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This is why I'm super irritated Microsoft dropped EPUB support in Edge when switching to Chromium, and why it's so frustrating that EPUB support isn't common by

This is why I'm super irritated Microsoft dropped EPUB support in Edge when switching to Chromium, and why it's so frustrating that EPUB support isn't common by default in operating systems: It's literally just HTML/CSS in an opinionated structure. EPUB should be as ubiquitously supported as PDF is today, no browser has an excuse for not supporting it.

jrimbault 6y ago
The epub reader in old-Edge was quite nice.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  It really was. And just the fact that it was default-installed was a main perk: I could rely on it being on, say, a work PC, where I can't install software for personal use.
- Hammershaft 6y ago
  It was the nicest one I've used on any platform. Now I read epubs on Apple books and I come away a little frustrated every time I use it (especially when I copy and paste)
  - roryokane 6y ago
    > especially when I copy and paste You can make copy and paste work normally in Apple Books with the solutions on https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/137047 https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/137047 ‘Don't want iBooks to always paste the “Excerpt From” of what I have copied’.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  The PDF reader too. Wish they repackaged it as a standalone app.
irrational 6y ago
If it is that easy, there must be a business/political reason for not supporting it. Does anyone have a clue what that might be?
- asdff 6y ago
  Probably just as simple as a lack of willingness to put an engineer on the feature. Mozilla killed of the RSS reader in firefox for similar reasons.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Sigh... Well, at least Thunderbird still has it !
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I think it was probably a combination of low usage (because a lot of people either use Kindle or a DRM-encumbered EPUB platform like Adobe Digital Editions), and the fact that Microsoft likely was more concerned with prioritizing porting over other more critical functionality like Active Directory integration into the Chrome codebase. Presumably if Google decided to add EPUB support, Edge would get it back too, but Microsoft hasn't decided that feature is valuable enough to add onto their modifications.
  - anoncow 6y ago
    Low usage is a chicken and egg thing.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      I agree, I am just speculating to why Microsoft did what it did. :) I also think it's particularly sad that Windows 10 had a perfectly good EPUB app, Reader, that Microsoft deprecated aggressively to force everyone to read eBooks in Edge... only to remove eBook support from Edge too.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
arthur2e5 6y ago
One of the possible reasons Chromium is a bad for EPUB is its lack of MathML support. But then it's not like all EPUB readers have it, and it's not like MathJax can't be used for rendering.
- naikrovek 6y ago
  epub supports MathML. are you saying Chrome doesn't support MathML?
  - detaro 6y ago
    yep. although Igalia is running some efforts to get it added again.
  - rijoja 6y ago
    Sadly yes. There are solutions such as MathJax, however this is obviously not as nice as having it built into a lower level.
ipsum2 6y ago
There's a few JS libraries that allows you to basically have the same functionality, example: https://github.com/futurepress/epubjs-reader/ https://github.com/futurepress/epubjs-reader/
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Great. Instead of us choosing the simplest solution, i.e. native support in browsers that already have the HTML/CSS engine, we continue to build layers and layers of bloated abstractions, now with Javascript™. Not the fault of the library developer - they’re just trying to help, but it’s like instead of fixing holes in the ship, we build pumps to dump the water out. Too many pumps on the ship and it gets bloated and can’t take any cargo. This is the current web in a nutshell. We need a ship captain that can guide us authoritatively.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
johnchristopher 6y ago
I don't think epub is just HTML/CSS, there's something in the way it's being processed by readers. I have tried a lot of browser extension based and standalone readers in the past and they all render things differently with different bugs. Something doesn't add up.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > I don't think epub is just HTML/CSS It's XHTML to be precise, and that doesn't change no matter what processing is done by readers, it's still (just) XHTML. The format is literally described in the submission :) > they all render things differently with different bugs Just like HTML did in the beginning.
  - johnchristopher 6y ago
    > > they all render things differently with different bugs > Just like HTML did in the beginning. ePub wasn't born yesterday. It's revision 3, first released ~2006/7. XHTML was proposed to correct and prevent the kind of problems html4 had because of how it organically grew, specifically relying on its XML root (no pun intended). Epub should definitely not suffer from bugs like HTML had in the pre-XHTML and pre-HTML5 era. I sometimes have bugs like: - whole book is black - some pages can't be loaded/read so I have to skip them - some toc and back link don't work like they should (probable bad markup) There's also some readers oddities: - completely inconsistent line-height - aligned setting not working at all etc. Anyway, there's a reason XHTML2 didn't happen and we got HTML5 instead. Either ePub has some extensions that are not trivial to implement or most readers are buggy. Or both.
    - richeyryan 6y ago
      I've worked on a ePub parser and renderer and the issues you're describing sound pretty familiar. The three main components of the ePub (aside from the actual pages) are the TOC, the spine and the manifest. The manifest basically tells you where everything is, the TOC is the table of contents which can link to various pages and the spine gives you the traversal order. Some mistakes I've seen are using the TOC to traverse the book. Using the spine to traverse the book but not handling hidden pages properly. Not handling two page spread properly. So yeah the spec is nuanced and it would be easy to make a reader that worked with a lot of books but then had weird issues on another set of books that aren't particularly different. We ended up writing our own parser because we kept finding issues with the main open source ones. I recall using this repo (https://github.com/IDPF/epub3-samples https://github.com/IDPF/epub3-samples) to test specific functionality to make sure it was in line with the spec.
emayljames 6y ago
Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/epubreader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/epubreader/ Chrome addon: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/epubreader/jhhclmfgfllimlhabjkgkeebkbiadflb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/epubreader/jhhclmf...
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Addons/extensions are a major security risk. For example, Firefox addon: Download files and read and modify the browser’s download history, Access browser activity during navigation, Access your data for all web sites Chrome Web Store obscures the full permission list, but the comments for that extension admits: right "read and change all your data on the websites you visit" needed It's 2021, you should view all browser addons as a threat.
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
SumatraPDF supports it.

