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Standard Ebooks

standardebooks.org

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Re: Standard Ebooks

#111

Post by boznz »

acabal wrote: post #104
boznz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I email epubs to my kindle frequently and they open and read just like any ebook. I last tried this a week ago and it was fine.

When you use 'Send to Kindle' to send an epub to your device, you are not reading an epub. In the link above, it mentions how Kindle converts epub to an Amazon format before allowing your device to read it. Amazon's formats on the whole are inferior, with poor rendering capabilities, and an automatic conversion means all bets are off in terms of what the ebook will look like. Kindle will not natively support epub unt…

I did not know that and does kind of explain one book with pictures that looked a bit weird. On the whole though, text epubs are totally readable as I get most of my books from non-amazon sites such as smashwords and email them to the kindle to read.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#112

Post by weijiacheng »

devashishp wrote: post #108
weijiacheng wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site actually hosts several "religious books" (try filtering by the "Spirituality" tag -- I've even produced several books on religious topics myself for SE). What it doesn't host are "Religious texts from modern world religions" (what some might call "scriptures," e.g. the Bible or the Quran) which is a much narrower category than "religious books." As a religious person myself, I actually think this policy is v…

I think that makes sense, but it still seems a bit arbitrary, I don’t see bookshops having these issues

Yes, bookshops will sell one version of the Bible to Catholics, another to Protestants, another to fundamentalists, another to progressives, etc. :)

In contrast, part of the SE editorial philosophy is that it tries to host the best (based on academic scholarship, translation quality, academic acclaim, etc.) version of each text available in the public domain, which excludes that "something for everyone" sort of play available to a commercial bookstore. You could rightly argue that this is losing something (it's good to have multiple translations to compare if you're reading a text for critical purposes), but the SE editorial philosophy avoids a certain amount of confusion and clutter for the general reader. So there's a deliberate (you could call it "arbitrary" in some sense, if you wish) tradeoff being made here.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#113

Post by robin_reala »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #105
boznz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

epub is just a collection of zipped HTML, CSS FONTS and images and as bog standard as you can get. You can open it with a Zip extractor and see.

Huh.. yeah.. so then why doesn't Firefox/Chrome open it?

Edge used to support ePubs directly, but they removed that functionality for some reason. There is a little more to it than just rendering. E.g. ideally you’d want some popup table of contents support.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#114

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

bentley wrote: post #77
wharvle wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, any edition of a book that's "updating" modern English loses me, including messing with capitalization. Not interested. I love the formatting on Standard Ebooks, but they're no use to me if they're "updating" language, aside from things like repairing typesetting and formatting lost or mangled in PG editions. Agree on notes in print, side notes (on very-wide editions) are best, then foot, then end of chapter en…

As someone who regularly compares different scans of old books, I counter: for centuries it’s already been common practice for publishers to update spellings, recapitalize, and even make more drastic changes. You just never noticed because print books don’t have a public commit log. In the case of Standard Ebooks, “sound‐alike” changes are allowed (so spelling and capitalization changes are allowed when they make sen…

The problem is when irregular spelling is intended to capture a vernacular. It does a disservice to everyone, erasing the author's intent with homogenized language.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#115

Post by bentley »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #114
bentley wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who regularly compares different scans of old books, I counter: for centuries it’s already been common practice for publishers to update spellings, recapitalize, and even make more drastic changes. You just never noticed because print books don’t have a public commit log. In the case of Standard Ebooks, “sound‐alike” changes are allowed (so spelling and capitalization changes are allowed when they make sen…

The problem is when irregular spelling is intended to capture a vernacular. It does a disservice to everyone, erasing the author's intent with homogenized language.

If the spelling is intended to be vernacular, the SE policy is not to change the spelling. I (a mere reader) have successfully reverted dialectal spellings in SE several times.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#116

Post by Pet_Ant »

nacs wrote: post #95
noitamroftuo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says on each book page "Compatible epub — All devices and apps except Kindles and Kobos." - but i think this is incorrect bc epub is now the preferred format for Kindle.

Kobos also support epub. Almost all my Kobo books are EPUB and work great.

Real EPUBs can crash Kobos and you need to specifically reformat them with a plug-in in Calbre. It may be a recent update that broke it, since I used to have less problems.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#117

Post by opminion »

devashishp wrote: post #108
weijiacheng wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site actually hosts several "religious books" (try filtering by the "Spirituality" tag -- I've even produced several books on religious topics myself for SE). What it doesn't host are "Religious texts from modern world religions" (what some might call "scriptures," e.g. the Bible or the Quran) which is a much narrower category than "religious books." As a religious person myself, I actually think this policy is v…

I think that makes sense, but it still seems a bit arbitrary, I don’t see bookshops having these issues

US Barnes & Noble can have a few meters of shelves with different versions of the Bible, and a buying guide. It is quite striking if you are not used to it.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#118

Post by moonchild »

Handprint4469 wrote: post #2

I would love if they offered a download option for a file you could just upload to Lulu (or similar service) to have it printed and mailed to you. Every time I buy one of these public domain books from Amazon, they are invariably shitty, low-quality "printed by Amazon" versions. I miss the time where you could get a high-quality hardcover, but more and more those seem reserved only for the current week's NYT best-sel…

Lulu does not make 'high-quality hardcovers'.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#119

Post by femto »

willdr wrote: post #83
meristohm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kobo, with either stock OS or KOReader (I use this, in part because the font size can be easily increased for my daughter who so far needs text larger than stock) or Plato.

Is the build quality and backlighting as good as the Kindle? And do they have a seamless option (no notched screen)?

I've been happy with the half dozen Kobos in my house.

Weirdly, about half of them have developed a problem after about 5-7 years, whereby they intermittently stop charging. Replacing the battery doesn't seem to fix it. Might be a problem with the soldering of the USB connector to the PCB?

As a bonus they are Linux based, and you can do fun things like replace internal SD cards with bigger ones, login using telnet and install new applications.

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