Re: EPUB and XML [was: The non-polyglot elephant in the room]

Lest anyone be confused, iBooks  supports both EPUB and .ibook format
(as well as PDF but  Apple's iBookstore doesn't sell PDF titles).

My email was referring to iBooks in context of EPUB. iBooks and iBooks
Author are totally different software programs. The vast majority of
the titles for sale in the Apple iBookstore are EPUB and Apple has
been very proactive in supporting EPUB 3 features, including
co-authoring the recent FXL metadata extension format [1] and
subsequently revising their implementation to support the official
spec over their earlier proprietary extension.  Apple also requires
EPUB to validate via EPUBCheck validator. So in my book Apple gets
full marks for being standards supportive in re: iBooks.

A tiny percentage of the titles in the iBookstore were created by
Apple iBooks Author program and are therefore in the proprietary
"fork" of the EPUB format (.ibook) that is presently generated by
iBooks Author. That format as Leif impies also uses XHTML-based
content and it would appear also uses UIWebView (WebKit) for
rendering. My understanding is that iBooks Author was developed by a
separate team.

--Bill

[1] http://idpf.org/epub/fxl/

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Leif Halvard Silli
<xn--mlform-iua@xn--mlform-iua.no> wrote:
> Bill McCoy, Mon, 28 Jan 2013 07:04:27 -0800:
>
>> But when EPUB 3 is widely deployed it's
>> clear that the platform's native browser engine (e.g. UIWebView on
>> iOS) will be widely used under the covers by reading systems - it is
>> already is by Apple iBooks, Kobo, and VitalSource Bookshelf. That
>> strategy has allowed e.g. iBooks to move much faster, e.g. at the same
>> rate that WebKit's changed on iOS.
>
> FWIW, the IBA format is XML:
>
> ]] The output of iBooks Author is a proprietary Apple file format
> similar to the EPUB standard, but with extensions that prevent it from
> being universally readable or editable as an EPUB document.[10] The
> format uses undocumented, proprietary XML namespaces and undocumented
> extensions to CSS.[11] [[
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBooks_Author
> --
> leif halvard silli

Received on Tuesday, 29 January 2013 15:31:32 UTC