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The ePub format & why blind readers should care about it
ePub (Electronic Publication)
Filename extension: .epub
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
ePub and DAISY share some similarities but they are different standards. ePub is designed to be the format that the trade (Bookstore) community uses for commercial ebooks and is overseen by the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum). The current standard contains a DAISY book amongst its internal contents but this is typically locked up in the proprietary delivery format that the individual publishers and book distributors use.
To play DAISY materials you need a DAISY player and several of the commercial players play ePub along with several other formats. Unfortunately the eBook reader manufactures have not typically included a DAISY player in their devices or in their software, if they did you could also play DAISY materials on them. However, as there is a Daisy book and html files already in the ePub ebook, conversion software could be developed that could grab these files and extract them to make the ebook accessible (refer farther down this doc to read Arache's description of one of these conversion programs).
Also, as of last year, the DAISY Consortium agreed to help to provide leadership and resources to assist in the maintenance for EPUB standards
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/08/prweb2754274.htm
which means that in the future there may be more accessibility built into the epub format.
Also note that epub is replacing PDF as the preferred ebook format amongst some ebook vendors, as discussed in this
New York Times article on ePub format
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/technology/internet/13reader.html?_r=2
and with the new iPad being one fo the devices for which epub is being produced, one may hope that this trend will increase in the very near future.
It is also encouraging to see many other readers and writers getting fed up with the PDF format, as expressed recently by SF writer Charlie Stross in his subtley-titled blog post
PDF: Satanic horror from the abyss, or merely evil?
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/pdf-satanic-horror-from-the-ab.html
in which Stross offers some of his own texts in what he refers to as more sane formats (thus, if you are looking for some etexts of Charlie's books, follow that link).
Here is a project to develop an accessible epub reader:
Emerson a cross platform DAISY and EPub reader
http://code.google.com/p/emerson-reader/
User FAQ
http://code.google.com/p/emerson-reader/wiki/UserFAQ
and a wiki-style guide to creating ePubs.
http://sites.google.com/site/spontaneousderivation/an-epub-tutorial
written by Arachne
Arachne also had the following to say about converting epub into formats such as html or rtf which could be read on an assistive tech device:
block quote start
I know of an open source ebook reading/conversion software called
calibre, but DTB isn't one of the supported output formats---nor is
HTML, strangely enough (it supports ePUB, Mobipocket, and several
others). I've been experimenting with it this evening, and I've found
that it can convert ePUB books to single-file RTF documents, which
another program (I think Windows has something that edits RTF on it by
default, I know Mac does) can then convert to a single file of HTML.
The interface of calibre is unfortunately not the friendliest in the
world. Or at least, I have difficulty working with it....
Here is a link to calibre's site:
http://calibre-ebook.com/
When I use calibre, this is how I convert the books:
1. Add the book to the library (calibre works in a manner similar to
iTunes, it copies files to its own library directory)
2. The book shows up in a list in the main window after it gets added.
Right-click the book in the list.
3. On the menu that appears, choose convert ebooks / convert
individually. This will open up a new window with information about
the book.
4. There's an input format dropbox in the left and an output format
dropbox on the right. The input format will be correctly selected
already, the output format can be chosen. Choose RTF.
5. At the bottom right of the window there is an OK button, click OK.
6. The book information window closes. Calibre works for a while.
7. Calibre finishes processing at some point (usually under a minute,
but I've seen it take longer for huge books) and you can right click
the book again in the main window.
8. On the menu that appears, choose Open containing folder. This will
open up the directory in explorer or whatever Microsoft uses these
days to browse files.
9. The RTF file will be in the directory. Or should be, unless Calibre
ran into an error (it will pop up a dialog box about the error).
There could be an easier way. But I'm so horrible at interfaces...
The calibre developer is a good guy and takes feature requests, bug
reports, and questions seriously. He's quite interested in supporting
as many formats as possible, so supporting Daisy would be another
feather in his cap, especially since Daisy is XML in nature.
Also, he should definitely add support for generating a single HTML
file.... that would be highly useful for many purposes.
Let me know if this helps, and if you have other questions, please ask.
