Thursday, May 08, 2003
Embryonic eBooks
embryonic because the eBook still feels a bit ‘under development’.
These days new words are being added to the dictionary under the letter ‘e’. It’s easy; just add e - eInk, ePaper, eLife, eworld, eMedia - etc. Not to be outdone the letter ’i‘ is also in for new family members: iBook, iPhoto, iLink. Note the use of the second letter capital - another addition to written English (or should it be eEnglish?).
The eBook has it’s own semantic problems because you can’t be sure whether someone is using the term in the context of a device or the actual content: so - ‘I read War and Peace on my eBook’ means that they used an ebook device (see below). But, ‘I don’t bother with paper books anymore; I just read eBooks’. In this context, the eBook is a piece of fiction or non-fiction.
But what is the difference between a piece of interactive media like a CD-ROM and an eBook?
furthermore...
eBooks as Devices
If the the word is used in the context of ‘device’ then is there one device? Well no, because it could be:
Rocket Book
gemstar
Discontinued! (22/04/04)
Franklin eBook
franklin
Korea eBook
http://www.hiebook.com/
The above devices are specifically made to view eBooks in their own format. These devices are very hard to find in Europe (where I am).
Alternatively and probably more likely to succeed (personal view) is the:
PDA
This is a family of devices on its own because these start life as organisers / diaries / address books etc but also have a complementry function as eBook readers. These devices have a much broader appeal than purpose made eBook devices because they are smaller and more versatile. Publishers are making more eBook texts available for these PDAs in a number of formats:
Readers for PDA
MobiPocket
http://www.mobipocket.com/
Palm Reader is the standard reader that comes free on all Palm OS devices.
Microsoft ebook Reader is the standard reader that comes free on PocketPC devices but is also available for Windows on computers:
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/default.asp
Acrobat eReader for palm (originally ‘GlassBook’)
This will take certain types of Adobe PDFs and deliver on palm devices.
eBooks on Computer
Some would say that the computer as a reading ‘device’ isn’t portable enough to be thought of an eBook device but actually, you see a lot of people carrying laptops around and they are getting smaller and smaller and lighter and lighter. The recent launch of ‘tablet PC’ makes this even more an appropriate eBook platform.
The truth is, though, that people who are interested enough to be creative with the eBook phenomena do their creative work on computers and are probably inclined to make eBooks for the computer as medium rather than the PDA or other device.
eBook Content
Sources: Public Domain literature
Michael Hart started the Project Gutenberg in 1971 and since that time the project has set out to: ‘...... provide Public Domain Etext editions a short time after they enter the Public Domain..’
The web site is at: http://www.gutenberg.org/ and just recently has been added a help section on converting these texts to various eBook formats.
Legacy documents can be converted to eBooks but in my own experience this process can be very arduous. Optical character recognision software is getting better all the time, but even so, checking for errors is essential.
Long texts
Where texts are long (novels and reference works) indexing and search facilities are essential and this fact may drive the decision about authoring tools.
Short texts (eg poetry)
Where the texts are short (poems, short stories etc) then there can be more flexible approched to authoring tools. Some good ones here: http://www.bornmagazine.org/
Hypertext novels
Concurrent with the idea of ‘repurposing’ previously (paper) published materials, is the view that the screen medium offers more potential for interactivity or hypertext and so texts should be written specifically for the medium:
Mark Bernstein runs Eastgate systems and if you follow the links to Hypertext, you’ll find some useful information about what is going on in this discipline.
see Eastgate systems:
http://www.eastgate.com/
Journals
It may be that the technique of weblogging has superseded the idea of journal publishing in eBook format, however, ‘ATPM’ is an example that is distributed in a variety of formats including PDF:
http://www.atpm.com/
A Flash based journal here is also worth looking at but unsurprisingly, it is very graphical in content.
http://www.thisisamagazine.com/
Creation
The creation of the eBook takes place on the computer. Ideally the software used should allow for delivery on multiple devices. This decision is mission critical. As much as I like the work found at Born Magazine, which is mostly created with Flash, this would not be appropriate for longer texts. Another important factor for the eBook designer is how much control over the interface is desired. Most of the reader software, already provides page turning and search buttons etc. Acrobat (not the eBook Reader) does, at least offer the full screen mode, so that ALL the interface elements can be hiden from the end user. In this mode, the navigational interface needs to occupy part of the content space.
