July 2013 Was EPub3 Month

04 April 2013

ePub3, IDPF, XHTML5, HTML5, , Demonstration Books, Opinion

July 2013 was ePub3 month. After 22 months of stalling and prevarication is something about to happen. Watch this space.

Let's start off with a little fun with this little Tumblr item Let's Talk About ePub3. This little three step graphic probably says more about ePub3 than all of the long-winded narrative following!

July was ePub3 Month

10 July. Setting the July 2013 ePub3 tone, my opinion rant that ePub3 was a dismal failure. This article is a continuation of that thread.

17 July. The first E-book Zero (E0) test set is prepared and available.

24 July. The AAP announcement of an ePub3 adoption initiative with a strong focus on accessibility.

25 July. A DBW article Aggressive casting doubts in a news-mannerly way on the AAP announcement.

25 July. An IDPF article is released in DBW "Why Publishers are Making a Push for ePub3 Now".

30 July. An IDPF announcement. Call for Participation: EDUPUB Workshop.

Let's get into this and try to understand the real facts and effect on ePub 3 adoption by e-retailers, reading-systems and publishers, remembering that if all three are not fully synchronized nothing much can happen.

In the spirit of ePub3 interactive content, the original article extracts are in expanding interactive expanding panels (blue) and text popups (green). Just click on the blue text to hide and reveal the article extracts associated with the comments, or click the popups to reveal the wisdom within.

The AAP Press Release

First the press release by the AAP.

The Association of American Publishers supports the establishment of EPUB 3...

Wednesday, 24 July 2013 | Ed McCoyd, Andi Sporkin

The Association of American Publishers supports the establishment of EPUB 3 as the standard global distribution format for eBooks and has embarked on a new initiative designed to rapidly advance the format’s implementation in the marketplace.

The EPUB 3 Implementation Project is being developed in a partnership with retailers, digital content distributors, device makers, reading systems providers, assistive technology experts and standards organizations, with the support and engagement of leading advocates for people with disabilities.

The initiative’s goal is to accelerate the across-the-board adoption of the EPUB 3 format in the consumer market by identifying and implementing what stakeholders consider to be the core set of baseline features critical to the format’s acceptance. Among these features are greater interactivity for users, multimedia-enhanced content and expanded accessibility for people who are blind or have other print disabilities.

Publishers have set an ambitious six-month goal to rapidly advance implementation of EPUB 3 through the initiative. Although each individual publisher will make decisions about introducing EPUB 3 titles on its own time-line, many anticipate introducing large numbers of EPUB 3 files into the marketplace beginning First Quarter 2014.

AAP publishers are currently recruiting representation from all stakeholder groups to participate in the initiative’s two central efforts:

– Convening this summer: A working group to identify baseline accessibility features for the EPUB 3 files and for metadata, and to plan the program for the September workshop

– September 10, 2013: A day long workshop for all participants in New York City to define and prioritize actionable projects.

Broad adoption of EPUB 3 will offer countless benefits and opportunities for all those who read, use, create, produce, distribute and publish content:

– Readers and consumers will enjoy greater user experience, including more interactivity and have more consistency in content features and function across devices and retailers

– Through EPUB 3’s innovative assistive features, people who are blind or have other print disabilities will have access to the same titles, at the same time, as all readers

– Retailers and device makers will be able to market and sell more feature-rich content and more devices for such content, reaching an even broader customer base by providing a consistent, optimal user experience

– Educators will have the ability to assign more digital reading materials which are inherently accessible to all students, including people with disabilities

– Publishers will be able to deliver more robust, feature-rich products in the marketplace — in a more streamlined way — to all accounts, for the broadest possible distribution worldwide to readers

While AAP publishers have undertaken a number of activities, independently and in partnership with relevant stakeholders, to advance the EPUB 3 format, this initiative is the most extensive and potentially transformative to date.

This initiative is potentially heartening. Especially looking at setting a baseline for education and accessibility although trade-book e-retailers will probably win the ePub3 spec. feature minimization.

