Why Adobe may be good for the new ePub standard e-book format

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I'd agree with you if it weren't for the minor detail that both AT&T and Apple keep saying it isn't being subsidized.

They may, however, be playing with semantics on that one.

[NatCh]

Possible. I haven't heard/read the exact phrasing, so I couldn't guess. I really don't see what it would gain them to claim that they weren't subsidizing if they really were, though, the other way round would make better sense.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Looking at Adobe's history, back in the 1990s they started promoting Acrobat, giving it away for free, and in the process soundly trouncing the effort by WordPerfect to introduce a similar product. (Anyone else remember that one?)

Once they had control of the market, they started making regular changes to Acrobat, then created the separate "Full version" of Acrobat (which you had to pay for). Many of the changes they made were good, from a customer's point of view... but others just made Acrobat bloated, and shifted its focus from a cross-platform, unalterable document reader to a partially- editable word-processing/forms/graphics app.

In the meantime, Adobe has bought up a lot of its competition, and is forcing customers to shift to their (very expensive) apps.

Adobe makes great products... but they've also proven that they can be as ruthless as Microsoft in protecting their market. Very likely, they'll try to find ways to add proprietary (or just highly optimized to DE) elements to ePub, molding it into their preferred image, in such a way as to lock everyone into their version of ePub on their devices. (Microsoft also works this way... see "Browser Wars".) This will make DE the popular app to run ePub files on, with their extra elements. Adding DE to Creative Suite will further enlarge its user base with creative types who are already using Adobe's software (which is most of them, now that they own the graphics market).

They will likely also apply the draconian DRM systems presently used for major Adobe products to lock down DE to 1-2 computers max. This could extend to material you add to DE, but hopefully they'll stop before they get there.

However, if they decide to put DRM on their ePub docs, there'll be no stopping them, and no use arguing about it.

[andym]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Looking at Adobe's history, back in the 1990s they started promoting Acrobat, giving it away for free, and in the process soundly trouncing the effort by WordPerfect to introduce a similar product. (Anyone else remember that one?)

Once they had control of the market, they started making regular changes to Acrobat, then created the separate "Full version" of Acrobat (which you had to pay for). Many of the changes they made were good, from a customer's point of view... but others just made Acrobat bloated, and shifted its focus from a cross-platform, unalterable document reader to a partially- editable word-processing/forms/graphics app.

In the meantime, Adobe has bought up a lot of its competition, and is forcing customers to shift to their (very expensive) apps.

Adobe makes great products... but they've also proven that they can be as ruthless as Microsoft in protecting their market. Very likely, they'll try to find ways to add proprietary (or just highly optimized to DE) elements to ePub, molding it into their preferred image, in such a way as to lock everyone into their version of ePub on their devices. (Microsoft also works this way... see "Browser Wars".) This will make DE the popular app to run ePub files on, with their extra elements. Adding DE to Creative Suite will further enlarge its user base with creative types who are already using Adobe's software (which is most of them, now that they own the graphics market).

They will likely also apply the draconian DRM systems presently used for major Adobe products to lock down DE to 1-2 computers max. This could extend to material you add to DE, but hopefully they'll stop before they get there.

However, if they decide to put DRM on their ePub docs, there'll be no stopping them, and no use arguing about it.

Adobe make their money from content production tools. And one of the key things they need to be able to say to content providers is that with their tools you can create the media asset once and then it can be read on many different devices, so content producers don't have to mess around repurposing content. So they have a built in incentive to ensure that their content can be read by mobipocket readers etc. It's not in their interest to have browser war.

Does that mean that further down the line they won't introduce features that aren't additional to the standard. Maybe. But the history of the 'browser wars' was that both Netscape and Mozilla introduced extra features some of which were later incorporated into the standards. The problem mainly with the way that Microsoft sought to leverage its dominance in the OS market to kill off Netscape, and its poor support for standards, rather than with additional features.

Will Adobe introduce DRM? It must be a certainty that DE will read content using a DRM system that only DE can read. But it will be interesting to see whether Adobe decides it wants to actually operate that system or whether it simply opts to be the platform for systems operated by content providers.

And Adobe's licensing policies aren't draconian at all. The last time I looked at their licence it said I could install on as many computers as I wanted providing I only have one copy running at a time. Seems pretty reasonable to me. And certainly more customer-friendly than other companies.

