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EPUB is, without any doubts, my preferred ebook format. I knew it was an open format standard, but I have never taken a look at what's under its hood. After I t

by r3bl 11y ago

EPUB is, without any doubts, my preferred ebook format. I knew it was an open format standard, but I have never taken a look at what's under its hood. After I took a look at this presentation, I'm going to dedicate this evening to exploring the format, its advantages and its disadvantages. Unfortunately, I am not able to find any reasonably good looking Linux client for it, so I usually use ebook-convert command that comes with Calibre to convert my books from PDF to EPUB and vice versa.

lostmsu 11y ago
Risking get fire for self-adv, but some time ago I made a very simple static HTML-based ePub reader (does not even support contents or pictures), but with some sync over Google Drive. I used it mostly because I have a wide diversity of platforms in my possession, and want to sync between them. Here's the link: https://h5reader.azurewebsites.net/# https://h5reader.azurewebsites.net/#
sdfin 11y ago
During your exploration, did you find something about why amazon's kindle doesn't work with EPUB?
- sondr3 11y ago
  Because money. I doubt there's any really good reason besides the fact that they don't want you to just be able to copy books directly from your Kindle and read it elsewhere.
- steve19 11y ago
  Practically speaking it matters not. Calibre can do pretty lossless (practically speaking) conversions between formats. The limitations/features of ebook readers have a much greater influence on how a book looks than the format. I love the status-quo where Amazon pretends that their DRM is not hopelessly compromised and I get to strip the DRM from the vast quantities of ebooks I purchase there. I would much rather they keep turning this blind eye than adopt epub behind a more effective DRM scheme. That would be a huge loss to me. When my e-ink kindle can support high-resolution color images, smooth and fast LCD-like scrolling etc. then I might care about epub features, but while I don't want or expect more from my kindle than a paperback, I am quite happy.
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  I use a Kindle and it makes little to no difference at all. If you need you can edit a book in epub format and calibre converts it to mobi seamlessly in little to no time.
dredmorbius 11y ago
There's FBReader, which is ... OK. My gripes are: The controls are nonstandard. I haven't used it in a bit, but advancing the text with spacebar would be just peachy. Default formatting. It's not bad, but the most annoying, especially on today's widescreen 16:9 format screens, is that while margins can be set, text width cannot. I find 35 - 45 em is about perfect for text, yet cannot set this for ePub. Sigh. I actually usually use Calibre or Pandoc to create HTML, then write my own CSS and serve those locally.
- skillachie 11y ago
  PS: Co-founder at BookFusion BookFusion can be used instead of Calibre to not only manage and organize your eBook library but also to: 1. Read ePub, PDF and other major format ebooks 2. Send your eBooks to your kindle device if you have one 3. Easily share your eBooks with friends and family the way you would a physical book. Web: https://bookfusion.com/ https://bookfusion.com/ Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bookfusion.android.reader&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bookfusion... IOS: Coming in 2016 I would be happy if you would take the platform for a spin and send me your feedback at dc@bookfusion.com We have lots of updates for 2016
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Thanks, I'll definitely be taking a look. My frustrations with poor publication curation is ... a major pain point. I would love: 1. A tool that would present HTML content in some standardised, simple, format. E.g., Readability, Instapaper, Pocket, Firefox Reader Mode. 2. Include metadata. Perhaps a somewhat IMDB-type facility for sources which don't include good metadata. ISBN and DOI work well for traditional printed book and scientific article works, but other online content is ... less well structured. 3. Tags. I've detailed a possibly workable general tagging ontology at Ello (https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/FTpX7LWNFjtOpYGu5xRkHg https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/FTpX7LWNFjtOpYGu5xRkHg). That plus user-assignable tags, and the ability to subset/select by multiple tags would be ... nice. 4. Bibliography generation. I've looked at, kinda, Calibre, Zotero, Mendelay (rejected on account of Elsevier ownership), and a few other tools. Sharing between desktop (Linux) and Android other than via Kindle would be tres, tres cool.
cJ0th 11y ago
Okular can open ebooks. Also, there is an extension for firefox which allows you to view and manage epub files in your browser http://www.epubread.com/ http://www.epubread.com/
OvidNaso 11y ago
Recent versions of mupdf support epub. I currently use zathura which is great for pdf's and it does an decent job with epub's.
Yetanfou 11y ago
If you happen to use - or plan on using - Owncloud, you might want to have a look at a few apps I made just for that purpose: Reader [1] is an epub reader based on the Futurepress epub.js renderer. It looks close to 'native', especially when used full-screen. OPDS catalog [2] is, as the name implies, an OPDS catalog which you can use to access publications (not limited to epub) hosted on an Owncloud instance. It allows you to access your library from any OPDS compliant client, examples of which are FBReader (Android), CoolReader (Android), Moon+ Reader (Android), Aldiko (Android), KyBook (iOS) and Marvin (iOS). [1] https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/Reader+%28ebook+reader%29?content=167127 https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/Reader+%28ebook+r... [2] https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/OPDS+catalog?content=168132 https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/OPDS+catalog?cont...