If EPub3 is good for anything it is definitely education, training and learning content. It is essential that a baseline of features exists that supports these genres, not just trade books.

Unfortunately there are no names, no specifics and no details of support by any particular publisher, reading system implementor or retailer as commented by others. But here is hoping enough get on board.

The IDPF Article on DBW

Next in the July ePub3 action was a long article in Digital Book World, written by a member of the IDPF, that needs a long commentary and analysis to provide international balance. (International in this context means not U.S., Japan or Korea.)

Now I understand that this article was a PR exercise, trying to get people excited and interested in ePub3 given the AAP announcement. There are a number of swooping, soaring obvious generalizations, so we are just providing a back-to-earth landing ground. Optimism is a great thing, but never believe your own PR!

And the story starts..... now! Once upon a time, in a land far, far away...

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) announced...

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) announced a major initiative to accelerate adoption of EPUB3 earlier this week. This latest version of EPUB, the widely used open standard format for digital publications, is based on the latest Web Standards including HTML5. But given that the vast majority of ebooks selling today are fiction and text-centric nonfiction titles that don’t have a clear need for the multimedia and interactivity associated with HTML5, some people have questioned why there’s such a fuss about moving to the new version.

Will this initiative result in accelerated ePub3 adoption. We stand poised in anticipation.

"Some people" are completely correct. Why is there such a fuss about moving to the new ePub version? EPub2 does it fine for trade and linear reading text books. Why can't ePub2 work with ePub3?

It's only a reading system thing. AZARDI does it without batting a byte; ePub2, ePub3, E0; throw it at me and I will present it my way. The specification shouldn't have tried to be backward compatible, it should have broken new ground and left version compatibility in the hands of reading systems developers.

The explanation is simple: While the long term benefits of moving...

The explanation is simple: While the long term benefits of moving up to HTML5 and the modern Web platform are significant as readers will demand more interactivity in ebooks, in the short-term the migration to EPUB3 is much less about ebooks that sing and dance and much more about lowering the costs of production and delivery for publishers across the increasingly wide range of devices, tablets and smartphones that readers are using.

It's difficult to understand the point that is being made here. Guess I am dumb (Damn it. Aunt Molly was right). I think it is the future history of interactive reading experiences in a paragraph, but am not quite sure.

The XHTML of ePub2 is the XTHML5 of ePub3 with a few elements added in here and there. Amazon have done well with HTML1.00 and CSS 0.5 for the past five years. There is more at play than locking on to HTML5.

EPub3 does not lower the cost of eBooks. We have delivered thousands of ePub3s over the last year and it costs a lot more money to produce a novel as an ePub3 than ePub2 for a number of reasons (that is another post).

There is nothing in the ePub3 spec about the wide range of devices, viewports and aspect ratios people are using. Why is this relevant in 2013 when the specification was written two years ago before the Phablet was invented!

To understand this it's helpful to consider what version 3 adds...

To understand this it’s helpful to consider what version 3 adds to the EPUB standard. EPUB3 can be viewed as having four major feature clusters:

Styling and layout enhancements (general CSS enhancements, enhanced font/typography support, and fixed-layout support),
Global language support (vertical writing, R-L page progression direction, phonetic annotation, etc.)
Rich media and interactivity (audio, video, scripting)
Accessibility features (better semantics, pronunciation hints, synchronizing pre-recorded media with text display, mathematics etc.).

Can I just be a little small-minded and point out that it is a specification not a standard unless the IDPF became a standards body, instead of a trade organization, while I wasn't looking.

Styling and layout enhancements. Mostly too little, too late. The available rendering engines (Webkit and Mozilla the awesomely exciting (yawn) Blink by Google [which promises "To improve the open web through technical innovation and good citizenship"]) are moving ahead at a cracking pace with their short development cycles. EPub3 is rooted in 2009-10 with print-outs available in 2011. In December 2011 we produced ePub3 Unleashed (Download) to comprehensively demonstrate the potential of ePub3. The feature range demonstrated has not been matched by any publisher book.

