Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On 4/05/11 7:13 AM, Christophe Strobbe wrote: Hi Ben, Sorry for my late response; it seems I missed this mail last Friday. Quite alright, things do get a bit hectic from time to time. There is a list of software-based DAISY players in the Wikipedia article on DAISY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAISY_Digital_Talking_Book#Software_players. I try to update it when I find something new. Hardware DAISY players also exist, but they aren't cheap. Cool. Thus far I've just listened to the MP3s it generates in a regular media player, but I'm not a fan of the synthetic voices. If there's no alternative, then sure, but I prefer a real audio book there. Obviously that tends to be more expensive to produce, though, unless one is reading one's own work. Appropriate use of styles and headings was already looking like it would be necessary for ePub and other things anyway. I take it with regards to the language marking you're referring to specifying the language for a document or paragraph (rather than just the default language of LibreOffice), right? Yes, that is correct. Cool. Is there a guide somewhere of the right document/page/paragraph attributes needed to generate decent DAISY documents? I made a presentation about this at FOSDEM in February of this year. My slides are on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/aegisproject/fosdem-2011-a11y-authoring-libre-office but I can also send them off-list. If you could email them to me, that'd be great. There is more detailed guidance on accessible authoring (not geared at DAISY) from the Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project: http://adod.idrc.ocad.ca/. Their techniques for OpenOffice.org also apply to LibreOffice. (And they also cover MS Word, Google Docs, Corel WordPerfect, iWork; it's an impressive set of documents.) That's very cool, I've grabbed all the OOo ones and bookmarked the site for future reference. Regards, Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEAREKAAYFAk3Cz0cACgkQNxrFv6BK4xMvkwCg7IZ73NwobnNJ8a9pDEUe0pC0 LxkAn2zUgMpUrmndyzPW9l69Uq1tgNf6 =SbEv -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
Hi Ben, Sorry for my late response; it seems I missed this mail last Friday. On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:02:17 +1000, Ben McGinnes b...@adversary.org wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On 28/04/11 9:28 PM, Christophe Strobbe wrote: On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:49:11 +1000, Ben McGinnes b...@adversary.org wrote: I hadn't even heard of DAISY, but it looks very cool so thanks for pointing me at it. I just installed the extension and will have a little play with it at some nebulous point in the future. Great :-) (I am involved in the development of odt2daisy.) Cool. Since then I've tried it on a couple of things and it is pretty nifty. Although I should really poke around for some decent DAISY software readers/players to see (and hear) how others would experience any given thing. There is a list of software-based DAISY players in the Wikipedia article on DAISY: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAISY_Digital_Talking_Book#Software_players. I try to update it when I find something new. Hardware DAISY players also exist, but they aren't cheap. Since this thread mentions both ePub and DAISY I would like to point out that the IDPF (in charge of ePub) and the DAISY Consortium are working on a stronger convergence between the two formats. snip This means that ePub 3 will contain more features to support accessibility for people with disabilities than in previous versions. (DAISY was designed for persons with reading impairments from the outset.) This is what caught my attention with DAISY and why I'm now looking forward to ePub 3. It's a great example of where ebooks can level the field for everyone. I remember when I was a kid and already reading voraciously that my Nan did too. Unfortunately her eyesight was very bad, so the only books she could read were the large print books available at the local library and she couldn't read everything she wanted to. This always struck me as most unfair. We finally have the technology to render this situation a thing of the past and we should do so. But it also means that whatever content you put into an ePub doc will need features to make that type of content accessible. For many types of content (images, video, audio) this involves the use of text alternatives. Making math and science accessible is still a challenge, in spite of many years of research. 