AZARDI- Release 2. Now it Reads, Checks, Edits, Repackages

2010-07-01: AZARDI is no longer in development or support by Infogrid Pacific.
It can still be downloaded

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If you are serious about creating excellent ePubs with full specification conformance; or if you are a publishing professional looking for more quality control over ePubs delivered; then the new release of AZARDI is probably a must have tool on you desktop (if you have a Windows OS that is!). The new release has both the promised Reference mode ePub Package Checker, and a bonus Component Editor built right in.You can read more about it and download it here.

The one tool lets you read, validate and edit/repackage your ePubs. With a little interface familiarity, it takes just seconds to make major changes and corrections.

Reference Mode

The IDPF ePub specification is a three part specification with lots of MUSTS and MUST NOTs, buried into its verbose prose. Some of the package validation issues jump between the sections so it can be a bit daunting to work through it all. This version of AZARDI checks the “big” packaging and validation items; future version will add more detailed checking and reporting. In fact during development AZARDI found a packaging bug in eScape, which was missed by ePubCheck (which is why we did the last eScape maintenance release).

Edit Mode

The decision to include an Edit Mode was made at the last minute, but seemed to be a necessary supporting feature for the Reference Mode if AZARDI was going to be truely useful. What's the point in getting a conformance warning if you cant fix it then and there.

Edit Mode can be used for much more than package conformance corrections of course. It is particularly nice for those last minute errata and CSS tweaks as well. One staff suggestion was to make a book of empty pages in eScape, and then drop HTML straight into the pages using AZARDI-Edit. I don't know how useful that will really be, but it certainly can be done. Edit Mode starts to take AZARDI in a slightly different, and interesting direction which we will exploit in Release 3.

Release 2 Information

AZARDI Release 2 is only available for Windows at present, with the Linux (Debian) package right behind. We are getting serious about a release for Mac, but first we have to learn how to turn the new machine on!

Please remember this is software, and it's checking random ePub packages against an open specification. That means there is probably going to be bugs or something wrong somewhere. If you have an opinion, or would like to report bugs, behaviours or something it is no doing well or right, we would appreciate hearing about it.It is best to send reports directly to azardi@infogridpacific.com.

Next for AZARDI

1. URL library functions - you can run and share an Internet distributed ePub library. This will include library management functions.
2. ePub-Remix - Combine sections from various books into a new book and package it (this may have a dual viewport interface - IE two books open at once).  
3. User embedded annotations. Not just bookmarks and notes, but annotations that embed into the ePub so you can create a new distributable derivative work. (With the remix function, great for teachers and lecturers to create custom annotated ePubs for lessons, courses, study guides, etc.)

Meanwhile we hope you will enjoy the freedom from having both reference mode and edit mode in your desktop ePub Reader.

Comments

[bookie]

Hurry up with the Linux release, :) and please put search, bookmarking and word definition lookup on the agenda for future releases.

Bookmarking is of great importance in an e-book reader, you scarcely ever read a book all the way through,one will more often than not need to mark a particular spot in a book, I think you will have make this one a priority.

[Laisvunas]

It would be great to have dual viewport interface - two books open at once, but it seems to me that much more important is the possibility to open inner links of the publication in tabs. Also it would be great to have the possibility to open different publications in different tabs. Tabbed interface is usual in browsers and serves us really well.

Yet another thing - it would be great to have full text search though opened publication and through entire library.

Thanks for the excellent soft and keep your great work!

[cell functions]

With a little interface familiarity, it takes just seconds to make major changes and corrections.

[Tadalafil]

What's the point in getting a conformance warning if you cant fix it then and there.