Hopefully the AAP meeting and EDUPUB group will make Fixed-Layout spine properties mandatory and introduce a few new properties for consistent textbook behaviour. Currently only AZARDI has a complete implementation of the Fixed-Layout spine properties. We demonstrated how spine properties can provide enhanced education experiences in the ePub3 concept book Famous Paintings (download). No other reading system even tries these real education concepts. It's not hard but does compete with proprietary education production applications. Don't expect a lot of changes.

In real world implementations we have found that not having a rendition:layout-scrolling option makes it impossible to create education ePub 3's of value. This is the sort of discovery that can only happen when REAL implementation testing is employed.
Global language support. This is the Internet. There is no credit to take here. There was a Radium project and the IDPF fixation with vertical writing for Japanese. Other languages are never mentioned. In January 2012 we produced Around the World in 28 Languages (download) to demonstrate the potential universality of ePub3 based on quality rendering engines. It is the same with font support.
Rich Media and Interactivity. The IDPF collapsed on WebM support and fell back to the MP3/MP4 specification because of Apple's input. That's OK and from AZARDI 23 MP3 and MP4 will be supported in AZARDI desktop for Windows. However interactivity remains a mine-field for both reading system implementers and book producers. An interesting note on WebM.
Accessibility. Accessibility becomes difficult in ePub3 because of the significant and strange packaging structures. The E0 package makes the application of accessibility standards such as WCAG and probably more important WAI-ARIA a more straight-forward issue.

All of these things are fine with the exception that SVG and MathML are worth their own list number. Let's call it 5. They are very big in education content.

So while these four cheerful points sell ePub3 up, it is the unspoken Item 6 that promotes the dialogue of the anti-ePub 3 voice. What is not mentioned is the cluster of strange features such as Canonical Fragment Identifiers, trigger, switch, manifest fall-backs, images in spine and eye-watering metadata strategies to name the major items. It is these that have significantly slow adoption of ePub3. Hopefully these will be addressed and prioritized by the AAP and EDUPUB meetings.

Many people think of HTML5 (and thus EPUB3 which differs...

Many people think of HTML5 (and thus EPUB3 which differs from EPUB2 primarily in being built on HTML5) as being all about the rich media and interactivity.

But HTML5 is a marketing term and in fact all of these enhancements in EPUB3 are enabled at least in part by HTML5 and related specs like CSS3 that come along with modern browsers.

There are a number of very large association jumps here.

People don't think about HTML5 as rich media and interactivity. That's Flash! People think of HTML5 as being a timely and necessary correction to the XML locked-down direction the XHTML specification was heading. The same way E0 is a correction to the direction ePub3 has gone and has stalled for the same reasons.

EPub3 differs from ePub2 primarily being built on HTML5? Firstly ePub3 is built on XHTML5 which imposes a number of required limitations in the ePub packaging environment. That should be stated clearly. It means SVG and MathML have to be packaged with name-spaces for example; loosing the liberation from name-space content death HTML5 delivers. But we understand that compromise as all our production is well-formed XHTML.

EPub3 differs from ePub2: 1) starting with the metadata disaster waiting to happen, 2) the manifest packaging with un-required properties and fallbacks, 3) a spine supporting fixed-layout properties, 4) a semi-useful landmarks strategy (if it is actually used sensibly), 5) a useful if limited page navigation strategy, 6) a cover definition (but not how it is to be used); and many more differences in the details. There are a lot of DocBook ePub2 books out there!

HTML5 is not a marketing term! It is a W3C specification. It was an independent action by a group of individuals who saw the W3C direction on the modularization of XHTML was a looming disaster. HTML5 was a reality business check. It brought the W3C to it's collective knees and made it rethink, and trash what it was doing with XHTML.

This trivialization of significant events in the recent history of standardization efforts is somewhat of an understatement to the actual courage demonstrated by the WHATWG working group. Check out the history of HTML5 presented with this infographic.

