Kindle Paperwhite 5.6.5 - OPDS and ePub?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by barryem

I don't pretend to have actual numbers about any of this but I think the last thing I read was that 60% of USA ebook sales are from Amazon. I have read that epub is used more in other countries than it is here but I wonder if it's enough to be a majority.

Also, it's kind of difficult to care that a format is open when it's DRM'd. That shuts the openness down, it seems to me.

I'm not against epub and I'm not trying to say mobi is in any way better. The little I know about formats suggests just the opposite. But all this fear of a "closed system" when the books are so easy to jailbreak even if the devices aren't, seems a little off to me. I wonder how many of the Kindle users in here buy books from Amazon and use Calibre to back them up just in case Amazon goes kerplunk. Probably a lot. It's hard to believe Amazon doesn't know that and nothing they've done makes it seem like they care much.

Barry

I don't have any statistics either.
I want to addressed your "closed system".
I have found that most mis-information comes from people that have never actually used the product but went to a forum to find out stuff.
Now ok, going to a forum is fine, but the problem is they usually go to whatever device forum they currently own.

I mean supporters of one thing are going to make up stuff about the competition.

Total example,
Although it was a phone call not a forum.
I had a Nook account but the second I changed the credit card, I lost the books. At that time, they were tying their DRM to the credit card. The guy tried to tell me that I must have changed my email. The guy at Barnes and Noble told me point blank that Amazon does the same thing. He hung up on me when I told him that I had changed both my email and my credit card at Amazon and they didn't take my books.

Let's see, couldn't we say the same thing about Apple being closed. I read that if you have an iPad you can only use their apps and must use isomethingorother for music and books.
Ok in all honesty, I know it is a separate OS and that it is easier straight out of the box to use their apps. Same with Android.

So if I was looking for information, I wouldn't pass on what I thought I knew until I had actually researched the device including asking actual users what it can and can't do.

[Cinisajoy]

And to the OP, if you dislike Kindle that much either return the present or pass it on to someone that likes Kindle.

[barryem]

The "best format" can mean the one that's the most capable and flexible. Or it can mean the one that's most useful to most people. Or it can mean the one that's most readily available. For me the best format is mobi because I usually read with a Kindle.

The thing is, though, that "open" has little meaning in this context since all nearly ebooks are closed with DRM regardless of format. So to say epub is more open, while that may occasionally be true, is usually not true. It is true in the sense that any ereader can be made such that it supports epub, but that has little meaning these days. The majority of ereaders support mobi, at least in the USA.

I'm not advocating for either format. This whole thing is a mish-mosh and is getting worse. We'd be far better off if all ebooks were published in some common unlocked format such as HTML 4 or RTF, but that's not going to happen. Instead we have 2 major formats, both of which have excellent device and app support and being afraid of either of them seems to me more dogmatic than practical.

Barry

[Rizla]

There is a non-solder jailbreak. It will probably be released before xmas. Keep your kindle in aeroplane mode in case in stealth updates.

I agree the Kindle is a sad sad ereader. The hardware can do so much more than the restrictive software allows.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

There is a non-solder jailbreak. It will probably be released before xmas.

What leads you to that conclusion? No information whatsoever has been released about when - or even if - it will be released. Where does your information come from?

[cvkemp]

Originally Posted by Rizla

There is a non-solder jailbreak. It will probably be released before xmas. Keep your kindle in aeroplane mode in case in stealth updates.

I agree the Kindle is a sad sad ereader. The hardware can do so much more than the restrictive software allows.

And I disagree with you the Kindle is a great ereader, and it does what it was designed for, and that is to read ebooks, and even some newsstand items. I have no desire to screw my ereader up for some jailbreak that more than likely will screw up my device.

[Cinisajoy]

Guys, if you don't quit arguing over rather a kindle is bad, I will feed you all uncleaned tripe.

[mateuszv]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

And to the OP, if you dislike Kindle that much either return the present or pass it on to someone that likes Kindle.

I wouldn't say I 'dislike it that much', rather that I have been unpleasingly surprised by its software. Now that I used it a bit, I can say that its hardware is quite amazing. But this doesn't change the fact that the software sucks (and it sucks on purpose, apparently).

Still, I like it enough that I developed a mobi export for my ebook library system so it becomes compatible with Kindle. Now I am using the Kindle "almost" the same way I was using FBReader on my mobile phone. The difference being that I have to go through a web browser instead of an OPDS browser.

So now I can keep collecting ePubs, and access them either from my mobile devices via OPDS, or for less eye-straining reading, access them via the web index from the Kindle For those that could be interested, I attach some photos of how it looks like below.

photo 1

photo 2

[eschwartz]

Moderator Notice

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Feel free to update your original post with an appropriately-resized image, or use our attachments feature (in the Go Advanced reply mode).

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[shamanNS]

It still blows my mind how moderators consider deletion of content that has been posted in incorrect way more "logical" then just turning images that are to big into (off-site, or link pointing to the attachment(s)) hyperlinks, by removing the BBcode tag...

I'm guessing the idea behind the image size rule is avoiding stretching of the forum page? Link in place of image does that.

Or is it also the size it takes when it's added as attachment?

[eschwartz]

It's not the moderator's job to do so, it is the member's job to follow the posting guidelines.

I personally consider offsite links to be vastly inferior in user experience to properly-resized or attached images. But I am not interested in doing so on behalf of other people -- if it is important enough, the OP will do it himself.


Do note that @Issybird is more considerate than I and has on many occasions voluntarily taken the time to replace oversized images with attachments. You may not have noticed, since consequently she doesn't leave moderator notices.