We have decided to put another ePub desktop reader into the digital publishing soup. At the moment we call it IGP:FLIP-eReader; that's to match our multi-format production environment IGP:FLIP (Front List Interactive Publishing). Of course we reserve the right to give it a fabulous and creative name later.
The rationalization for "yet another reader"
There are a number of ePub readers out there at present. The dominant (and currently only) commercial one is Adobes Digital Editions (This is the same engine used in the Sony BBeB reader), and a half-hearted effort from Mobipocket to allow import of ePubs.
There is an excellent and up-to-date list of ePub Readers with test results at jedisaber.com so there is no need to recycle that information here, except to note the image characteristics of the readers, especially SVG are not rated. In fact only ADE, and the Online Bookworm reader support SVG in any form - in both cases conditionally.
Most (all) of the existing readers are a digital equivalents to a standard printed book, and everyone is seeing the mobile market as the El Dorado of eBooks. It may well be. The feature emphasis in all these readers is some kind of file management system (usually called a library) and paged print book metaphors, or scrolling strategies for resource deprived mobile devices. When eBooks are text only, this is fine, but the moment we introduce images, advanced hyperlinking and other options, things change.
Stretching ePub to do more
ePUB can be effectively used for corporate and government communication, training and education material, and is an excellent substitute for documents where layout, images and interaction is important. Dynamic text is cool and useful. (ADE doesn't even have a link back button and justifies the exclusion as not required!) The current crop of readers are not designed to deliver for complex content. They are generally trying to look and act like books, or deliver scrolling text reading experiences to mobile devices (all of which is excellent and we want to be part of that too). Images, SVG and layout are distant and poor relatives.
We work with a lot of education and training content, producing it for print, multi-market reprint reflows, Online and special packages such as SCORM. ePub appears to be a very useful way to ship out education and training packages (encrypted or not/customized or not). It just has to be demonstrated. To be demonstrated there has to be a reader that goest that little bit further in content presentation. Is it possible to have an ePub reader that will do it all?
Right or wrong, we decided it was our mission to develop an ePub reader that would reasonably handle more complex content and layout than the current batch, was highly standards compliant, and would push the ePub concepts and constraints to the limit. That is, show what ePub is capable of in loving hands.
In conclusion
So we are now working on IGP:FLIP-eReader and the prototype will be out early 2009. It will be targeting dynamically assembled academic, education and training content which has lots of internal links and often lots of images and illustrations.
The nice thing about putting another e-book reader out there is that ePub is not another proprietary format, its a reader for an agreed international standard, and the more the merrier. The core idea is exploiting a single standard to the maximum and liberate content from paper and its metaphors.
