FeedbooksFeedbooks will have on-the-fly .epub files this month,” reports Hadrien. “We’ll enable this feature on books first and then on RSS feeds too. In the future, we’ll work on improving the overall look of these .epub files and would also like to add a ‘custom .epub’ feature on the website, where anyone will be able to easily customize the CSS and layout of the book.”

What a great role model for Project Gutenberg and other public domain sites! I still hope that PG will carefully scrutinize the IDPF’s standards and make sure that good validation software is definitely on the way. But Feedbooks’ forthcoming use of .epub is one more sign that the format is not just for DRM-contaminated books. Ideally Hadrien can share his wisdom on .epub with Gutenberg and other public domain sites. Any code to make available?

Feedbooks, by the way, is worth paying close attention to. I’m looking forward to the refinement and expansion of Hadrien’s service that can turn newspapers and into RSS feeds in formats for the Sony Reader and other machines.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Another short comment: Adam B. is currently porting both the new version of FBReader (with initial epub support) and our own application for the iLiad.

    It means that anyone will soon be able to directly download both e-books and RSS feeds on their iLiad (PDF or Epub) without any computer around (you just need a WiFi connection).

    Of course our application will be open source and could be ported to any device with some sort of connectivity and using Linux as their OS.

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