eBook Formats

Infogrid Pacific produce the following eBook formats from our standard "Formats on Demand" tools. This list covers the standard publisher gamut for aggregation. 

Unfortunately eBook Reader devices are the "three steps forward, two steps backward" environment. While they work well enough for simple content such as novels, their lower powered processors and smaller memory mean they cannot  handle display complex content that is comprehensively styled.

ePUB

ePUB is the new eBook standard from the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum). It is an exciting format in that it supports almost all of the W3C CSS standards, and all languages. However not all reader devices can make use of this much flexibility. Of course portable readers have limited abilities and this means matching the output ePUB format to the abilities of the Reader.

Sony BBeB

This proprietary Reader from Sony uses ePUB as the input. It is good for standard trade and retail books of the reading kind, but is not particularly designed for, or good for academic and other content with complex details and layouts. 

Mobipocket /  Kindle

Mobipocket is the proprietary eBook format used by Amazon. It is a relatively old product but a competent Reader. It handles images moderately well. It has recently been updated by Amazon and is now the format for the new Amazon eBook Kindle Reader.

MS Reader

Microsoft Reader works both on the desktop and portable devices. It is most suitable for continuous text and the fixed screen size limits its use for complex content without a lot of "user intervention". 

Palm Reader

The Palm eBook format uses the PDB format, and is also a relatively simple reader. It is restricted on the size of images it can use, and layout and formatting options are similarly restricted. 

IGP:Reader/Writer

Reader/Writer (RW) is our own online authoring and viewing application. Content is all encoded into XHTML 1.1 Strict, so it conforms to the IDPF ePUB format as well. It is capable of displaying the most complex online content.

IGP:ACOM Content Objects

When you need your digitized content automatically or manually turned into reusable content objects Infogrid Pacific are the people to do it. ACOM content objects work seamlessly into IGP:Writer with IGP:FLIP facilities to produce new works from old. 

Archive METS Packages

This is a package rather than a format, but is required when using IGP:Repository 2 as a digital preservation archive. All files are included into a standard directory structure and a Metadata for Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) XML package file is created. In Open Archive Information System (OAIS) terms, this is called a Submission Information Package (SIP).