I'm with Jane on this one.
While I find drm generally to be a serious pain, and don't make a
habbit of supporting it, I'd have to make an exception for RFB. They
do it more for the publishers than the clients, and it's a shame it's
necessary, but w/o Katie player supporting this, the *only* solution
for playing rfb books on the mac would go away. This in my opinion
is *not* desirable. (Unless of course you built a separate app for
this)
The other thing is, while I agree that text is generally better,
there are situations where daisy, mp3, or some other format is
desirable, and it would be sad to see this dropped in Katie player
just because there's very little call for it. Of course if you did
drop, I'd be happy to take up the slack, but this would mean folks
woul need to buy two readers to read *all* their books. Not a good
solution if it could be avoided.
As for bookshare books. I have some very definite opinions on this,
and I won't go into them here, because I *know* it would offend folks.
But in brief, I'm not pleased with bookshare to say the least, and I
find it slightly irritating that so many companies support a closed
proprietary format when there's loads of open formats out there with
considerably greater selection and of much better quality, but to
each their own.
That's all I'm saying on that topic. I will *not* respond to threads
on that part of the topic.
But, as for supporting other formats, I don't know if it's strictly
necessary, but if you do support them, it could make you the
preferred player for a lot of folks. Support enough formats, and
maybe you'll even get sighted folks buying Katie to keep all their
content centrally located.
(any idea whether or not Microsoft would talk to you about supporting
WMA files?) Sure would be nice to have a player that actually works.
But then again, that's delving heavily into drm, and since I agree
that's a topic better avoided when possible, you may not want to do
this, but if you did, once again you'd be the only programming doing
it (media player and flip for mac aside) since they don't support the
latest encrypted wma formats.
But, hey, while we're throwing out ideas, why not add pdb (palm
database) support for those palm reader files. I've got quite a few
books in that format, and can't use them on the mac because the palm
reader for the mac just isn't vo accessible. I'm sure I'm in the
minority here, but I kind of like having access to the *same* stuff
as sighted folks from (and here's the important part) the same source.
http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com sells thousands of books most of
which can be downloaded in pdb format.
And then, there's
http://www.fictionwise.com
Which does work for us, since their stuff can generally be downloaded
in pdf format.
Those are my top two sites (well, next to the webscriptions or baen
free library)
http://www.webscriptions.net
and
http://www.baen.com
respectively.
I've got a couple thousand books, and 95% of them came from these 3
sources.
Having a single reader to handle them all on the mac would be
absolutely lovely.
I'd do it myself, but seeing as how I don't have a product to point
to and claim blind accessibility for reading on the mac, I can't even
get some of these folks to answer my emails, much dialog about how to
incorporate their formats into a general reader.
Just my pie in the sky requests. Don't feel bad about telling me to
go fly a kite. I don't expect you to implement them, but if you did,
I'd sure be happy.
*grin*
On Apr 8, 2006, at 2:21 PM, Jane Jordan (gmail) wrote:
Hi, Joe.
I would hesitate to upgrade KatiePlayer if RFB&D books were no
longer supported. That was the only reason I bought it in the
first place. Of cours, now I know that it does much more, and yes
I would want to be able to listen to Daisy books from Bokshare when
I get that subscription renewed again. But I would hate to see
that particular part of KatiePlayer go away in a new version. I
like the fact that I can carry the comptuer with me and listen to
books from RFB&D whenever aqnd wherever I like, so taking that way
would be a bummer.
The rest of it I don't fully understand, so won't comment on it.
Jane
On Apr 8, 2006, at 12:56 PM, Kafka's Daytime wrote:
Hi Scott,
There was a bit of discussion about this on the list a few weeks
ago. We still have to complete testing of katieplayer on Intel
Macs before we make any changes required and issue a public
statement about katieplayer running on the Intel Macs. We require
a license (BASIC: $18) for each machine on which katieplayer is
installed. If it is a replacement machine (and you won't be using
katieplayer on two separate machines) please send an email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] including your new Hardware Fingerprint.
Again, we expect to have compatibility/update news in the
reasonably near future. I'll be sure to post the new information
to the list. Sorry for any delay/inconvenience. We'll get there.
Also keep in mind the Cocoa version of katieplayer is under
development in parallel.
Incidentally, I have a question for all on the list - or at least
those interested in DAISY. - regarding the forthcoming Cocoa
version of katieplayer. How would you feel if the new Cocoa
version of katieplayer were to support only Bookshare/DAISY 3
books and DAISY 2 content which does not use "live" Digital Rights
Management (DRM) (unless the standard is not obscure and is
available to any developer without draconian licensing fees/
requirements)? RFBD books, for instance, would - under this
scenario - *not* be supported (though we'd probably keep the
legacy version of katieplayer available). We're also considering
moving away from the 'text + audio' flavor of books and
concentrating solely on 'text-only' (e.g. those books provided by
Bookshare). My own humble personal view is that it seems less and
less wise to distribute audio with a talking book. There is the
advantage of the human reader - but the prompt availability and
small file sizes of the 'text-only' books (rendered 'live' by
synthesized speech) - seems to me to trump the advantages one has
in the human-read audio. Further, Bookshare's content collection
is getting bigger and broader and I think we're going to see it
continue to grow (recent addition of the O'Reilly technical series
was very nice and kind of a big deal). (RFBD offers a fine service
- I'm simply wondering about the best way for us to proceed with
katieplayer based on the needs/wants of our audience). BTW, the
katieplayer Cocoa version would come in at the same $18 price
point for the BASIC version i.e. affordability is still a basic
goal of the effort. Finally, think of katieplayer in a broader,
accessible media player sense. No promises, but what would be in
your feature wish list? Again, would love to hear some thoughts
from those who are interested.
Thanks in advance,
Joe
On Apr 8, 2006, at 12:04 PM, Scott Howell wrote:
Joe, just got myself an Intel-based Mac. I used disk target mode
to move all my stuff to the new Mac. I didn't expect everything
to go perfectly and well Katieplayer isn't working any longer.
That would make sense do to the different hardware fingerprint. I
tried just running the app and putting the key, but that didn't
work. Matter of fact, if I switch to another app while its in the
registration dialog and then switch back, I loose speech from
Katieplayer and can't navigate around. So, I wanted to pass that
along, but also how do I register Katieplayer to work on my new Mac.
tnx
Scott