[bowerbird]

bob said:
> Adobe seems to not sabotage others who want to use it
> or create tools for it without an Adobe partnership

whoa! have you forgotten how adobe stomped microsoft
when redmond was going to put native .pdf into vista?

from the get-go, they were robbing service bureaus blind.
and their track record for buying up their competition is
absolutely ghastly. their latest victim was macromedia.
and now they seem to be using flash for _everything_...

adobe is the meanest dog in the yard. i don't trust 'em.

_especially_ how they're using the ubiquity of .pdf as
the "frozen" format to now try to leverage into reflow.

fortunately, light-markup systems are flowering fully,
and i don't think adobe can do anything about it, but
you have to _always_ be careful of the meanest dog...

-bowerbird

[andym]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

bob said:
> Adobe seems to not sabotage others who want to use it
> or create tools for it without an Adobe partnership

whoa! have you forgotten how adobe stomped microsoft
when redmond was going to put native .pdf into vista?

from the get-go, they were robbing service bureaus blind.
and their track record for buying up their competition is
absolutely ghastly. their latest victim was macromedia.
and now they seem to be using flash for _everything_...

adobe is the meanest dog in the yard. i don't trust 'em.

_especially_ how they're using the ubiquity of .pdf as
the "frozen" format to now try to leverage into reflow.

fortunately, light-markup systems are flowering fully,
and i don't think adobe can do anything about it, but
you have to _always_ be careful of the meanest dog...

-bowerbird

Erm pdf is natvie in Mac OSX so I doubt that its absence (if it is indeed absent) from Vista is anything to do with Adobe 'stomping on' Microsoft.

Yes indeed its purchase of Macromedia strengthened its position in the market for content production tools where it is definitely the dominant player. It is backing epub for its own business reasons but that deosn't mean that epub isn't (potentially at least) good news for publishers and consumers.

[HappyMartin]

As a photographer I have used and trusted Adobe products for over a decade. They work well, do pretty much what they claim and have a reliable and sensible upgrade cycle. Of course they play hardball, this is capitalism and its what we are stuck with like it or not.

I find all the formats and for me odd conversion apps e readers emply a right royal pain in the butt. all I want to do is read books. I have had an iLiad less than a week and have no enthusiasm to learn all this stuff. If Adobe swan in and stomp some standards onto the whole thing it will help me and I suspect be positive for the e book industry. My wife wants an iLiad now and guess who is going to have to figure out all her conversions for the odd stuff she needs to access related to her work.

[bowerbird]

andy said:
> pdf is natvie in Mac OSX so I doubt that its absence
> (if it is indeed absent) from Vista is anything to do
> with Adobe 'stomping on' Microsoft.

the dispute was quite public. you could look it up.


> its purchase of Macromedia strengthened its position
> in the market for content production tools where it is
> definitely the dominant player.

it becomes "the dominant player" by buying its competitors,
after which it usually shelves their products. the list is long.

their prominent use of flash is the exception to the rule.
evidently they decided it'd be better to cut to the purchase
and use macromedia's product without developing their own.

but the end-point is the same, a "market" -- as you put it --
with zero competition... wherein it's easy to be "dominant"...


> It is backing epub for its own business reasons but
> that deosn't mean that epub isn't (potentially at least)
> good news for publishers and consumers.

oh, you better believe that .epub is "good news for publishers".

and they will support it strongly, as it's _great_news_ for them.

a complex file-format raises the _cost-of-entry_ to their business,
and since the virtually-cost-free promise of _self-publishing_ is
threatening to swamp their e-marketplace with low-cost books,
.epub is _exactly_ what they need. that's what this is about, folks,
raising the cost-of-entry, a tactic they were taught in b-school 101.

and adobe is quite happy to help 'em do it, just as long as adobe
can sell a ton of content-authoring-tool software in the process.

now, whether this is "good news for consumers" is a different matter.

if you are happy with the pablum the publishing houses are offering,
and you're willing to put up with the d.r.m. they want to force on you,
then yeah, maybe this is good news for you. or maybe it's not, since
it's far from clear that .epub will end up as the sole available format.

there's still mobipocket/amazon to contend with, just for starters.

and some people might prefer .pdf. if you've got a fixed screensize,
and you can quickly and easily create nicely-sized text for that size,
the need for reflow is _significantly_reduced_, perhaps to _zero_...

also, every company that comes out with new viewer-hardware will
probably develop their own format to try to create lock-in that way.

and there could be _lots_ of such hardware coming down the pipe,
as prices of the necessary components drop to commodity levels...

