AZARDI 26 Goes International

17 December 2013

AZARDI, I18N, Internationalization, ePub3, Announcement

To celebrate the second anniversary of the AZARDI ePub3 reader we have gone International starting with 11 languages  and added epub:type pop-up notes, footnotes and glossary terms.

To celebrate the second anniversary of the AZARDI ePub3 reader we have gone International and added epub:type pop-up notes, footnotes and glossary terms.

The ePub3 specification was released two years ago in October 2011 and AZARDI 11, the world's first ePub3 reader was launched just two months later in December 2011.

The AZARDI 26 release supports full interface Internationalization (I18N). We are starting with these languages (in EN alphabetic order):

  1. Chinese (simplified)
  2. Czech
  3. English
  4. German
  5. Hindi
  6. Italian
  7. Malay
  8. Nepali
  9. Polish
  10. Russian
  11. Spanish

That covers about 40% of people on the planet at this time. We will continue adding languages in subsequent releases.

I18N = Internationalization

For those who don't know; the term I18N is used as an abbreviation for the full 20 letter spelling of internationalization.

Another term used is L10N for Localization.

Article on I18N and L10N at Wikipedia

AZARDI I18N Project

AZARDI now has language support for these territories and countries. Why don't you add yours?

You can see more information on the AZARDI Internationalization page (new window). If you would like to contribute a language translation, the how-to information and translation files can be downloaded from there.

There are only 180 terms to be translated because AZARDI was designed with the least possible interface text to facilitate international use and easy I18N support.

We are giving full translation acknowledgement to any person or organization who would like to help with the translation for a language.

Pop-up Notes, Footnotes and Glossary Definitions

AZARDI 26 now has epub:type driven pop-up notes and footnotes and adds glossary terms and definitions as well. Glossary popups are particularly effective for textbooks.

Apple included a nice footnote pop-up feature in iBooks some time ago. Since then we have processed a number of books for various publishers to take advantage of this feature. However everyone wants pop-up notes and footnotes. IGP:Digital Publisher has a format generation processing option to convert our standard note tagging pattern into footnotes so they can also be made to pop-up. 

One complaint that publishers make is the fact the Apple pop-up approach removes the content from the book flow. This is not such an issue for footnotes but is significant for notes. IGP:Digital Publisher also has a packaging option to retain the footnotes and notes in the content.

We took a different approach to Apple and place the pop-ups at the bottom of the page rather than locking out the reading experience with a middle of the page pop-up.

The AZARDI notes, footnotes and glossary terms popup appears at the bottom of the page to avoid interrupting the reading flow. This can also be custom styled.

There is a highly footnote and note tagged test book available for anyone who wants to explore these features. We will get that online in a couple of days. Meanwhile you can see how AZARDI exploits the epub:type features here and here.

AZARDI for the World

We have focused and will continue to focus on developing world languages. A significant target market for AZARDI is textbooks, learning content and training material for the developing world. This is why AZARDI has such a comprehensive implementation of the fixed-layout specification and added scrolling mode (which every publisher using AZARDI uses as the default in their textbooks).

There are textbooks in progress in Chinese, Hindi, Marathi, Filipino, Spanish and even English!

Currently there are hundreds of textbooks being produced for both open and controlled delivery using AZARDI. It has to be AZARDI because there is no other option available that isn't tied to some third-party commerce system.

With AZARDI publishers can deliver the books everywhere, to every platform and device.

Producing Textbooks for AZARDI

AZARDI is available on the desktop for Linux, Mac and Windows. It is also available as a cloud reader for modern browsers and as apps for Android and iOS.

A Year 2 textbook showing the AZARDI fixed-layout Scrolling mode with device adaptive width. No six-year-old wants to fight with fixed pages, widget panels or arbitrary pagination breaks in an interactive learning environment.

All of these platforms have their own HTML5/CSS3 and Javascript support quirks, so testing books for delivery on multiple platforms is tedious and difficult, especially when introducing some exciting new interactive learning component.

To ease the platform testing problem IGP:Digital Publisher now has a "Send to ACF" (AZARDI Content Fulfilment) button. This is used during production to make it easy to send frequent updates to all supported platforms.

One click and a book is updated on all AZARDI reading system platforms and can be instantly Quality Control tested. That means no wasted time in production generating and sharing ePub3 files and uploading them to all those platforms and devices.

And In Conclusion

We are now ready to put I18N support into AZARDI for any and every language. AZARDI is updated every six weeks in syncronization with Firefox updates. If you deliver a translation we will have it in the next release.

There is more information on the AZARDI Internationalization page (new window) on the AZARDI site.

Please provide an interface translation in your language if you can. It is easy. Thank you.

Posted by Richard Pipe

 

 

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