3D was also mentioned in this thread - I don't know how that would be made accessible. Fortunately for me my interest is essentially text only (regardless of whether it is fiction or non-fiction). So I don't have to worry so much about any of these, but it is definitely something to bear in mind and work on. When it comes to books, PDF is only really useful for type-setting a print book (e.g. the way Lulu uses them for preparing print on demand books). I think tagged PDF with reflow options in PDF readers (see one of my previous mails) changed that a bit. Adobe Reader even has a Read Out Loud function (but you will need to get used to synthetic speech). Since I've used PDF for the odd report (the last one was an anti-censorship thing), that's something I'll have to keep in mind for next time. Also for the political stuff. It takes a little time to prepare all the relevant formats, but compared to the process of writing, proofing and editing, not really all that much. If you want a decent DAISY book, you will need (at the very least) to make sure that you use the correct styles for headings (to enable navigation) and that you mark the language(s) in the content correctly. Appropriate use of styles and headings was already looking like it would be necessary for ePub and other things anyway. I take it with regards to the language marking you're referring to specifying the language for a document or paragraph (rather than just the default language of LibreOffice), right? Yes, that is correct. Is there a guide somewhere of the right document/page/paragraph attributes needed to generate decent DAISY documents? I made a presentation about this at FOSDEM in February of this year. My slides are on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/aegisproject/fosdem-2011-a11y-authoring-libre-office but I can also send them off-list. There is more detailed guidance on accessible authoring (not geared at DAISY) from the Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project: http://adod.idrc.ocad.ca/. Their techniques for OpenOffice.org also apply to LibreOffice. (And they also cover MS Word, Google Docs, Corel WordPerfect, iWork; it's an impressive set of documents.) Best regards, Christophe Regards, Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEAREKAAYFAk26RlkACgkQNxrFv6BK4xPnCACfQ7qw5EbSJXy2jcj921Te8SCb rXgAoOgGOBwi9NIEVqU+dQnHUwRqw6YD =+61B -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Christophe Strobbe K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD Research
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
Hi, On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:42:27 +1000, Ben McGinnes b...@adversary.org wrote: On 25/04/11 7:11 PM, drew wrote: As far as LibreOffice being a display client for ebooks, I would agree it is not in scope. However, should LibreOffice have support for producing documents targeted to eReaders? I don't know maybe, probably. The writer2epub extension does a reasonably good job of that already, although I'd follow it up with editing in Sigil and probably final tweaking in Calibre. There is also a (commercial) ODFToEPub extension: http://www.pincette.biz/odftoepub/index.xhtml, http://www.pincette.biz/odftoepub/release_notes.txt. Best regards, Christophe -- Christophe Strobbe K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD Research Group on Document Architectures Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442 B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee BELGIUM tel: +32 16 32 85 51 www.docarch.be Twitter: @RabelaisA11y -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
Hi, On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:53:00 +0200, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+ooofut...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Ben, *, On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Ben McGinnes b...@adversary.org wrote: On 25/04/11 7:11 PM, drew wrote: As far as LibreOffice being a display client for ebooks, I would agree it is not in scope. However, should LibreOffice have support for producing documents targeted to eReaders? I don't know maybe, probably. The writer2epub extension does a reasonably good job of that already, although I'd follow it up with editing in Sigil and probably final tweaking in Calibre. There is also http://odt2daisy.sourceforge.net/ - in case your reader supports the daisy format. Other than that: what would be a special requirement for eReaders? I know PDF is suboptimal because it needs to scale to the display screen. (...) I don't know what software is used on eReaders, but Adobe Reader on the desktop supports reflow when you zoom in: press Crtl+4 (or go to View - Zoom - Reflow in the menus). To zoom in, simply press Crtl++ (like in many current browsers). Note that this requires tagged PDF. LibreOffice can output tagged PDF when you check that option in the PDF Options dialog that is displayed when you choose Export as PDF Adobe Reader has more accessibility options under Edit Preferences Accessibility; for example: Always use Zoom Setting, and Replace Document Colors (which allows users to override the colours defined by the author). So when you use properly tagged PDF, is is probably not the format itself that is at fault but the reader (=software). Best regards, Christophe -- Christophe Strobbe K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD Research Group on Document Architectures Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442 B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee BELGIUM tel: +32 16 32 85 51 www.docarch.be Twitter: @RabelaisA11y -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
On Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:19:50 +0200, CaStarCo casta...@gmail.com wrote: There is a draft of the EPUB3 specification ( http://idpf.org/news/epub-3-specification-public-draft-released ), I think that this spec has many problems: Since this is a draft specification: has anyone tried sending comments? (Unfortunately, I don't see a real *invitation* for comments, which is unlike the process used for ODF, W3C specs, ...). Best regards, Christophe the capability of scripting (wich is potentially harmful), the low emphasis on semantic data (they use metadata, but specially related to the book structure, not with its content), to forget the 3d models type of media (epub3 only supports images, video and sound, but not 3d models wich the user could explore), and the absence of profiles (they talk about fallbacks, but only for scripting, not for media content). I suppose there are good reasons to choose that spec and not an extended one... but at that moment, I can imagine which reasons are. I think that would be interesting to program an ebook editor, to promote the EPUB use over other privative formats. Many lacks of the EPUB format can be covered with scripting, but hidding the scripting to the user, doing it automaticly behind the scene. If there are interested people, then I'm interested on helping working on webkit integration. Kind regards 2011/4/25 Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com On 04/25/2011 11:11 AM, drew wrote: However, should LibreOffice have support for producing documents targeted to eReaders? I don't know maybe, probably. I am not an expert on ebooks formats, but I know there are a lot of efforts around the ePub format to become a standard. Unfortunately, there are too many commercial interests around ebooks today for the development of a real independent standard. Anyway, should such a standard be defined and accepted, I would personally be in favour of supporting it, as documents are becoming more pervasive than in the past and in the future will be accessed through a multitude of devices (many of them being mobile). Best regards, Italo -- Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com mobile +39.348.5653829 VoIP +39.02.320621813 skype italovignoli -- Christophe Strobbe K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD Research Group on Document Architectures Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442 B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee BELGIUM tel: +32 16 32 85 51 www.docarch.be Twitter: @RabelaisA11y -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:49:11 +1000, Ben McGinnes b...@adversary.org wrote: On 25/04/11 8:53 PM, Christian Lohmaier wrote: There is also http://odt2daisy.sourceforge.net/ - in case your reader supports the daisy format. I hadn't even heard of DAISY, but it looks very cool so thanks for pointing me at it. I just installed the extension and will have a little play with it at some nebulous point in the future. Great :-) (I am involved in the development of odt2daisy.) Since this thread mentions both ePub and DAISY I would like to point out that the IDPF (in charge of ePub) and the DAISY Consortium are working on a stronger convergence between the two formats. (It is no coincidence that two of the editors of the ePub spec at http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-overview.html represent the DAISY Consortium). This means that ePub 3 will contain more features to support accessibility for people with disabilities than in previous versions. (DAISY was designed for persons with reading impairments from the outset.) But it also means that whatever content you put into an ePub doc will need features to make that type of content accessible. For many types of content (images, video, audio) this involves the use of text alternatives. Making math and science accessible is still a challenge, in spite of many years of research. 3D was also mentioned in this thread - I don't know how that would be made accessible. Other than that: what would be a special requirement for eReaders? I can't speak for anyone else, but as long as an eReader can display content as it would in a normal book then it's good enough. If that book is a novel, then it will usually be pretty easy (e.g. text, italics, bold, small capitals, subscript, superscript and maybe footnotes). If that book is a text book (e.g. a science book) with charts, formula, pictures, etc.) then more may be required. I know PDF is suboptimal because it needs to scale to the display screen. When it comes to books, PDF is only really useful for type-setting a print book (e.g. the way Lulu uses them for preparing print on demand books). I think tagged PDF with reflow options in PDF readers (see one of my previous mails) changed that a bit. Adobe Reader even has a Read Out Loud function (but you will need to get used to synthetic speech). plain text might be boring to read (headings, etc hard to spot, lack of structural information for navigation), rtf might not be supported by the reader... Well, I wouldn't opt for either of those formats. So there probably is no one-size-fits all solution. And it depends on what the purpose is: personal use (i.e. conversion of random documents) or dedicated publishing (aim is to write a book and publish it) and thus how many restrictions you can impose on the structure/formatting of the document. Exactly. At this stage most ebook publishers, including self-publishers, usually need at least two or three formats for each publication and often more. Until your post I was considering PDF, ePub, Kindle (.mobi) and maybe one or two others (.lit and whatever Sony uses). Now you can add DAISY to the list too. It takes a little