E-book

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Definition

The Wikipedia (12:06, 7 July 2006 (MEST)) entry provides the following definitions: “An e-book (also: eBook, ebook) is an electronic (or digital) version of a book. The term is used ambiguously both to refer to either an individual work in a digital format, or a hardware device used to read books in digital format. Some users deprecate the second meaning in favor of the more precise "e-book device"” ... “The term e-text is often used synonymously with the term e-book, and is also used for the more limited case of data in ASCII text format excluding books in proprietary file formats.”

History

Ardito (2000) describes how Andries Van Dam, a professor of technology at Brown University in the USA, coined the phrase "electronic book" while working on the first hypertext system during 1967 and 1968 on an IBM 360 mainframe, and that in 1968, Alan Kay conceptualised an e-book called Dynabook, a portable, interactive personal computer with a flat panel display and wireless communication. Though e-books are not new, their uptake has been slow, especially when compared to other e-formats such as e-journals and e-newspapers. One reason for this is because e-books have been available in many formats and these formats are often incompatible and non-interoperable.

(Anurada & Usha, 2006:48)

Typology

DSchneider distinguishes the following major forms

  • e-books that only can be read on specialized devices.
  • e-books that have been designed for reading on standard computers (including mobile devices). Typical formats are HTML or PDF (but with adapted pagination and line length). Such books also include navigation features such clickable cross-links, indexes, etc.
  • e-books in plain text format. This is how the Gutenberg project started. This format is also frequent for short "how to install something" manuals.
  • digital books that are meant to be printed on paper. Typically these are PDF files with a page size that doesn't fit on our current low-resolution screens (even my 1200x1900 monitors). Sometimes, paper books or articles are scanned and redistributed as huge PDF files (e.g. teachers do that quite a lot).
  • on demand books is an orthogonal category. These are books that are assembled on the fly by users or information providers from various sources, e.g. wiki pages or DITA topics.

Standards and Software

Formats

Firstly, one has to distinguish between the formats used to write the book (source) and the delivery formats.

Encoding formats for initial authoring:

  1. Any sort of word processor format, in particular MS RTF/doc or more recent standardized formats such as Open document format or the MS equivalent that also aims to become a standard. Sometimes, such texts are delivered through the web "as is", sometimes HTML/PDF or other formats are produced.
  2. Any sort of XML/SGML based encoding, edited with either a programmer's editor or a Wysiwyg tool.
  3. TEX/Latex, popular in science.

Formats that are both used for authoring the source and reading

  1. HTML
  2. Several XML languages (together with some rendering (e.g. stylesheet) technology)
  3. CHI (MS Compressed HTML Help) that allows to distribute a set of HTML files, graphics and metadata as a single zip file
  4. IMS Content Packaging, maybe the most popular format for e-learning texts to be read through an LMS.
  5. Wikis (see: Wikipedia:WikiReader)

There are several delivery formats, most of them proprietary e.g.

  1. Adobe reader in PDF format (Ebookreader). This is the most popular format for texts to be printed.
  2. PostScript (PS)
  3. Hiebook reader in HI format (home page);
  4. Microsoft reader in LIT format (home page);
  5. Mobipocket in PRC format (home page). Works on most PDA types.
  6. Netwton eBook in PKG format.
  7. Open electronic book package format
  8. Palm reader in PDB format (see home page)
  9. Image formats such as JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG (typically used for either scanned texts or visually rich formats).
  10. Typical web formats, such as HTML, PDF etc.

Software

More entries for clients and production tools should be added here. In the meantime go to MobileRead Wiki. This website includes most everything you need to know about e-books.

Readers
Authoring
Multipurpose
  • Calibre, free, open source and cross-platform.
On-demand generated books

A new trend may be on-demand generated books, e.g. with either PDF libraries or XSLFO to PDF pipelines, one can quite easily implement book output from databases or different file formats.

  • Some Mediawiki extensions allow to print an article or a collection of acticles as PDF. See the wiki book article.
  • XML Standards like DITA are specifically made for such endeavors.
  • Editors like O'Reilly also have technology in the pipeline, e.g. see the SafaryU project (now on hold) that allowed teachers to combine books from several sources.

Links

  • 7 Things You Should Know About E-books PDF - a good layman's introduction from EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

References

  • Ardito, S. (2000), "Electronic books: To "E" or not to "E"? That is the question", Searcher, Vol. 8 No.4, pp.28-39, HTML
  • Anuradha, K.T., H.S. Usha (2006), Use of e-books in an academic and research environment: A case study from the Indian Institute of Science, 40 (1) 48-62, HTML/PDF (Access restricted)
  • Gibbons, S. (2005), Electronic Books in Libraries, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY HTML
  • Sulli, J.D. (2004), "Choose your eBook readers", Writers-Publish: the information for new writers and publishers, HTML
  • Tedd, L.A. (2004), "Ebook development in UK higher education: an overview", Unesco Interactive Workshop on Ebooks, Hotel Atria, Bangalore, September 16, 2004: PDF.
  • Urs, S.R. (2004), "Unesco Interactive Workshop on Ebooks, Bangalore, September 16 2004: a report", PDF.
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