The Kindle is Getting Support For HTML5 123
Posted
by
timothy
from the that's-right-supporting-of-you-jeff dept.
from the that's-right-supporting-of-you-jeff dept.
Nate the greatest writes "It looks like Amazon won't be adopting Epub after all. [Thursday] Amazon released some technical details on the new Kindle ebook format, which they are calling Kindle 8. There are a lot of interesting changes to the file, including new formatting and SVG images. The new tags are going to open up a whole lot of new possibilities for making Kindle ebooks."
Re:Good News for Authors (Score:5, Insightful)
I look upon the inevitable Kindle conversion with a terrible dread. I'm typing it up in Google Docs, but because I use italics for emphasis, this means I have to either manually construct the book (and manually re-put in all my italics and formatting), or use a converter which will produce sucky output which will require a lot of manual cleanup
Crikey.
I had no idea the Kindle conversion was as lame as you say.
I thought we software-folk had solved all the issues of converting basic formatted text about 20 years ago. Equations, vector graphics, embedded images...OK, they might still be cross-format hurdles.
But italics? Seriously? That's so 1980's
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly.
I have been interested from the beginning, but not offense or trolling intended, but who gives a flying $(#)($ about a new format.
As long as Amazon still has control over my Kindle and can remove my "property" without knowledge or consent I could care less about significant improvements to the file formats and features. It's interesting, but I would rather know that Amazon has fundamentally changed its policies. That *would* be welcome news.
This is like Sony introducing a new firmware with some cool features..... but we still have to overlook that we are on a locked down paranoid platform, the PS3.
There was a lot I did not appreciate about Steve Jobs, but man did he give us some freedom to truly own our music again. I wish I could download purchased books without DRM like I can music.
Sorry, but this is a PITA ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I had a Kindle for a while, and it does what it is supposed to admirably. This new book format is bound to do things even better, which is great.
But everyone else seems to be using ePub. Libraries use ePub too. Which really means that if you buy a Kindle you're stuck in the Amazon ecosystem. Well, unless you find a publisher that is willing to use unprotected PDF or MOBI files. That sometimes happens for the books you buy. But that won't happen for libraries (which need some sort of DRM).
And libraries are a serious concern for me. The ebook/digial audio book section is already confusing enough with device support.