time to prepare all the relevant formats, but compared to the process of writing, proofing and editing, not really all that much. If you want a decent DAISY book, you will need (at the very least) to make sure that you use the correct styles for headings (to enable navigation) and that you mark the language(s) in the content correctly. Best regards, Christophe -- Christophe Strobbe K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD Research Group on Document Architectures Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442 B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee BELGIUM tel: +32 16 32 85 51 www.docarch.be Twitter: @RabelaisA11y -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On 28/04/11 9:28 PM, Christophe Strobbe wrote: On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:49:11 +1000, Ben McGinnes b...@adversary.org wrote: I hadn't even heard of DAISY, but it looks very cool so thanks for pointing me at it. I just installed the extension and will have a little play with it at some nebulous point in the future. Great :-) (I am involved in the development of odt2daisy.) Cool. Since then I've tried it on a couple of things and it is pretty nifty. Although I should really poke around for some decent DAISY software readers/players to see (and hear) how others would experience any given thing. Since this thread mentions both ePub and DAISY I would like to point out that the IDPF (in charge of ePub) and the DAISY Consortium are working on a stronger convergence between the two formats. That sounds good. (It is no coincidence that two of the editors of the ePub spec at http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-overview.html represent the DAISY Consortium). An excellent document, I probably won't delve too much into the spec, but it is excellent to see what it will be able to do. This means that ePub 3 will contain more features to support accessibility for people with disabilities than in previous versions. (DAISY was designed for persons with reading impairments from the outset.) This is what caught my attention with DAISY and why I'm now looking forward to ePub 3. It's a great example of where ebooks can level the field for everyone. I remember when I was a kid and already reading voraciously that my Nan did too. Unfortunately her eyesight was very bad, so the only books she could read were the large print books available at the local library and she couldn't read everything she wanted to. This always struck me as most unfair. We finally have the technology to render this situation a thing of the past and we should do so. But it also means that whatever content you put into an ePub doc will need features to make that type of content accessible. For many types of content (images, video, audio) this involves the use of text alternatives. Making math and science accessible is still a challenge, in spite of many years of research. 3D was also mentioned in this thread - I don't know how that would be made accessible. Fortunately for me my interest is essentially text only (regardless of whether it is fiction or non-fiction). So I don't have to worry so much about any of these, but it is definitely something to bear in mind and work on. When it comes to books, PDF is only really useful for type-setting a print book (e.g. the way Lulu uses them for preparing print on demand books). I think tagged PDF with reflow options in PDF readers (see one of my previous mails) changed that a bit. Adobe Reader even has a Read Out Loud function (but you will need to get used to synthetic speech). Since I've used PDF for the odd report (the last one was an anti-censorship thing), that's something I'll have to keep in mind for next time. Also for the political stuff. It takes a little time to prepare all the relevant formats, but compared to the process of writing, proofing and editing, not really all that much. If you want a decent DAISY book, you will need (at the very least) to make sure that you use the correct styles for headings (to enable navigation) and that you mark the language(s) in the content correctly. Appropriate use of styles and headings was already looking like it would be necessary for ePub and other things anyway. I take it with regards to the language marking you're referring to specifying the language for a document or paragraph (rather than just the default language of LibreOffice), right? Is there a guide somewhere of the right document/page/paragraph attributes needed to generate decent DAISY documents? Regards, Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEAREKAAYFAk26RlkACgkQNxrFv6BK4xPnCACfQ7qw5EbSJXy2jcj921Te8SCb rXgAoOgGOBwi9NIEVqU+dQnHUwRqw6YD =+61B -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
On 04/25/2011 08:59 AM, todd rme wrote: Sounds like latex Apart from discussions on the characteristics of the file format, ebooks are definitely outside the scope of The Document Foundation. There are already several organizations working around ebooks, and taking care of the related problems. -- Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com mobile +39.348.5653829 VoIP +39.02.320621813 skype italovignoli -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