Choices
Decision should be made in consideration of:
- target platform(s)
- length of text / content
- delivery method (web or CDROM)
- Other media content (ie does it have video / sound etc)
- Multi-target platforms
Acrobat
The Acrobat Reader from Adobe is free and easily obtainable. Publishers can distribute the Reader and presume that the majority of web users will have the appropriate browser plug-in.
Acrobat is much more sophisticated as an eBook delivery than many are aware of. Apart from the fine way that text is rendered on the screen, PDF files that Acrobat handles can also display Quicktime movies. Interactivity can be provided by JavaScript. The Adobe eBook Reader is a different product and although it will open PDF files, this reader has other functions built in to help the user navigate (e bookmarking and ‘read aloud’).
some examples here: http://www.islomania.com/ebooks/
also see http://www.adobe.com/
and http://www.adobe.com/epaper/tips/acr5createlink/main.html
Flash
Good short texts ones here:
http://www.bornmagazine.org/
The popularity of the Flash player and plug-in amongst web users and designers make this a really strong possibilty for computer based eBooks. However, it’s use will be limited to shorter texts that require no search facility. Having said that, the possibilty of utilising the Flash data server technology makes this a good potential development area.
HTML
here is an example of one of my own:
[url=http://www.islomania.com/JuanFernandez/ringrose/]http://www.islomania.com/JuanFernandez/ringrose/[/url]
TK3 Reader
TK3 is a format for multimedia rich eBooks:
http://www.nightkitchen.com/
The reader is free and the authoring tool can be purchased for MAC or PC. The eBook navigation style is built in but there are a number of different templates to choose from. Multmedia content can also be added to enhance the text.
Standalone apps
The Voyager Publishing Company (Bob Stein) used Hypercard to publish the ‘Expanded Book’ series back in 1991, but in those days CDROM or floppy disc was the distribution method.
Although Hypercard still exists it has been superseded by tools like Metacard, Runtime Revolution, Supercard and Real basic.
StorySpace:
see Eastgate systems:
http://www.eastgate.com/
Web delivery
We wouldn’t have any of this without the possibility of web delivery. One of the reasons for the lack of success of the retail CD-ROM market is distribution. Electronic distribution removes this barrier BUT, eBooks cannot become as dependant on multimedia or distribution may become problematic. In other words, the ability to download over the internet should be a determining factor when considering the amount of content to put in ‘over and above’ the text.
Issues
Fonts
Decisions have to be made whether system fonts (available on the client device) are used or other fonts which have to be embedded or distributed with the ebook. Display technology needs to be understood: text as text can be searched and dynamically flowed, whereas text as graphics cannot. When designing for computer reading, there is a choice of screen size, so the designer / publisher needs to decide; to allow scaling or not. This may have serious implications for the way the fonts are rendered.
Security
In commercial situations, distributors of ebooks want to prevent the purchase from being copied, or even printed. Some eBook formats include the facility for ‘digital rights management’ (DRM); the ability to protect from copying or even printing is built in to the web delivery system. (see: http://www.adobe.com/products/server/readerextensions/main.html)
Portability
Some would argue that they want to read in the bath and eDevices don’t work in that context. But how many of us actually read in the bath anyway?
Readability
Many argue that they won’t read a lot of text on the screen, but actually we are doing so more and more. Email is making us capable of much more. The new generation of devices and laptops have very clear font display and software providers are now providing technologies to deliver even sharper fonts; Microsoft have ClearType (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/default.htm) and Adobe have CoolType (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/cooltype.html)