plus, we haven't begun to see the (inevitable) stage where hardware
is _given_away_ in exchange for long-term service-contracts where
the vendors expect to make their money off the provision of services.
(or the display of advertisements. or likely a combination of both...)

remember that _books_ are just a tiny piece of the overall content pie.
and the same corporations that own the publishing houses also own
the film studios, the television networks, and the recording companies.

and there are all types of potentials promising them even bigger money.
a mobile machine that knows _where_ it is (via g.p.s.) can show its user
ads for nearby businesses, whether involuntarily or at the user's request.

there's this big myth that has been perpetrated that the main reason why
publishing companies haven't jumped on e-books yet is because of the
absence of a dominant file-format. and that's just silly. it's the fear of
piracy that's frozen the content cartel in regard to digitization of all types.

they put their foot in the water with the c.d., and -- wonder of wonders --
end-users used the digital format to do what the digital format does best
-- i.e, make copies, copies that can flow over the net quickly and easily --
and the corporations freaked, because their bread-and-butter is _scarcity_.

***

martin said:
> As a photographer I have used and trusted Adobe products for over a decade.
> They work well, do pretty much what they claim and have a reliable and
> sensible upgrade cycle. Of course they play hardball, this is capitalism

adobe does make good products.

and they also buy out their competition,
so the adobe product is the only one left.

that's not "capitalism". that's "monopoly".


> and its what we are stuck with like it or not.

sounds a bit fatalistic to me. but i can understand your pessimism.


> I find all the formats and for me odd conversion apps e readers emply
> a right royal pain in the butt. all I want to do is read books.

this situation was created by the very corporations who own the content.
they want things to be complicated for us. we are a pawn in their game.

that's why i'm here to tell you that a simple system of plain-ascii text-files
-- which are then handled correctly by _intelligent_ viewer-applications --
_can_ work just fine, creating books that are _typographically_beautiful_
and which possess the _high-powered_functionality_ we expect of e-books.
the kicker is that even a garage hacker like myself can program such viewers.

if we _could_ standardize on one e-book format, _this_ is the one it should be.

but i can tell you -- for sure -- the content-cartel will not let it be so simple.

so the main question is whether we want to play the game their way, or not...

and make no mistake -- .epub is playing the game their way.

-bowerbird

[Lemurion]

Personally I find either .lit or mobipocket formats work very well for reading and have no problem with either. Adobe always makes me think of draconian restrictions, bloated applications, and documents that are hard to read. Those features don't add up to selling points.

[nekokami]

bowerbird, I've hesitated to say this, because I don't want it to come across as an ad-hominem, but I think it's relevant to the discussion. I'd find your arguments about formatting a lot more convincing if you used standard capitalization, punctuation, and line-wrapping in your posts. You may be right that ePub is overkill for fiction books, but are your posts an example of what z.m.l. would give us? I personally find them rather difficult to read. When we're talking about DRM or the prospective price of the Amazon Kindle, I suppose it doesn't really matter, but when the subject under discussion is text formatting, I think you may be undercutting your position.

[bowerbird]

nekokami, that's certainly not an "ad hominem" argument.
it's your opinion, and you've got a right to it, and there are
probably lots of people who agree they dislike my "style"...

sorry about that... :+)

but i'm not sure that my style is _meaningful_ to the topic...

seems to me the ideas stand up on their own, with a logic
that's powerful enough that it transcends their presentation.

but if that's not the case for you, personally, then perhaps
i can point you to some working examples of light markup.

the most well-known systems are "markdown" and "textile".
even minimal research will show you they are used a _lot_,
such as on the most common blog platforms (e.g., wordpress).

plus, of course, wiki markup is also a form of light markup,
so its use -- on wikipedia alone -- means it has a large base.

one of my favorite of the markdown sites is "showdown":
> http://www.attacklab.net/showdown-gui.html
it's a javascript implementation that works in real-time...

i think that if you explore markdown in showdown a bit,
you will discover that it is an extremely capable system,
one that generates standards-compliant valid xhtml code.

plus, you can drop any .html code into a markdown file
-- markdown passes it through unmodified -- so there is
virtually nothing that you cannot do, which means in turn
that there's no reason to limit its use to "fiction books"...
iight markup is capable of handling the most difficult books
just as easily as epub (with its "islands" approach) can do.

finally, if you'd like some examples of _books_ in _z.m.l._:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/vl3.pl
click on the underlined link to view the "master" .zml file,
and then click the button to see the .html that's generated.
let me know if you have any negative feedback on those...