jrimbault 6y ago

The epub reader in old-Edge was quite nice.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
It really was. And just the fact that it was default-installed was a main perk: I could rely on it being on, say, a work PC, where I can't install software for personal use.
Hammershaft 6y ago
It was the nicest one I've used on any platform. Now I read epubs on Apple books and I come away a little frustrated every time I use it (especially when I copy and paste)
- roryokane 6y ago
  > especially when I copy and paste You can make copy and paste work normally in Apple Books with the solutions on https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/137047 https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/137047 ‘Don't want iBooks to always paste the “Excerpt From” of what I have copied’.
908B64B197 6y ago
The PDF reader too. Wish they repackaged it as a standalone app.

irrational 6y ago

If it is that easy, there must be a business/political reason for not supporting it. Does anyone have a clue what that might be?

asdff 6y ago
Probably just as simple as a lack of willingness to put an engineer on the feature. Mozilla killed of the RSS reader in firefox for similar reasons.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Sigh... Well, at least Thunderbird still has it !
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I think it was probably a combination of low usage (because a lot of people either use Kindle or a DRM-encumbered EPUB platform like Adobe Digital Editions), and the fact that Microsoft likely was more concerned with prioritizing porting over other more critical functionality like Active Directory integration into the Chrome codebase. Presumably if Google decided to add EPUB support, Edge would get it back too, but Microsoft hasn't decided that feature is valuable enough to add onto their modifications.
- anoncow 6y ago
  Low usage is a chicken and egg thing.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I agree, I am just speculating to why Microsoft did what it did. :) I also think it's particularly sad that Windows 10 had a perfectly good EPUB app, Reader, that Microsoft deprecated aggressively to force everyone to read eBooks in Edge... only to remove eBook support from Edge too.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago

arthur2e5 6y ago

One of the possible reasons Chromium is a bad for EPUB is its lack of MathML support. But then it's not like all EPUB readers have it, and it's not like MathJax can't be used for rendering.

naikrovek 6y ago
epub supports MathML. are you saying Chrome doesn't support MathML?
- detaro 6y ago
  yep. although Igalia is running some efforts to get it added again.
- rijoja 6y ago
  Sadly yes. There are solutions such as MathJax, however this is obviously not as nice as having it built into a lower level.

ipsum2 6y ago

There's a few JS libraries that allows you to basically have the same functionality, example: https://github.com/futurepress/epubjs-reader/ https://github.com/futurepress/epubjs-reader/

systemvoltage 6y ago
Great. Instead of us choosing the simplest solution, i.e. native support in browsers that already have the HTML/CSS engine, we continue to build layers and layers of bloated abstractions, now with Javascript™. Not the fault of the library developer - they’re just trying to help, but it’s like instead of fixing holes in the ship, we build pumps to dump the water out. Too many pumps on the ship and it gets bloated and can’t take any cargo. This is the current web in a nutshell. We need a ship captain that can guide us authoritatively.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

johnchristopher 6y ago

I don't think epub is just HTML/CSS, there's something in the way it's being processed by readers. I have tried a lot of browser extension based and standalone readers in the past and they all render things differently with different bugs. Something doesn't add up.

capableweb 6y ago
> I don't think epub is just HTML/CSS It's XHTML to be precise, and that doesn't change no matter what processing is done by readers, it's still (just) XHTML. The format is literally described in the submission :) > they all render things differently with different bugs Just like HTML did in the beginning.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  > > they all render things differently with different bugs > Just like HTML did in the beginning. ePub wasn't born yesterday. It's revision 3, first released ~2006/7. XHTML was proposed to correct and prevent the kind of problems html4 had because of how it organically grew, specifically relying on its XML root (no pun intended). Epub should definitely not suffer from bugs like HTML had in the pre-XHTML and pre-HTML5 era. I sometimes have bugs like: - whole book is black - some pages can't be loaded/read so I have to skip them - some toc and back link don't work like they should (probable bad markup) There's also some readers oddities: - completely inconsistent line-height - aligned setting not working at all etc. Anyway, there's a reason XHTML2 didn't happen and we got HTML5 instead. Either ePub has some extensions that are not trivial to implement or most readers are buggy. Or both.
  - richeyryan 6y ago
    I've worked on a ePub parser and renderer and the issues you're describing sound pretty familiar. The three main components of the ePub (aside from the actual pages) are the TOC, the spine and the manifest. The manifest basically tells you where everything is, the TOC is the table of contents which can link to various pages and the spine gives you the traversal order. Some mistakes I've seen are using the TOC to traverse the book. Using the spine to traverse the book but not handling hidden pages properly. Not handling two page spread properly. So yeah the spec is nuanced and it would be easy to make a reader that worked with a lot of books but then had weird issues on another set of books that aren't particularly different. We ended up writing our own parser because we kept finding issues with the main open source ones. I recall using this repo (https://github.com/IDPF/epub3-samples https://github.com/IDPF/epub3-samples) to test specific functionality to make sure it was in line with the spec.

emayljames 6y ago

Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/epubreader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/epubreader/ Chrome addon: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/epubreader/jhhclmfgfllimlhabjkgkeebkbiadflb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/epubreader/jhhclmf...

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Addons/extensions are a major security risk. For example, Firefox addon: Download files and read and modify the browser’s download history, Access browser activity during navigation, Access your data for all web sites Chrome Web Store obscures the full permission list, but the comments for that extension admits: right "read and change all your data on the websites you visit" needed It's 2021, you should view all browser addons as a threat.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

SumatraPDF supports it.