EPUB (or ePub) stands for electronic publication and is the current standard for publishing electronic books

EPUB (or ePub) stands for electronic publication and is the current standard for publishing electronic books. It is not a new format, in fact, version 2.0 is standard since 2007, but now needs to talk about it because Apple has decided that its iBookstore based on that standard. Let us see what is and what are their possibilities and disadvantages for the end user, who after all, is what interests us.

An overview: it offers ePub

First let us see the advantages since it has a couple pretty good when it comes to choose as the format for electronic books:

* This is a standard and is based on standards, ensuring compatibility between all systems that support it, without causing strange effects (including selection of text within a PDF, which is totally unpredictable).
* Use Unicode necessarily, which ensures that there are problems of text encoding, which is written in Japanese will be in Japanese and what is written in Spanish (including accents and ñ) will be in Spanish, no characters nonexistent.
* It is a dynamic and expandable format, supports both text and pictures, even videos that can be embedded anywhere in the document.

However, it also has a drawback rather important and I hope to resolve in upcoming revisions to the standard:

* You are too focused on text publications, and although these correctly and presents them without SQUARED, not so with other image-based publications such as comic books or magazines. Despite enduring images and video format such representation adapts to the device where they are displayed so that the bullets from a comic strip could be SQUARED, making it totally unreadable.

ePub inside: knowing the format

The format is a file. Epub, a container (like our applications. App) that contains three key files:

* Open Publication Structure (OPS) 2.0: This is an XHTML document (which are based websites) that determines the structure of the publication as well as the style is linked through a subset of CSS, Style Sheet called OPS, found in the OCF.
* Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0: Determine the structure is the container itself. Epub. It is based on XML and consists of two files:
o A. opf that contains all the metadata of the publication, from the title and language to where the files and text style determines the content.
o A. NXC containing the table of contents (forgive the redundancy), ie, chapters and where they are.
* OEBPS Container Format (OCF) 1.0: Another container, but this time with some relevant information: the content. This is a ZIP compressed archive where the files that make up the publication, text, images, style sheets, anything other than the above is here.

Once the structure view. Epub is to say that everything is based on web standards, so any web developer could, without exorbitant effort, make a. Epub manually, but luckily there are tools that allow us to make them without touching anything code.
Making our ePub: some tools

We will not get into a macrotutorial for ePub (although you might think for a future entry) are only going to give a few touches of the programs that can be used in Mac OS X to create content in this format. Always aiming at what Jobs said about "small publishers" and that the iBookstore would accommodate any "editorial" that he wanted to, and does not this mean that individuals can do it too? (While all this is pure thoughts, nothing confirmed) Let's see some programs:

* Adobe InDesign CS4: The first being perhaps best known, and also the most expensive. The design tool supports publications since version Adobe CS4 export content ePub format.
* Sigil: This is a complete editor and open source ePub that works across multiple platforms, including Mac OS X. Perhaps it is best to have an all in one to a very low cost, zero.
* IStudio Publisher: The way Adobe InDesign, albeit at a much lower cost ($ 49.99 single license), it is a content publishing tool that allows export in ePub format.
* Gauge: This is a converter, in order to go from almost any format to almost any other, selected eBook reader that we have, is free (the author accepts donations) and multiplatform.

Conclusions

I think Apple has chosen well. The ePub format is fairly complete, while you may be unfortunate for some things, it is the standard and this is the most important. Surely the problems are fixed in future versions, becoming a full format and perfect for its purpose. On the other hand is a format widely supported by the e-book readers currently on the market, except the Amazon Kindle, which somehow hidden from us (except the random decision Store) does not support this format.

In a world where proprietary formats PDF and took precedence over the standard, Apple has taken a dramatic turn of events offering support only to ePub, although that might have created their own format or use some other already established by them, such as iTunes LP.

What do you think of ePub now that I know a little more? Do you think a good choice for Apple? "I would be ashamed to publish your books in iBookstore?