2011/4/25 todd rme toddrme2...@gmail.com On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 6:59 PM, CaStarCo casta...@gmail.com wrote: What you are proposing basically sounds like latex. But you need to be careful to separate out the format from the software that reads the format. Stuff like sorting tables, choosing layouts, choosing colors, inserting other text, linking to other resources, that all has to be handled by the program. The format just need to provide the right information to allow the software to do this. · Alternative reading flows ( I tell the reader that i want to understand a paragraph, then the reader constructs for me the minimum text that lets me to understand what I want... obviously, not with magic and not with an exceptional IA, we can add metadata that stablish depency relations between paragraphs... for example). This requires the text be stored in a manner that makes it easy to change the flow. The flow itself would be determined by the software. This is the whole point of latex. · Indexes created automaticly from the text structure, on the fly, not in writer time. · Special tags for special words (or phrases), such as definitions, theorems, proofs... - the possibility of create automaticly (in reading time) tables of many parts of the content (such as an automatic studying summary or resume). In technic or scientific books could be very interesting. This lets to separate the narrative of a book of the capable of being systematized data: definitions, theorems, proofs, formulas, tables, graphs, figures... These are the same thing. There would just need to be a tag for put this in the index with this label. I assume latex can do this. · The capability of sorting data tables by many parameters (growing or decreasing order, by column, by row..) (with limitations, if the writter decides to lock the entire table or parts of it, then without that capability) - this lets to looks at the data following the way that helps us more without having to do the work of rmanually rewriting tables. This would be in the software, rather than the format. The format would just need to be able to store tables as actual tables, rather than as text with lines. · Contextual data without context changes: usually, if we want to remember what means a word, we have to go back in the text, or click an anchor... if we are lucky, we have tabs, in other cases we have to deal with many windows or with the go back button. A solution could be modyfing the layout in reading time (i suppose that the ebooks have liquid layout to suit better in many different devices): If i want to read about a word, and i have the luck that the word is defined in the same book, a solution could be that a bubble apears in above the word with the definition written inside. (moving the text to avoid hiding the closer text). This lets to read the definition without losing the context in wich we found it, and helping the reader to understand it. This would be in the software, rather than the file format. The format would just need to be able to store text and pictures in such a way that it is easy to change their flow without breaking things. Latex can do this. · Reading profiles: many times, depending on the device what are we using, it's preferible to use an image or other (because contrast, size, colors...). In the PC there are no problems, but if we want to expand the usage of the format, it's important to convice the devices industry. This would be part of the software rather than the file format. Once again, the format would need to store text in a way that it is easy to change basic properties without breaking the layout. Latex can do this. · The capability of hyperlinking books by it's identificator (not URL)... I'm thinking in something like IABN (it's similar to ISBN, but more universal, based on SHA256). This wouldn't be in the format. The format would could have a way to store unique identifiers for certain works, but actually looking up that work would depend on the software. · The capability of distinguish between many types of specialized data, such as formulas, musical scores, source code, flow diagrams, and many others. Sounds like latex -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted I know Latex very well, and it's not like LaTeX, I'm talking not about making layouts automaticly. I'm talking about automatic adaptation to the user needs in reading time. And, of course, I'm talking to use metadata inside the format to allow the program to do these actions... I'm not a 16 years old boy, I understand the diferences between the format specification and
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 09:39 +0200, Italo Vignoli wrote: On 04/25/2011 08:59 AM, todd rme wrote: Sounds like latex Apart from discussions on the characteristics of the file format, ebooks are definitely outside the scope of The Document Foundation. Hello Italo, As far as LibreOffice being a display client for ebooks, I would agree it is not in scope. However, should LibreOffice have support for producing documents targeted to eReaders? I don't know maybe, probably. Thanks Drew -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
