kepub: why does it exist?

[Jane Eyre]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

With Kobo, people will buy from Kobo book store and they will have a great experience with Kepub. Others will have the choice to buy from almost any other stores. ePub or Kepub? Kepub has more options with Kobo. Why go with less when you can have more?

I don't understand. Who or what does prevent Epub to be as performing as Kepub?

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by Jane Eyre

I don't understand. Who or what does prevent Epub to be as performing as Kepub?

I don't know.

It is what it is.

Edit : It makes me think of the web and the way websites are built. Some swear by standards, others by Google Chrome (Blink). In the end, people want what works the best for them, while others will continue to stand by standards for philosophical reasons, even if their browser of choice doesn't work with all websites sometimes. But, hey, that's another story!

[Jane Eyre]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

I don't know.

It is what it is.

Edit : It makes me think of the web and the way websites are built. Some swear by standards, others by Google Chrome. In the end, people want what works the best for them.

Of course, but, ebooks are not precisely web pages..it is just plain text, no animations, no jQueries or Javascript... an ebook is some more easy and simple. It doesn't need much to work..really I don't undersand. Kindle has been the first, but standards are developed to make users' life easier. Companies should invest on standard formats instead of feathering their own nest with their closed formats...

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by Jane Eyre

Companies should invest on standard formats instead of feathering their own nest with their closed formats...

I totally agree.

Why don't they? The hundred thousand millions dollars question.

Edit : That said, often the people behind building standards often have a tunnel vision of what should be a standard. I think of the days I was in Linux, lots of discussions often heading nowhere. So devs would just make a fork.

[slm]

Epub is an open standard. However, if someone like Kobo sells an epub, the publisher often insists on DRM. DRM is not a single open standard:

Adobe has most of the epub DRM market (and charges the bookseller to use it). Amazon has a separate DRM for its books. I suppose that Amazon could apply its DRM to epubs but there isn't any reason for them to do so (from their point of view). (Actually, most Amazon ebooks these days are fairly similar to epubs, I gather)

The various DRM regimes each require a reader than can decode that DRM. The Amazon Kindles decode Amazon DRM but not Adobe (or Kobo kepub). The kepub reader can not decode either Amazon or Adobe but it can read the DRM Kobo applies to kepubs.

Of course, the participants in this discussion usually strip DRM and so, for them, a epub is an epub, regardless of who sold it to them and--for them--multiple reader programs make little sense.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by slm

Epub is an open standard. However, if someone like Kobo sells an epub, the publisher often insists on DRM. DRM is not a single open standard:

Adobe has most of the epub DRM market (and charges the bookseller to use it). Amazon has a separate DRM for its books. I suppose that Amazon could apply its DRM to epubs but there isn't any reason for them to do so (from their point of view). (Actually, most Amazon ebooks these days are fairly similar to epubs, I gather)

The various DRM regimes each require a reader than can decode that DRM. The Amazon Kindles decode Amazon DRM but not Adobe (or Kobo kepub). The kepub reader can not decode either Amazon or Adobe but it can read the DRM Kobo applies to kepubs.

Of course, the participants in this discussion usually strip DRM and so, for them, a epub is an epub, regardless of who sold it to them and--for them--multiple reader programs make little sense.

Totally on point.

[Aleron Ives]

I always use KEPUB mostly for the rapid page turn feature. The image viewer is also handy for nonfiction. It seemed to me that WebKit was a bit snappier than RMSDK, but it might have been my imagination. The stability seems better as well, especially when it comes to large books.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Jane Eyre

Does Pocketbook read Kepub? I did not know it.

Yes. To a non-Kobo ereader or app, a kepub looks like an epub with extra code that does nothing. Kepub is a variant of ePub not a totally different format.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Jane Eyre

Good topic, very interesting!!
I have just uploaded in the two screens about the rendering of modified Andika font (by Barty user https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...ght=andika+ink) on my Clara 2E.

Same ebook, epub on the left. The epub version seems awful to me..and, it happens exactly the same with my kindle paperwhite, where andika looks softer and muche more definite, elegant while using kfx converted ebooks.
I also see some little differences among them about font size and line height. In the overall, I prefer kepub format too though Epub is standard and kobo format is a proprietary one...it's a shame!

The problem (as it looks to me) is that you have the weight turned up too high in the ePub. Turn it down until it look like the KePub's weight.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

To me, everything you say here is a matter of taste and opinion.

With Kobo, people will buy from Kobo book store and they will have a great experience with Kepub. Others will have the choice to buy from almost any other stores. ePub or Kepub? Kepub has more options with Kobo. Why go with less when you can have more?

What?

None of what I said is opinion. It's fact. Out of the box, KePub does look nearly as good as ePub. You can change how KePub looks with patches and an option in the config file. But you have to know what to do to do these things. It's all manually done. None of this is an option in the Kobo firmware. So you have to know about the patches and know about the option in the config file.

I've made these changes and KePub does look at lot better. But the bug with the line height is annoying.

[slm]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Yes. To a non-Kobo ereader or app, a kepub looks like an epub with extra code that does nothing. Kepub is a variant of ePub not a totally different format.

For some ereaders, you may have to rename the file so that the name ends with ".epub"

[Aleron Ives]

IIRC only Calibre allows the .kepub extension. To use the file on your Kobo, .kepub.epub is required, so most KEPUB files should already have a valid extension for other reading systems.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

None of what I said is opinion. It's fact. Out of the box, KePub does look nearly as good as ePub. You can change how KePub looks with patches and an option in the config file. But you have to know what to do to do these things. It's all manually done. None of this is an option in the Kobo firmware. So you have to know about the patches and know about the option in the config file.

I've made these changes and KePub does look at lot better. But the bug with the line height is annoying.

When I had my Kobo, I stoped using patches a while ago, years? My daughter and spouse both have a Kobo, they never touch anything. I just set their Calibre to transfer epub to kepub. That’s it. You have to realize that your knit picking is not something most people do. So, yeah, the way you obsessed with the looks of your ebook is based on your opinion. Facts for you, nothiing important for others.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by slm

For some ereaders, you may have to rename the file so that the name ends with ".epub"

For all ereaders. A Kobo ereader needs the .kepub.epub file extension. The only exception is if you have books synced from Kobo in which case there is no file extension and a file name that looks like a GUID ( 97affd0c-f2e4-46d8-aa18-c36b00a8cff9 for example).

The only place a .kepub extension works is in the calibre library, neither calibre's ebook viewer nor ebook editor will open them. When the Kobo Touch driver is used, the file is renamed to .kepub.epub when transferred to the ereader.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

When I had my Kobo, I stoped using patches a while ago, years? My daughter and spouse both have a Kobo, they never touch anything. I just set their Calibre to transfer epub to kepub. That’s it. You have to realize that your knit picking is not something most people do. So, yeah, the way you obsessed with the looks of your ebook is based on your opinion. Facts for you, nothiing important for others.

It IS a fact that epubs do some things better than kepubs - word spacing and typography. That most users don't notice or care doesn't make this fact nonexistent. I care nothing for kerning and ligatures either, but I do know that epubs are better in this regard. This is not JSWolf's personal opinion, it's a fact.

Kepubs also do some things better than epubs, so it's the matter of personal preference which format to use.