by r3bl 11y ago

lostmsu 11y ago

Risking get fire for self-adv, but some time ago I made a very simple static HTML-based ePub reader (does not even support contents or pictures), but with some sync over Google Drive. I used it mostly because I have a wide diversity of platforms in my possession, and want to sync between them. Here's the link: https://h5reader.azurewebsites.net/# https://h5reader.azurewebsites.net/#

sdfin 11y ago

During your exploration, did you find something about why amazon's kindle doesn't work with EPUB?

sondr3 11y ago
Because money. I doubt there's any really good reason besides the fact that they don't want you to just be able to copy books directly from your Kindle and read it elsewhere.
steve19 11y ago
Practically speaking it matters not. Calibre can do pretty lossless (practically speaking) conversions between formats. The limitations/features of ebook readers have a much greater influence on how a book looks than the format. I love the status-quo where Amazon pretends that their DRM is not hopelessly compromised and I get to strip the DRM from the vast quantities of ebooks I purchase there. I would much rather they keep turning this blind eye than adopt epub behind a more effective DRM scheme. That would be a huge loss to me. When my e-ink kindle can support high-resolution color images, smooth and fast LCD-like scrolling etc. then I might care about epub features, but while I don't want or expect more from my kindle than a paperback, I am quite happy.
rpgmaker 11y ago
I use a Kindle and it makes little to no difference at all. If you need you can edit a book in epub format and calibre converts it to mobi seamlessly in little to no time.

dredmorbius 11y ago

There's FBReader, which is ... OK. My gripes are: The controls are nonstandard. I haven't used it in a bit, but advancing the text with spacebar would be just peachy. Default formatting. It's not bad, but the most annoying, especially on today's widescreen 16:9 format screens, is that while margins can be set, text width cannot. I find 35 - 45 em is about perfect for text, yet cannot set this for ePub. Sigh. I actually usually use Calibre or Pandoc to create HTML, then write my own CSS and serve those locally.

skillachie 11y ago
PS: Co-founder at BookFusion BookFusion can be used instead of Calibre to not only manage and organize your eBook library but also to: 1. Read ePub, PDF and other major format ebooks 2. Send your eBooks to your kindle device if you have one 3. Easily share your eBooks with friends and family the way you would a physical book. Web: https://bookfusion.com/ https://bookfusion.com/ Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bookfusion.android.reader&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bookfusion... IOS: Coming in 2016 I would be happy if you would take the platform for a spin and send me your feedback at dc@bookfusion.com We have lots of updates for 2016
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Thanks, I'll definitely be taking a look. My frustrations with poor publication curation is ... a major pain point. I would love: 1. A tool that would present HTML content in some standardised, simple, format. E.g., Readability, Instapaper, Pocket, Firefox Reader Mode. 2. Include metadata. Perhaps a somewhat IMDB-type facility for sources which don't include good metadata. ISBN and DOI work well for traditional printed book and scientific article works, but other online content is ... less well structured. 3. Tags. I've detailed a possibly workable general tagging ontology at Ello (https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/FTpX7LWNFjtOpYGu5xRkHg https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/FTpX7LWNFjtOpYGu5xRkHg). That plus user-assignable tags, and the ability to subset/select by multiple tags would be ... nice. 4. Bibliography generation. I've looked at, kinda, Calibre, Zotero, Mendelay (rejected on account of Elsevier ownership), and a few other tools. Sharing between desktop (Linux) and Android other than via Kindle would be tres, tres cool.

cJ0th 11y ago

Okular can open ebooks. Also, there is an extension for firefox which allows you to view and manage epub files in your browser http://www.epubread.com/ http://www.epubread.com/

OvidNaso 11y ago

Recent versions of mupdf support epub. I currently use zathura which is great for pdf's and it does an decent job with epub's.

Yetanfou 11y ago

If you happen to use - or plan on using - Owncloud, you might want to have a look at a few apps I made just for that purpose: Reader [1] is an epub reader based on the Futurepress epub.js renderer. It looks close to 'native', especially when used full-screen. OPDS catalog [2] is, as the name implies, an OPDS catalog which you can use to access publications (not limited to epub) hosted on an Owncloud instance. It allows you to access your library from any OPDS compliant client, examples of which are FBReader (Android), CoolReader (Android), Moon+ Reader (Android), Aldiko (Android), KyBook (iOS) and Marvin (iOS). [1] https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/Reader+%28ebook+reader%29?content=167127 https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/Reader+%28ebook+r... [2] https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/OPDS+catalog?content=168132 https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/OPDS+catalog?cont...