2011/4/25 Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com On 04/25/2011 08:59 AM, todd rme wrote: Sounds like latex Apart from discussions on the characteristics of the file format, ebooks are definitely outside the scope of The Document Foundation. There are already several organizations working around ebooks, and taking care of the related problems. -- Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com mobile +39.348.5653829 VoIP +39.02.320621813 skype italovignoli -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted Wich organizations? I think that if we have to trust that these organizations will innovate we are going to wait a very long time. I know that I am not a guru and not and expert, but I think that this work is not impossible.. then, why the actual ebooks are that set of static crap? why it's so difficult to make technic books for ebook readers? the usage of semantic data is restricted in a very poor set of cases... and the standard format EPUB is very Spartan. In any case, it's not like LaTeX, I'm talking about making tools that a not technic user can understand without a great effort. Anb about making a format more similar to dynamic web pages (html5 + javascript) than to latex (but without the risk of executing code, the dynamism should be programmed in the viewer, wich works with the semantic data embedded in the document). I was writting to the OpenDocument Foundation because i thought it was a little more than LibreOffice... It's only LibreOffice? -- - Per la llibertat del coneixement - - Per la llibertat de la ment... - -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 11:17 +0200, CaStarCo wrote: 2011/4/25 Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com On 04/25/2011 08:59 AM, todd rme wrote: Sounds like latex Apart from discussions on the characteristics of the file format, ebooks are definitely outside the scope of The Document Foundation. There are already several organizations working around ebooks, and taking care of the related problems. snip Wich organizations? I think that if we have to trust that these organizations will innovate we are going to wait a very long time. I know that I am not a guru and not and expert, but I think that this work is not impossible.. then, why the actual ebooks are that set of static crap? why it's so difficult to make technic books for ebook readers? the usage of semantic data is restricted in a very poor set of cases... and the standard format EPUB is very Spartan. snip I was writting to the OpenDocument Foundation Close - but not quite - this is a list for The Document Foundation. The OpenDocument standard is overseen by a different organization, OASIS - http://www.oasis-open.org/ because i thought it was a little more than LibreOffice... It's only LibreOffice? I hope that it will be eventually. Thanks Drew Jensen -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
On 25 April 2011 10:40, drew d...@baseanswers.com wrote: On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 11:17 +0200, CaStarCo wrote: 2011/4/25 Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com On 04/25/2011 08:59 AM, todd rme wrote: Sounds like latex Apart from discussions on the characteristics of the file format, ebooks are definitely outside the scope of The Document Foundation. There are already several organizations working around ebooks, and taking care of the related problems. snip Wich organizations? I think that if we have to trust that these organizations will innovate we are going to wait a very long time. I know that I am not a guru and not and expert, but I think that this work is not impossible.. then, why the actual ebooks are that set of static crap? why it's so difficult to make technic books for ebook readers? the usage of semantic data is restricted in a very poor set of cases... and the standard format EPUB is very Spartan. snip I was writting to the OpenDocument Foundation Close - but not quite - this is a list for The Document Foundation. The OpenDocument standard is overseen by a different organization, OASIS - http://www.oasis-open.org/ because i thought it was a little more than LibreOffice... It's only LibreOffice? I hope that it will be eventually. Thanks Drew Jensen I think this is a very interesting issue. We are moving from the dominant technologies that were designed to put information on paper to the dominant need of presenting information on screens. With the revolution in digital readers this is only going to increase and then what relevance has document formats that are primarily designed to target hard copy output? If odf does not adapt it will become obsolete. I am constantly irritated by having to download pdfs, .docs and so on when all I want to do is view the information without cluttering up my download area with hundreds of files that only ever get glanced at. In most of these cases simply putting the info in a web page would do and if it really needs printing, print that page or create a pdf from it. Even if we are not there yet, most information in the future will never get printed to hard copy and that is going to be more the case as time goes on. LO and odf have to be adapt. -- Ian Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications The Schools ITQ www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940 You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