***

in closing, i've been an advocate of light markup for years.
i've done a lot of research on it, and i _know_ that it works.

i've also seen a remarkable uptake in its acceptance, which
doesn't surprise me, because no one likes complex markup.

i predict that within 5 years, browsers will be programmed
to display light-markup files _natively_, so we won't even
be required to convert our light-markup files into (x)html...

the publishing houses have a vested interest in heavy markup
since they want to raise the cost-of-entry as high as possible.
but ordinary people want to lower the cost of self-publishing,
as demonstrated by the embrace of simple blogging software.

the light markup revolution is clear, and gains strength daily.

so if you discount the message because of the messenger
(which is a different kind of rhetorical error), you will be
missing an important message. the revolution won't care
-- it'll go on -- but you will not want to be left far behind...

-bowerbird

[nekokami]

bowerbird, thanks for not taking this personally. I really was asking, seriously, is z.m.l. designed to produce the kind of output style you use in your posts?

Personally, I'm an html fan, because I can see the tags in a regular text editor and I know what they mean. There's very little I need from a book or any other document that can't be done with quite plain html. That's how I tend to format my books, when I get them in other formats.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

oh, you better believe that .epub is "good news for publishers"...

...there's this big myth that has been perpetrated that the main reason why
publishing companies haven't jumped on e-books yet is because of the
absence of a dominant file-format. and that's just silly. it's the fear of
piracy that's frozen the content cartel in regard to digitization of all types...

...and make no mistake -- .epub is playing the game their way.

-bowerbird

Yes, piracy was always an issue (because the pubs couldn't take the time to figure out a workable sales model, and they were scared wussies). But multiple formats has meant a fractured market, limiting sales potential, and it IS a factor. Witness the emergence of two major partnerships once ePub was created and endorsed.

And I don't think ePub serves to "raise the bar" on the small publishers, because it's a format that anyone can create, without fancy software or hacks, and any reader can be trained to use (because it's XHTML). It's not designed to shut out big OR little guys... it's an equalizer.

[bowerbird]

nekokami said:
> is z.m.l. designed to produce the kind of output style you use in your posts?

no. it's designed to produce the kind of output you find in paper-books,
i.e., the high-quality typography that has evolved over hundreds of years

and as far as the web goes, it's designed to produce normal e-book .html,
of the type that just about everyone would agree is a decent representation.
(but the web-browser is always going to be an inferior book environment.)


> I'm an html fan, because I can see the tags in a regular text editor
> and I know what they mean. There's very little I need from a book
> or any other document that can't be done with quite plain html.

there is a one-to-one correspondence between the "rules" of z.m.l.
and the tags you see in .html, which is why z.m.l. can generate .html.
did you even look at the .zml example books that i pointed you to?

z.m.l. _headers_ are indicated by a sequence of at least _4_ blank-lines
preceding the header, with a two-blank-line sequence after the header.

(headers can be of the 2-part type that is extremely common in books,
where the first part is "chapter 10", the second "the lobster quadrille",
where these two parts are simply separated by a single blank line...)

the number of blank lines that precede the header indicate its _level_.
(more blank lines indicate a higher-priority header, which means that
you could conceivably have an outline with an infinite number of levels.
realistically, six is workable. but most books will only have one or two.)

even without much experience, it's easy to get used to seeing the headers:
> http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbi...01/alice01.zml

to see the .html that was generated by this .zml file, look here:
> http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbi...1/alice01.html
again, if you have any negative feedback on that file, please share it here.

there's a .pdf version as well, for people who would prefer that format:
> http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbi...1/alice01b.pdf
as with the .html, this was generated by the .zml file. the beauty is that
an individual user can generate a .pdf to their own custom specifications.

once you get used to clean .zml, obtrusive <h2>html tags</h2> get
extremely claustrophobic, especially when further cluttered with the
<a href="#tableofcontents"> and <h2 id="chapter10thelobsterquadrille">
tags</h2> that are needed for <strong>powerful</strong> navigation...

it will be even easier for people to "visualize" how z.m.l. works when
i release my .zml authoring-tool, with its side-by-side interface where
you do .zml on one side of the screen, and it's formatted on the other.
(the format is fairly similar to the "showdown" webpage i pointed to...)

and although you might dislike my _italics_underscores_ when i post here,
they seem -- to my eyes anyway -- more clear than the <i>html kind</i>
if you're editing the raw tags in a text-editor.