In some areas EPUB3 has gone beyond the browser...

In some areas EPUB3 has gone beyond the browser baseline, such as in enabling global language support and accessibility. IDPF, the developers of EPUB, are collaborating with W3C to over time elevate the broader Web platform (which necessarily evolves a bit more slowly since it needs to address the needs of the entire global information and communications technology community not just book publishing).

EPub3 has gone beyond the browser baseline.... What does this mean? What is a browser baseline? I haven't got the foggiest notion of a browser baseline. Educate me someone.

Global language support has been tirelessly driven by the Unicode consortium for 20 years making support of all languages in any computer platform a reality. It is one of the greatest and most marvellous technical achievements of humanity which we now grunt at - oh yeah UTF-8, whatever you say dude! Unicode is the DNA of language. It is so absolutely, magnificently....awesome.

UTF-8 and UTF-16 are now the universal encoding declarations. Helping a few Japanese Manga people get vertical Kanji rendering in their comics is not really enabling global language support.

The "broader web platform" evolves at the speed of light compared to the ePub3 specification which is locked in pre-2010 CSS and 2007 reader features suitable for eInk devices. EPub3 only partly adapts to the modern tablet era. Browsers and their rendering engines drive it. IPad/iOS, Android and FirefoxOS are all children of the "broader web platform" which have emerged since 2007.

Ebooks being sold today in the United States have been...

Ebooks being sold today in the United States have been straight-jacketed to straight text thanks to the limitations of e-ink devices that have been prevalent in the last five years (and are only now starting to fade away as digital readers increasingly use tablets and smartphones). But it’s not clear that even on tablets that novels and narrative nonfiction, which form the bulk of the sales for most trade publishers, will benefit from video or interactivity.

So that key feature of HTML5 is definitely not driving the AAP and other stakeholders to push EPUB3 adoption. Nor is it about global language support — in Japan, where EPUB3 is already widely used, vertical writing and related features have been critical but for English-language publishing these features are not necessary.

The IDPF seems to be only aware of two languages apparently. He doesn't know that of the six billion people on earth only 300 Million speak Engerish, Engerlish or whatever you coll it; and 125 million speak Japanese. It is expected that a "so called" international specification should at least be interested in more languages than English, Japanese and Korean.

Japan has enough money and technical resources to look after itself and contribute back to international standards. Vertical writing is NOT critical except to the Japanese and this statement is isolationist, not significant in the importance of ePub 3.

Spanish is the interesting one. 400 Million+, the second most spoken and distributed language in the world. Ahead of English. 50% of AZARDI downloads are to Spanish speaking users.

Instead, it’s the other two features of EPUB3 that are driving...

Instead, it’s the other two features of EPUB3 that are driving U.S. adoption. First, styling and layout enhancements. EPUB2 supported only a very minimal subset of CSS circa a dozen years ago and even for, say, a reflowable romance novel, the lack of reliable styling and embedded font support has been a challenge. Secondly, accessibility. Accessibility mandates apply of course to educational content, but also to other kinds of books used in government and educational settings; EPUB3’s baseline of accessibility support will eliminate the need to produce a second digital version using a specialized format like DAISY DTBook. Making content accessible may increase sales and of course is the right thing to do, but in many cases it is simply a cost of doing business that EPUB3 will reduce (and in any case work on DAISY has ceased and accessibility mandates are expected to shift to EPUB3).

Accessibility is not only important because the government says it is important. It is important because it reflect our evolved humanity. Or not.

Making content accessible will never increase sales. That is at best a hopeful thing to say. The reason anyone should support accessiblity is straight-forward human inclusionism because we can with just a little extra effort.

It is not going to be possible to create fixed layout textbooks that are visually-challenged inclusionist without a lot of additional production effort. That is a core fact. Can it always be done for all content? No it can't.

Serious and high-quality accessibility is something that must be done to the extent possible because in 2013 we have gone beyond pitying minorities and have the will and resources to treat them not as a special part of the community, but just people.

