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Your ePub Is fine

andreklein.net

61–70 of 322 posts

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#61

Kobo is actually in the process of completely rewriting their e-reader software (you can download the beta in the EU), and I’m pretty sure it’s no longer based on RMSDK. Adobe basically handed the EPUB DRM market to LCP on a silver platter by being a poor maintainer and then selling off to a third party that had botched the migration and further angered end users and platforms, that are switching off Adobe faster tha…

Have you tried the beta? Have you found it to be substantially better?

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#63
post #55

Is there a way to root the kobo and put a modern renderer in place?

Yes, for the ones I've owned rooting is very easy. KOReader and Plato are both popular (amongst the community of eReader rooting people) alternatives to the OEM software.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#64
post #53
post #20

Adobe has always been like this, too. They squandered an enormous marketshare with Flash because the alternative would've been spending a couple million on QA and they managed to unite all of the browser manufacturers in agreement that the web was better off without such an unreliable partner. I shipped a couple of things on Flash back in the day but it was staggeringly bad software — random crashes, various heisenbu…

> heisenbugs gold

A well-established term of art dating to 1983:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug>.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#65
post #53
post #20

Adobe has always been like this, too. They squandered an enormous marketshare with Flash because the alternative would've been spending a couple million on QA and they managed to unite all of the browser manufacturers in agreement that the web was better off without such an unreliable partner. I shipped a couple of things on Flash back in the day but it was staggeringly bad software — random crashes, various heisenbu…

> heisenbugs gold

Gold, but not new gold: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/heisenbug.html

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#66
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magical? Those are some rose tinted glasses. Having to install a binary blob from a free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask. Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns and virtually non-existent Linux support.

[flagged]

Sure, but Adobe was never going to solve them.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#67
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash is still unsurpassed as the easiest publishing medium. JavaScript build system layer cake and "web standards" are a million times harder than just drawing some stuff, maybe writing a simple function, then building a static file that can be embedded anywhere and even downloaded. You have to spend so much time setting up any flash alternative, and the "standards" are worse. I hate Steve Jobs for killing Flash and…

You know you can use Ruffle if you really want Flash right? https://ruffle.rs But the only standard you need is WASM. All browsers support it. Use whatever you want to make it. In fact, Ruffle is just a WASM app.

Ruffle is not complete or comprehensive. In my test of a dozen swf ruffle could successfully display about half. Compare to the actual flash plugin Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202 (11.2.202.643) in my retro machine browser which displayed them all perfectly.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#68
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magical? Those are some rose tinted glasses. Having to install a binary blob from a free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask. Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns and virtually non-existent Linux support.

[flagged]

I was an average-joe high school student back then.

People hated flash. Even non techies.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#69

I don't like .epub. I understand the reasons why this format exists, and I am 100% behind those reasons. But it's because I don't find any EPUB readers appealing to me. Just give me a FoxIt Reader clone for .epub, that's all. But naaaah!!, every single fucking e-pub reader that I tried must be a fucking library collector instead, like it's 2000's Windows Media Player style. I hate that. As such, whenever I get my han…

Hmm, Sumatra PDF perhaps?

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#70

BTW for those who are looking for a device, the PineNote exists: https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/ More expensive and less out-of-the-box software, but straight to the point on device ownership/what kind of software you can run, fewer strings attached. [EDIT] Great experience blogs on the PineNote https://shom.dev/posts/20250308_pinenote-day-one/ https://shom.dev/posts/20250406_a-pinenote-only-5-day-weeken...

Have you tried the PineNote yourself? It $400 and says that it's "aimed at Linux developers with an extensive knowledge of embedded systems and/or experience with mobile Linux." The community provided firmware they link for it hasn't been updated in over a year.

The Kobos don't limit what you can do with them either, you can sideload alternative e-reader software like KOReader that improves on the built-in reader functionality.

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