Wednesday, July 20, 2005
How do you read in a digital library?
Over at Teleread, I've posted an article about cross-platform reading.
For a digital library, the question must be What format should we make an e-book available in in order that it may be accessed by everyone who wants to read it?
I don't regard an ASCII text file to be an e-book format, nor is HTML read in today's browsers an e-book, but there are no other universal formats that can be read on a Windows, Macintosh and Linux computer, as well as the handheld devices, Palm, PocketPC and WinCE. (I not so reluctantly omit smartphones, but that is strictly my indefensible bias.)
A reader for the desktop machines which formats ASCII text books from Project Gutenberg with italic and bold and makes it presentable is under preparation. That may be one way out of the labyrinth.
And, of course, independently of our own choices, most commercial books are available in a restricted number of formats, with ASCII and HTML never an option.
Commercial publishers can ignore certain platforms or e-book formats if, for instance, they don't like (that is, trust) the DRM. Should digital librarians similarly advise patrons that some platforms are unacceptable?
I'm thinking particularly of Linux, for which currently only a single e-book reader is available — Plucker. You won't see any commercial titles in Plucker format, since it lacks DRM and so it seems likely to fall towards the bottom of supported formats. Do we totally write off Linux users as patrons of our digital libraries?
(Note: two new readers, OpenBerg and GIVE, are currently under preparation and will have Linux versions. Non-DRM, of course, returning us to square one.)
Well, I haven't mentioned PDF, of course, which you can read on Linux machines. PDF is a pretty much unsatisfactory for e-books, that is unless you want to do all your reading on a desktop computer. If you choose to support Palm, PocketPC, Internet Tablet and WinCE devices, you probably need PDF versions for each screen width offered -- that is to say, you can't have one file for everyone even though it has a .pdf extension.
Not a pretty picture. As David Rothman is fond of saying, it's a Tower of eBabel. He and Jon Noring propose the OpenReader format. Currently there are no readers that accept the OpenReader format and no e-books in it either. It may be too hypothetical for now.
So, what format do we offer our books in?
posted by Roger @ 7/20/2005 07:39:00 PM
4 Comments:
I used to travel for work...a LOT! I started reading ebooks on my (functional but now ancient) Palm IIIxe and then moved over to an HP1910 iPAQ because of the absolutely gorgeous screen! These days I use an HP2215 iPAQ.
Through all of these changes I also tried a number of different readers and formats and I seem to keep coming back to Microsoft's Reader software. There are things I dislike but I really like that it doesn't make me jump through hoops just to read a book.
I do confess though that right now I shy violently away from "digitally signed" books (DRM) simply because there hasn't been any sort of standard estabilished. I have "dead tree" editions in my house that are 30+ years old and I re-read on a semi-regular basis and I really don't want to spend a lot of money on formats that might vanish tomorrow.
It's clear that many people will want to read e-books they check out from the library on their PocketPC or Palm device. Others, like me, will prefer open devices with larger screens, like the Nokia 770.
To what extent does the library master multiple formats to meet your needs/wants and mine and everyone else's? And to what extent does it ignore them and, echoing Henry Ford's comment that you could get his car in any color you wanted, as long as it was black, and say, 'you can have the book in any format you want, as long as it's what we have'?
And your comment about not wanting to spend money on formats that might vanish tomorrow is true of libraries too, only a hundred times more so, since they purchase so many more books.
--Roger
While the current crop of digital library software doesn't generally provide out-of-the-box support for generation of multiple ebook formats, I've always assumed that a real digital library would allow a user to locate a book and then specify in which format they wanted it to be downloaded — that the user wouldn't have to be concerned with format prior to selection. This is like going into a bookstore, selecting a book, and being told that you can have it in hardback, softback, or on cassette. Why should this change when we move to electronic distribution?
Of course, with all manner of proprietary formats and ugly DRM schemes, this world may not come to pass soon, but one might hope that the least of our worries will be file format at some point in the sane future.
Admittedly, we may not be alive when that sane future arrives...
Actually, we've (National Library of Australia) created some pretty cool delivery systems that does quite a number of these things, albeit currently for pictures and audio, but eBooks is next up as the infrastructure is there. I'll snoop around the corners for some better info.
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