Any blind person out there "reading" these statements would just shrug their shoulders and say "same old same old".

The overall benefit really more...

The overall benefit really more about streamlining the workflow and supply chain so that a publisher can produce and reliably deliver one well-styled and accessible title as a single EPUB file to all distribution channels. We are mid-stream in the EPUB3 migration — with iBooks, Kobo, Google Play Books, VitalSource Bookshelf, and Sony having significant EPUB 3 support — and other distribution channels, including Amazon via KindleGen, supporting some EPUB3 features.

One ePub file to all? It will never happen in the U.S. but probably will in other countries around the world.

At least the one statement that has a ring of truth is "supporting some ePub3 features". However if you support the left features, and I support the right features, and they support the middle features; that is the same as either no support or dumb-down to the common denominator support. Oh yeah! That is an ePub2 replay where everything has to be dumbed down to ADE, or import to Amazon.

This is where the AAP initiative could get that dumbing down under control, and even possibly with a commitment from e-retailers and reading system developers. However please do not hold your breath!

But with many retailers and reading app developers still stuck...

But with many retailers and reading app developers still stuck on EPUB2, in the short term life has gotten worse for publishers, not better. So, making sure that over the next six months we get across the river to a place where EPUB3 is universally supported will make life much easier for publishers from a production distribution and quality assurance perspective, while in the process delivering the benefits of enhanced layout and accessibility.

No reading app developer is stuck on ePub2 except Adobe.

Get across the river! GET ACROSS THE RIVER! In the next six months! After two years some have found the river, but don't yet know how wide it is. Sadly it will not happen for North American publishers, because Apple has already proprietized ePub3 into a minimal spec that fits their business interests. The same way Adobe did with ePub2.

But that’s just about optimizing what we are already doing...

But that’s just about optimizing what we are already doing successfully: selling novels and other text-centric ebooks. To expand the market and readership, we have to enable content that is being sold today in print form that isn’t selling well in ebook form via the older and more limited EPUB2 format. This includes e-textbooks, comics/manga, how-to books, children’s books, and magazines. Much of the need here is pretty basic: the fixed-layout part of the styling and layout enhancements.

Fixed-layout is the part of the ePub3 specification that makes real sense. EPub3 has little value for linear reading at all. Not even typography is an issue really. While the cognoscenti may whine about e-book widows and orphans (without understanding how reading disruptive would look like on a 4 inch device) ePub2 has delivered the goods for those genres.

EPub3 fixed layout only has one spine-property missing in our understanding : rendition: layout-scrolling which is an essential required for text books.

What no-one in the IDPF is talking or will talk is the fixed-layout spine properties. The only reading system that implements these is AZARDI (Download 7MB the demo/test book FLO Grows Up and read it in AZARDI to understand a complete implementation of the IDPF Fixed Layout specification) . It would appear to be unlikely that the spine-properties will be supported by any other reading system any time soon or at all. Everyone will mimic the Apple proprietary implementation of ePub3. This is a shame because this is the one feature that will make textbooks possible in ePub 3.

For e-textbooks it’s going to be de rigeur to have integrated...

For e-textbooks it’s going to be de rigeur to have integrated assessments, video, rotating 3D models, graphs of equations that are “live,” and other features that will require other parts of HTML5. Manga and comics are evolving towards being “motion books.” While the jury’s out on how much interactivity will be needed in what segments, I think within the next five years an ebook form of a history title will be expected to have slide shows and video as a matter of course.

That is a 2012 statement of what the proprietary HTML5 packagers are doing now (iPublish, Inkling, etc). I certainly hope there will be a lot more than this.

How education content and "Manga" can be wrapped into the same paragraph is a bit strange? I am serious about this. These are not the same issues with similar dimensions. The future of 2 billion children bundled in with "Manga".

I am thrilled to discover that Manga and comics are evolving to become "motion books". And I hope history books have a lot more than boring slide-shows and video. Maybe a Manga motion history novel is just what we are all waiting for!

Stepping back even further, what EPUB is really...