likewise, i think you'll find the footnote rule-set rather easy to grasp.[1]

but clarity to the end-user is just half of the bargain.

another benefit of light markup is that it's extremely easy for programmers
to build applications which leverage the simplicity of plain-text input files,
since it's unnecessary to program around the obstruction of heavy markup.

every bit of my format has been stress-tested in the harsh environment
of actual real-world programming, where you have to be quite specific...
there's no room for wiggling when you get down to the actual app coding.

and this is something that the format wonks significantly fail to appreciate.
they seem to believe that by creating a format, all the work has been done.
but until you have applications that bring about the desired functionalities,
you haven't got squat. and if you _do_ have an application to do the work,
odds are the programmers already invented their own format, thank you...
it's not like we programmers are sitting around waiting for the right format.
we can mix one up quite easily all by ourselves, one that we know will work.

i mean, truly, i'm just _amazed_ that some people seem to think that they
can just lay out a format -- with little or no input from programmers about
whether it can be implemented correctly or not -- and then seemingly just
_expect_ that the programmers will come be led by the nose to implement
the format. i cannot tell you how many times i've made a decision about a
file-format that i later had to change once i tried to implement it in an app.

yet we went through a period of _years_ of "browser incompatibilities" and
"non-standards-compliant" nightmares -- heck, we are still living them! --
all because file-formats were created without clear implementation plans...

and does anyone think .epub will be any different? if you do, you're crazy.[2]

and what good does it do to have "one format" if different viewer-programs
implement it differently?

will there be a "best if viewed with digital editions" logo that people will use?

as far as i'm concerned, if you don't have _three_ open-source viewer-apps
for a particular format -- each with a dedicated programmer community --
all of which display an e-book exactly the same way, across many e-books,
you shouldn't even be _proposing_ that format as an industry-wide standard.

scratch that. make it three open-source viewers
_and_ three open-source _authoring_tools_ too...

-bowerbird

[1] footnote references are surrounded by brackets. if a bracketed reference
is preceded by two end-line markers, then it is the actual footnote itself.
(that is, it must be at the beginning of a line, with an empty line above it.)
otherwise, the brackets are the place that _called_ the footnote.[special]

[special] there we have a case of a footnote that's _inside_ another footnote,
and which is referenced[magic] with the word "special", rather than a number.
these bracketed references inside the text are not preceded by two end-lines,
so the program knows that they are _pointers_ to a footnote, not the footnote.

[magic] this footnote just shows a footnote reference can be placed anywhere,
such as the middle of a sentence, without confusing the viewer-program at all.
you might be wondering about ordinary bracketed text [were you?}, but do not
fear, since if there is no matching bracket-reference preceded by two end-lines,
the viewer-program knows that it shouldn't treat _that_ bracket as a footnote.
(this means the "were you?" text above is treated as ordinary bracketed text.)

why force a human being to do markup on all those footnotes, when a basic
viewer-program can employ an elementary rule-set to sort things out by itself?
note that this paragraph is a continuation of the "magic" footnote above it;
if it were the next footnote, it would have begun with its bracketed name...

[2] i mean the _generic_ "you", of course, not you personally, whoever you are.


two blank lines after the last footnote indicates that the footnotes are done,
and the regular text, if any, is continuing. of course, since you will ordinarily
put the footnotes in their own section (so they're actually more like endnotes),
the last footnote should be followed by a stream of at least _4_ blank lines and
a header, thereby indicating the beginning of the next section, if there is one...

[bowerbird]

steve said:
> multiple formats has meant a fractured market

they can -- and they will -- "unfracture" that market any time they want.
for now, they'd rather leave it broken. makes it easier to point fingers...


> Witness the emergence of two major partnerships
> once ePub was created and endorsed.

who? let's come back and look in a year and see if they made a difference.


> And I don't think ePub serves to "raise the bar" on the small publishers,
> because it's a format that anyone can create, without fancy software
> or hacks, and any reader can be trained to use (because it's XHTML).

you think xhtml can be created by "anyone"?

writers don't want to code xhtml. they want to write. and re-write.
and then re-write some more. but they don't want to code xhtml...

i mean, the publishing companies will try to force them to do coding
if they want to self-publish. because then writers won't self-publish.

luckily, the light-markup revolution will give them a simple alternative.

i mean, _you_ can use xhtml if you want. nobody is stopping you.
but none of the writers that i know will wanna go down that road...

-bowerbird