Re: Documenting EPUB feature requests

A couple comments from me:

1) Annotation & note creating and *sharing* systems (for example shared
> highlightnings in textbooks)
>

I've seen demos of reading systems where annotations can be shared among a
defined group within a particular reading system. Are you hoping to share
annotations across different reading systems?

BK: The most widely used (but not the only one) is Hypothesis
<https://web.hypothes.is/>. It's free, open source, and based on the W3C
Open Annotations <https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/> rec, which they
were instrumental in helping develop. Because the annotations are
maintained separately from the annotated content, it enables annotations
across online, EPUB, and PDF instances of the content (last I checked,
which was a while ago).


> 2) Glossaries (via popups)
>

There is a spec, but I'm not aware of any implementations.

BK: Like the other "satellite specs" for indexes and dictionaries, this is
mainly markup and is used by many publishers in content development and
maintenance. It doesn't get into EPUBs because reading systems don't enable
it. It is implemented in some educational platforms, I believe.

3) Cross reference systems (with previews)
>

Are you talking about linking to other EPUBs? This gets really complicated.
How would you construct a URL to something that might be available from a
hundred different sources, might cost money, and might not be online?

BK: This is handled in the scholarly space via Crossref
<https://www.crossref.org/> and Crossref DOIs. While it's mostly used for
journal citations it increasingly involves books and chapters as well. It's
basically a registry with specific metadata requirements. It's considered
indispensable in the journal world, but journals don't use EPUBs. For a
cross reference to a book, it would only take you to where you could
_obtain_ the book (or the chapter), not to the content itself. For Open
Access journals, it will typically take you to the cited article. Bottom
line: this works because it is a collaboratively managed system and service
maintained by a constituency that depends on it.

BK: BUT if you are talking about cross references within a book, that's
just linking and I don't see why you couldn't do that now.

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On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 2:11 PM Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 3:44 AM Harri Heikkilä <Harri.Heikkila@lamk.fi>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> [Brainstorming, ideas]:
>>
>> 1) Annotation & note creating and *sharing* systems (for example shared
>> highlightnings in textbooks)
>>
>
> I've seen demos of reading systems where annotations can be shared among a
> defined group within a particular reading system. Are you hoping to share
> annotations across different reading systems?
>
>
>> 2) Glossaries (via popups)
>>
>
> There is a spec, but I'm not aware of any implementations.
>
> 3) Cross reference systems (with previews)
>>
>
> Are you talking about linking to other EPUBs? This gets really
> complicated. How would you construct a URL to something that might be
> available from a hundred different sources, might cost money, and might not
> be online?
>
>
>> 4) Easy support for more typographic finesses (like running headers,
>> block quotes, pull quotes etc.)
>>
>
> blockquote is a standard HTML element. We do pull quotes all the time with
> standard HTML and CSS. EPUB tried to specify a mechanism for running heads,
> but it received little interest or adoption, and so it was removed.
>
> 5) Advanced navigation (see for example how Kindle does it)
>>
>
> Could you go into more detail about this?
>
> 6) Support of social reading functions
>>
>
> What sort of functions are you thinking of?
>
>
>> 7) Creating a working group with companies offering professional
>> publishing tools to support these kind of features in creating / exporting
>> EPUB (Adobe, Quark, Affinity...)
>>
>
> We would be delighted if Adobe or Quark participated in the CG. But I
> think the best thing of all would be EPUB export from Microsoft Word.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dave
>


-- 
*Bill Kasdorf*
*Principal, Kasdorf & Associates, LLC*

*Founding Partner, Publishing Technology Partners
<https://pubtechpartners.com/>*
kasdorf.bill@gmail.com
+1 734-904-6252

ISNI: http://isni.org/isni/0000000116490786
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786
<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786?lang=en>


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