AJ
block quote end
Filename extension: .epub
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
ePub and DAISY share some similarities but they are different standards. ePub is designed to be the format that the trade (Bookstore) community uses for commercial ebooks and is overseen by the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum). The current standard contains a DAISY book amongst its internal contents but this is typically locked up in the proprietary delivery format that the individual publishers and book distributors use.
To play DAISY materials you need a DAISY player and several of the commercial players play ePub along with several other formats. Unfortunately the eBook reader manufactures have not typically included a DAISY player in their devices or in their software, if they did you could also play DAISY materials on them. However, as there is a Daisy book and html files already in the ePub ebook, conversion software could be developed that could grab these files and extract them to make the ebook accessible (refer farther down this doc to read Arache's description of one of these conversion programs).
Also, as of last year, the DAISY Consortium agreed to help to provide leadership and resources to assist in the maintenance for EPUB standards
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/08/prweb2754274.htm
which means that in the future there may be more accessibility built into the epub format.
Also note that epub is replacing PDF as the preferred ebook format amongst some ebook vendors, as discussed in this
New York Times article on ePub format
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/technology/internet/13reader.html?_r=2
and with the new iPad being one fo the devices for which epub is being produced, one may hope that this trend will increase in the very near future.
It is also encouraging to see many other readers and writers getting fed up with the PDF format, as expressed recently by SF writer Charlie Stross in his subtley-titled blog post
PDF: Satanic horror from the abyss, or merely evil?
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/pdf-satanic-horror-from-the-ab.html
in which Stross offers some of his own texts in what he refers to as more sane formats (thus, if you are looking for some etexts of Charlie's books, follow that link).
Here is a project to develop an accessible epub reader:
Emerson a cross platform DAISY and EPub reader
http://code.google.com/p/emerson-reader/
User FAQ
http://code.google.com/p/emerson-reader/wiki/UserFAQ
and a wiki-style guide to creating ePubs.
http://sites.google.com/site/spontaneousderivation/an-epub-tutorial
written by Arachne
Arachne also had the following to say about converting epub into formats such as html or rtf which could be read on an assistive tech device:
block quote start
I know of an open source ebook reading/conversion software called
calibre, but DTB isn't one of the supported output formats---nor is
HTML, strangely enough (it supports ePUB, Mobipocket, and several
others). I've been experimenting with it this evening, and I've found
that it can convert ePUB books to single-file RTF documents, which
another program (I think Windows has something that edits RTF on it by
default, I know Mac does) can then convert to a single file of HTML.
The interface of calibre is unfortunately not the friendliest in the
world. Or at least, I have difficulty working with it....
Here is a link to calibre's site:
http://calibre-ebook.com/
When I use calibre, this is how I convert the books:
1. Add the book to the library (calibre works in a manner similar to
iTunes, it copies files to its own library directory)
2. The book shows up in a list in the main window after it gets added.
Right-click the book in the list.
3. On the menu that appears, choose convert ebooks / convert
individually. This will open up a new window with information about
the book.
4. There's an input format dropbox in the left and an output format
dropbox on the right. The input format will be correctly selected
already, the output format can be chosen. Choose RTF.
5. At the bottom right of the window there is an OK button, click OK.
6. The book information window closes. Calibre works for a while.
7. Calibre finishes processing at some point (usually under a minute,
but I've seen it take longer for huge books) and you can right click
the book again in the main window.
8. On the menu that appears, choose Open containing folder. This will
open up the directory in explorer or whatever Microsoft uses these
days to browse files.
9. The RTF file will be in the directory. Or should be, unless Calibre
ran into an error (it will pop up a dialog box about the error).
There could be an easier way. But I'm so horrible at interfaces...
The calibre developer is a good guy and takes feature requests, bug
reports, and questions seriously. He's quite interested in supporting
as many formats as possible, so supporting Daisy would be another
feather in his cap, especially since Daisy is XML in nature.
Also, he should definitely add support for generating a single HTML
file.... that would be highly useful for many purposes.
Let me know if this helps, and if you have other questions, please ask.
AJ
block quote end