to LRF/LRX, but that the implementation of the viewer is substandard even by Adobe's definition using ADE. Even the most recent ADE is not fully epub compliant. The fact is they even purposely , but needlessly, deviate from the standard.

Perhaps Adobe can't force them to update or else, but they should be at least suggesting that their licensees update their firmwares. Most definitely such shoddy support will not only affect the ebook reader manufactures, but also the publishers as well. Especially if they can't be certain how their ebooks will be displayed on a multitude of readers. But considering the number of typos and other problems that publishers seem to let slip, I don't think they have been to concerned about it in the past.

I would like to see more travel guides in epub format. The formatting in these books can be as difficult as it is in some textbooks. Publishers aren't going to want to deal with the frustrations of how great their book might look on one reader, but find out that not only does it look lousy on another reader, it also has information missing because the version of the ADE engine displays the <table> tag or some other tag very poorly. Let alone the other problems ADE has with such things as soft hyphens which would allow for a much better full justification experience.

Etienne66