Stepping back even further, what EPUB is really about is next-generation portable documents based on the Open Web Platform (aka HTML5).

I personally think what it is really about is a little bigger than that. Let's throw in HTML5 again. A magic bullet certainly never hurt Mary Poppins.

The publishing industry is moving inexorably to the Web...

The publishing industry is moving inexorably to the Web platform as its core content delivery architecture: there is really no other viable choice. EPUB2 was a limited fork of the Web Platform circa 2001 and doesn’t get us there.

In 2007 it was a little newer than that. It was more of an upgraded OEB than a fork of the Web with a focus on eInk displays as the future of reading. However ePub2 did a good job getting us seriously into digital reading systems even if it was the non-ePub hammer-blows of Amazon that really made it happen in the U.S.

PDF which is circa 1993 definitely doesn’t get us there....

PDF which is circa 1993 definitely doesn’t get us there. EPUB3 re-targets EPUB to be based on the current Web Platform — not a fork but really built on the overall platform. And, EPUB will stay current (we are now prepping EPUB 3.0.1), and get better and better aligned over time, while helping to push the broader platform ahead with regards to publisher requirements.

Excuse me! PDF is what we use to produce print books, and it has evolved and become a highly useful international standard. Sure it is not a really suitable ebook format, but tell the hundreds of education publishers I talk to who are looking for a STRATEGY to move their print content to digital.

EPub3, more than any other specification seems to be out of step with it's potential adopters. Publishers are not really a consideration.

Once this transition is complete, publishers will have...

Once this transition is complete, publishers will have a lot more options for distribution including of course directly via their own websites and, where appropriate, as native apps.

What is meant of course is that bits of ePub 3 could be used for distribution via your own website if you drop the OPF, manifest and crazy unrequired properties and fallback nonsense, spine, concrete paper-oriented TOC, page navigation and other navigation options, indexes that are un-ordered lists (sic), proposed dictionary XML grammars that are XML-101 child exercises, a CFI specification that is meaningless.

Sure then we can spend a zillion dollars processing brainless ePub 3 stuff to a App manifest or website. Or we could just start with E0 and spend 1% of the production cost of creating, checking and validating an ePubX.

Of course you don’t need EPUB to develop a website...

Of course you don’t need EPUB to develop a website or build a native app — EPUB simply provides a consistent framework for reliably structuring Web content so that it can be delivered in all of these ways depending on the circumstances.

An EPub2 or 3 package would be one of the worst possible foundation constructions to build an website or native app. To actually get the navigation, spine and other information from the XML OPF is a lot of un-necessary work. Even the highly criticized WebApp manifest file does a better job.

That is why the E0 format is so important right now.

It’s a very painful thing to leap forward a dozen years...

It’s a very painful thing to leap forward a dozen years in one revision, and there’s definitely been some significant pain points in the migration to EPUB3 that’s been underway for well over a year now (and is taking longer and proving more challenging than many of us had anticipated).

Leaping forward a dozen years in one revision is a bit of an imagination stretch. The ePub3 specification is a "dozen years behind" problem driven primarily by the concept of backward compatibility with ePub2. This constrained the creation of something new and good.

It didn't have to. It is relatively easy for a reading system to handle a number of packages. It is 2013. It is not "do or die". We are in the age of let's do it all. There doesn't have to be a "migration" to ePub3. It just has to be an option.

In a conversation with a strong ePub3 supporter I was asked "what is the alternative to CFI". My response was there is none. Just drop it. It is digital content specification noise like JPEG compression artifacts.

The problem with the ePub3 specification is it is written like a "My Way" song. Unfortunately in digital publisher in 2013 it is not possible to have too few regrets to mention!

Kanter’s Law is that “Everything looks like a failure...

Kanter’s Law is that “Everything looks like a failure in the middle. Everyone loves inspiring beginnings and happy endings, it’s just the middles that involve hard work.” And right now we are surely in the painful middle with the migration to EPUB3 (as well as with the bigger migration from e-ink to tablets and smartphones and the even bigger overall migration from a print-only publishing industry to a world where digital forms of all types of content are expected).