On 04/25/2011 11:11 AM, drew wrote: However, should LibreOffice have support for producing documents targeted to eReaders? I don't know maybe, probably. I am not an expert on ebooks formats, but I know there are a lot of efforts around the ePub format to become a standard. Unfortunately, there are too many commercial interests around ebooks today for the development of a real independent standard. Anyway, should such a standard be defined and accepted, I would personally be in favour of supporting it, as documents are becoming more pervasive than in the past and in the future will be accessed through a multitude of devices (many of them being mobile). Best regards, Italo -- Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com mobile +39.348.5653829 VoIP +39.02.320621813 skype italovignoli -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
There is a draft of the EPUB3 specification ( http://idpf.org/news/epub-3-specification-public-draft-released ), I think that this spec has many problems: the capability of scripting (wich is potentially harmful), the low emphasis on semantic data (they use metadata, but specially related to the book structure, not with its content), to forget the 3d models type of media (epub3 only supports images, video and sound, but not 3d models wich the user could explore), and the absence of profiles (they talk about fallbacks, but only for scripting, not for media content). I suppose there are good reasons to choose that spec and not an extended one... but at that moment, I can imagine which reasons are. I think that would be interesting to program an ebook editor, to promote the EPUB use over other privative formats. Many lacks of the EPUB format can be covered with scripting, but hidding the scripting to the user, doing it automaticly behind the scene. If there are interested people, then I'm interested on helping working on webkit integration. Kind regards 2011/4/25 Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com On 04/25/2011 11:11 AM, drew wrote: However, should LibreOffice have support for producing documents targeted to eReaders? I don't know maybe, probably. I am not an expert on ebooks formats, but I know there are a lot of efforts around the ePub format to become a standard. Unfortunately, there are too many commercial interests around ebooks today for the development of a real independent standard. Anyway, should such a standard be defined and accepted, I would personally be in favour of supporting it, as documents are becoming more pervasive than in the past and in the future will be accessed through a multitude of devices (many of them being mobile). Best regards, Italo -- Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com mobile +39.348.5653829 VoIP +39.02.320621813 skype italovignoli -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- - Per la llibertat del coneixement - - Per la llibertat de la ment... - -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
scripting, not for media content). I suppose there are good reasons to choose that spec and not an extended one... but at that moment, I can imagine which reasons are. Sorry, i wanted to say but at the moment, I CAN'T imagine wich reasons are. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Question about proposing the creation of a new format
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 On 25/04/11 8:53 PM, Christian Lohmaier wrote: There is also http://odt2daisy.sourceforge.net/ - in case your reader supports the daisy format. I hadn't even heard of DAISY, but it looks very cool so thanks for pointing me at it. I just installed the extension and will have a little play with it at some nebulous point in the future. Other than that: what would be a special requirement for eReaders? I can't speak for anyone else, but as long as an eReader can display content as it would in a normal book then it's good enough. If that book is a novel, then it will usually be pretty easy (e.g. text, italics, bold, small capitals, subscript, superscript and maybe footnotes). If that book is a text book (e.g. a science book) with charts, formula, pictures, etc.) then more may be required. I know PDF is suboptimal because it needs to scale to the display screen. When it comes to books, PDF is only really useful for type-setting a print book (e.g. the way Lulu uses them for preparing print on demand books). plain text might be boring to read (headings, etc hard to spot, lack of structural information for navigation), rtf might not be supported by the reader... Well, I wouldn't opt for either of those formats. So there probably is no one-size-fits all solution. And it depends on what the purpose is: personal use (i.e. conversion of random documents) or dedicated publishing (aim is to write a book and publish it) and thus how many restrictions you can impose on the structure/formatting of the document. Exactly. At this stage most ebook publishers, including self-publishers, usually need at least two or three formats for each publication and often more. Until your post I was considering PDF, ePub, Kindle (.mobi) and maybe one or two others (.lit and whatever Sony uses). Now you can add DAISY to the list too. It takes a little time to prepare all the relevant formats, but compared to the process of writing, proofing and editing, not really all that much. Regards, Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEAREKAAYFAk22TscACgkQNxrFv6BK4xOCPACg2MrNKNR+rHs1sYTFul8PuyN4 dgcAnixKVPC8dMbq/hZt1TB50JebuPpX =oQTC -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
