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EPUB is already XHTML and supporting files zipped (iirc the packaging) into one file. It's very widely supported. I wonder why they don't start with it or even
by wolverine876 3y ago
EPUB is already XHTML and supporting files zipped (iirc the packaging) into one file. It's very widely supported. I wonder why they don't start with it or even mention it?
EPUB lacks annotation, which is not at all trivial; I don't know how well it handles precise layout and pagination, and long-term preservation (will I be able to read it in 20 or 50 or 100 years?). But, again, I wonder why they don't improve on EPUB or at least use it as a starting point, and not seem to reinvent the wheel? (Sometimes, there's a good reason.)
- amadeuspagel 3y agoEpub isn't that great. The very idea of having a bunch of files zipped is something that makes sense only for a device where the entire thing wouldn't fit into RAM otherwise, and that otherwise just adds senseless complexity.
- wolverine876 3y ago> The very idea of having a bunch of files zipped is something that makes sense only for a device where the entire thing wouldn't fit into RAM otherwise, and that otherwise just adds senseless complexity. Microsoft uses that, of course. Why is it senseless? It seems much easier to work with. The portability of one file, instead of directories, is great.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoThat's not what I mean. It should just be one file, one HTML file, with styles in a style tag, images as base64.
- jasonm23 3y agoWhy?
- lxgr 3y agoePub can do most of these things I believe; there are just not many “PDF-like” viewers for it, given that most existing ePubs are books. Features I need are being able to quickly open multiple documents side-by-side; a feature I actively don’t want is maintaining some sort of “library” for me.
- mariusor 3y agoWhich things? Fixed layouts: no. Annotations that are saved with the epub: no.
- zilti 3y agoOkular can do all that.
- niutech 3y agoThere is Bene ePub reader running in web browser: https://github.com/nota-lang/bene/ https://github.com/nota-lang/bene/ - demo: https://nota-lang.github.io/bene/ https://nota-lang.github.io/bene/
- wolverine876 3y ago> Features I need are being able to quickly open multiple documents side-by-side I don't quite understand: Highlight the desired files in the file manager and press enter? Tile the windows that open? I am missing something (obviously) ...
- mrec 3y agoSumatraPDF opens ePub, supports multiple document tabs and doesn't maintain any kind of library.
- lxgr 3y agoI’ll check that out, thank you!
- wolverine876 3y agoI think that describes most PDF readers. I suspect the GP means something more specific.
- pyeri 3y agoOff topic: How does the EPUB compare with the ZIM format used by the [Kiwix Project](https://kiwix.org https://kiwix.org) to create offline Wikipedia dumps? Can EPUB handle extremely large content size like hundreds of MBs or even few GBs?
- mjevans 3y agoProbably depends why the content is huge. If it's just a lot of images, maybe, depends on the reader. I'm used to seeing epub files equivalent to self-contained webpages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB At a quick glance I don't see support for media formats like videos and such - in which case the obvious on-disk format is to hope the filesystem can compress text files and to layout a relative links only data-hive.
- pasc1878 3y agoepub is just a collection html pages and included images etc compressed by zip. So the limitation is the limits of zip.