What do Various Ereaders Use to Read Epubs?

[enuddleyarbl]

This probably doesn't go here, but I don't know where else it should be.

I was reading another thread here talking about RMSDK used by Kobo to render Epubs not handling various things (like smallcaps). Is there some resource somewhere talking about what all the existing hardware ereaders use to render Epubs? Do they all use RMSDK? All the same version? I can find nothing talking about the versions of RMSDK (or alternatives?) are available or why Kobo chose the one(s?) it did.

I also wonder if Wipro's acquisition of Adobe's ereader stuff like RMSDK will/has make/made any difference.

[JSWolf]

Kobo uses an old version of RMSDK. Pocketbooks uses (I think) the current version of RMSDK.

So what we;ve been saying that RMSDK on Kobo won't support, it will support on Pocketbook.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

I was reading another thread here talking about RMSDK used by Kobo to render Epubs not handling various things (like smallcaps). Is there some resource somewhere talking about what all the existing hardware ereaders use to render Epubs? Do they all use RMSDK? All the same version? I can find nothing talking about the versions of RMSDK (or alternatives?) are available or why Kobo chose the one(s?) it did.

Most of the commercial ePub ereaders use either a version of RMSDK or their own variant on the Readium/webkit renderer. Kobo uses both. The version of RMSDK and the Readium/webkit renderer varies with manufacturers.

As for why? Back when Kobo first started manufacturing ereaders, RMSDK was pretty much the only game in town. Later when they wanted to expand into the Japanese market, they had to look for a solution that would allow Japanese typography. They found this in ACCESS's NetFront™ BookReader v1.0 EPUB Edition. This worked but did not support Adobe DRMmed ePubs. The easiest answer for Kobo was to keep RMSDK and add a second renderer triggered by using the .kepub.epub file extension. As time went by, ACCESS donated their codebase to Readium and Kobo moved to using that codebase as the basis for their ePub3 renderer. Since RMSDK on Kobo's sole purpose was to support Adobe's ADEPT DRM, updating it was not a priority.

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

I also wonder if Wipro's acquisition of Adobe's ereader stuff like RMSDK will/has make/made any difference.

As far as I know, Adobe spun out support for RMSDK to Datalogics, Bluefire, Webqem, etc. quite a while back. Looking at the ByteBooks web portal, it appears that most support is still done by those companies though I have to wonder how active most of them are.

For Kobo, it appears that their path forward is their Readium/WebKit based renderer since Kobo's V5 firmware allow setting that as the default for any non-ADEPT DRMmed ePubs.