Of course there are dozens of "XYZ Laws" and corollaries that could be applied here, we could also be in the middle instead of almost at the end after two years: Murphy's Law is the obvious first candidate.Hofstadter's Law looks like it fits right in with the overall scenario, and Hindsight bias could also be applied.

Cute but ePub3 is NOT in the middle. It is 22 months old. Two years coming right up.

The requisite hard work is well underway, and thanks to...

The requisite hard work is well underway, and thanks to the momentum of the new AAP initiative, theReadium Foundation launched earlier this year, and other efforts by the publishing community around the world, I’m confident that by this time next year we will look back and all be very glad we’ve gotten across the river and fully adopted EPUB3 and integrated digital publishing with the modern Web Platform.

The new AAP initiative is looking at implementing the core set of baseline features that will result in the wider acceptance of ePub3. This will be very good if it happens. I am in full support of the Radium Foundation and wish it the best of luck. A hundred little companies will probably dive on it to look good. It is a slightly desperate approach to a problem that is no ePub3, but the relentless march of technology right past ePub3.

If the Radium initiative does not handle fixed-layout spine-properties completely and as a priority (and it can't because of the way it interpretes and packages book sections), it will be a failure. THIS IS THE REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EPUB2, EPUB3 AND PROPRIETARY APPLICATIONS (he said shouting). Unfortunately this river has no Siddhartha-like riverman waiting to transfer infinite wisdom. It is just a turbulent mess.

_{And then we can get on with the harder and more interesting work of truly reinventing books and other publications — and publishing as a business — for the digital world. After all, EPUB3 and HTML5 are just the plumbing. In digital just as in print — maybe even more so — content is still king.}

Unfortunately I don't think reinventing the book is waiting for ePub3; the publishing business has demonstrated that in 2013 it has moved on without ePub3 for the last two years.

EPub 3 and HTML5 mysteriously connected as if they were one and the same... again. The production format is not just the plumbing. It would be more correct to call HTML5 the foundation and structural framework of digital content and ePub3 a commercial container to package that structure for delivery to specific devices that understand the package. It's not poetic. But it is more accurate.

Content is King? I get the point of the statement and have used it in the past myself. But in 2013 content is a commodity for my channel which wants to be king.

It may be a philosophical point but content has never has been king. With print, audio, video, animation or digital content is the passenger. Accessiblity, readability and navigation are what matters - no regal labels. Content is the servant of these.

Summary

Don't read this summary if you are one of those tweety linkin types who don't like product and solution messages in commentary blogs. The reason we provide this commentary is because we have the experience and software solutions to allow publishers to directly address their content management issues. We have ePub3 production tools, distribution solutions and reading systems. Experience matters. Opinion doesn't. We are practitioners.

Publishers! Infogrid Pacific have created product, distribution reading systems and delivery solutions for ePub 3. We know what we are talking here.

There is a definite need to have your content ready for a dynamic digital content future. Just understand one thing: EPub 3 is just another format. Don't get sucked into the hyp of ePub 3 evangelists. It will pass faster than a fast thing.

The most important strategy any publisher, small or large can put into place in 2013 is to produce and manage your content in a future-proof manner so you can produce OEB, ePub2, ePub3, Kindle any garbage, exquisite PDF, SCORM packages, WebApps Static sites, support for legacy XML system: whatever you need. Even ePubX.

That is not addressed by some arbitrary CMS with arbitrary HTML or XML tagging.

We do not speak against the IDPF but just put everything through our production/reading system filter to sort out the chaff from the wheat.

We just want to ensure the correct information is available from real-world practitioners, who understand and can separate the clay from the gold. It's that simple.

July 2013 Was EPub3 Month

July was ePub3 Month

The AAP Press Release

The IDPF Article on DBW

WebRTC and WebM

Murphy's Law

Hindsight Bias

Hofstadter's Law:

Summary