Example note: "EPUB originally didn't support remote resources and people put a lot of work into changing. Loading stuff over the network is HTML's killer feature. Blocking network assets is a setback for format adoption, not progress."
> Blocking network assets is a setback for format adoption
People are standing here telling him that _allowing_ network assets _is a setback for format adoption_ and he's just going to keep pounding this stupid, obnoxious drum of his until he runs everyone off.
> almost all of the problems described would be solved by getting OS vendors (Google, MS, Apple) to invest more money in EPUB
That's back-asswards. Google, MS, and Apple don't give a shit about EPUB, they never will, and it's arguable that we're better served with them not buying a seat at that table considering how poorly their "help" has helped web standards, as much of the rest of his dismissive thread helpfully notes.
If he wants money for EPUB standards he should shake the cup at IDPF members who rely on it, and particularly Amazon, to whom he quite vocally abdicated the publishing space 12 years ago.[1]
Barking at operating system companies is nonsense at best and how we wind up with another, even more avoidable situation where the space is held hostage by them at worst. At least Amazon can chuck some goodwill money at EPUB development while continuing to kick its ass up and down the market with MOBI.
(Aside from all this, his dismissals of the "clunky" reading system complaint, citing how EPUB has "too many divergences", only further proves to me how tunneled the vision is of the people involved. To hell with forking or improving EPUB, then, because it can't be improved if that's the attitude of the people most involved with or influential within it. What bloody point is there in the customizability of a format that _nobody_ can effectively build tools for or consume?)
1: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/notes/amazon-wins/, in which he also admits that he has no idea how to work with IDPF, which is a really great sign of how long things have been going this badly in this space
https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/epub/former-participants/ certainly shows Google and Apple participated in the working group. Apple also has a book store selling EPUB books and has EPUB readers for both MacOS and iOS. Google also has an app that handles EPUB.
> People are standing here telling him that _allowing_ network assets _is a setback for format adoption_ and he's just going to keep pounding this stupid, obnoxious drum of his until he runs everyone off.
I don't know the background that you're frustrated about, but I'd suggest that the answer might be: 'it depends' - and it depends on the intended purpose of the format in question. PDF is self-contained, and can be read (mostly) reliably on almost any device with the right software; PDFs having to have internet access to be read or opened would be a bad thing; further, the same goes for most formats - including EPUB (as you say) and audio files, picture files, etc.
Article: "A PDF is a single file that contains all the images, fonts, and other data needed to render it."
This is only true if you are using PDF/A, or have explicitly bundled all of your fonts in some version of the PDF standard.
Otherwise, 14 total typefaces must be rendered by the viewer. These 14 are: Times (in regular, italic, bold, and bold italic), Courier (in regular, oblique, bold and bold oblique), Helvetica (in regular, oblique, bold and bold oblique), Symbol, and Zapf Dingbats.
The 14 standard typefaces can vary between viewers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF#Text
"...the base fourteen fonts... or suitable substitute fonts with the same metrics, should be available in most PDF readers, but they are not guaranteed to be available in the reader, and may only display correctly if the system has them installed."
Depending upon what the viewer bundles, PDFs using these 14 might not render as expected.
Below is a deeper discussion from the wiki:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110718231502/http://www.planet...
I'd value that a lot more than Pocket (which I always turn off).
And it is a feature of books that they stay the same.
Both can be a feature, the ability to change (e.g. they fix something in the cloud), and the disability to change (e.g. you can have it as you bought it).
Don't confuse what's necessary for standard fiction books with what the format should support.
JS and interactivity are fine, in technical books, reports, or niche fiction.
What I absolutely agree on is that epubs don't need is networking. Resources on the internet get stale after years or decades anyway, so inclusion of any network assets into an epub guarantees that the work will degrade over the years. References can be web links, but nothing from the internet should be embedded.
a) What epub editor software allow direct editing of MathML, and is it a good idea to depend on such software being available in order to edit the book without tinkering directly with the MathML by hand?
b) Does MathML support everything mathjax does?
Lots of governments around the world would love to know what their citizens are reading. Few would be bold enough to go after this directly, but if some company operating in their country has the data then there’s a path for that government to get the data.