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Your ePub Is fine

andreklein.net

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Re: Your ePub Is fine

#71

Post by stonecharioteer »

nfw2 wrote: post #31

As someone who has spent a good deal of time trying to build ereader software, eventually I decided to try to deal with the devil and build on top of RMSDK. There is no way to get access to it. I don't mean the licensing cost is prohibitively expensive for an indie dev although I understand that to be the case as well. There is no one to talk to. The email listed on their website does not respond to anything. Not eve…

Hello, I'm building https://merrilin.ai, could I pick your brain about the problems you faced?

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#72

Post by MadnessASAP »

ameliaquining wrote: post #39
gsnedders wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

epubcheck is meant to ensure conformance with the standards, not the interoperably implemented subset of the standards. (Which has lots of awkward questions: which implementations of the standards, which versions of those implementations, etc.)

The latter seems like what the tool's users actually want. That it's a harder problem doesn't change that.

The user wants the website to work in IE6, developing and testing only against IE6 to the detriment of other browsers is not generally regarded as a healthy state of affairs.

The standard exists, it is the responsibility of both the producer and consumer of ePUB files to adhere to the standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#73

Post by nfw2 »

stonecharioteer wrote: post #71
nfw2 wrote: post #31

As someone who has spent a good deal of time trying to build ereader software, eventually I decided to try to deal with the devil and build on top of RMSDK. There is no way to get access to it. I don't mean the licensing cost is prohibitively expensive for an indie dev although I understand that to be the case as well. There is no one to talk to. The email listed on their website does not respond to anything. Not eve…

Hello, I'm building https://merrilin.ai , could I pick your brain about the problems you faced?

Sure thing. I've actually been working on the spoiler-free resource angle as well. I can book a call to talk. Distribution is the killer problem here though.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#74

Post by marcus_holmes »

echelon wrote: post #48
turpentine wrote: post #45

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]

> You're in the 0.001%. Your asks are arcane and orthogonal to most users of software, who just want their PC to do something neat and useful.

Right up until enshittification kicks in and suddenly everyone cares and there are shouts of destroying the evil techbros who are poisoning the minds of our youth to buy a new yacht.

Can you imagine the situation if Jobs hadn't killed Flash? Most of the commercial websites required a Flash blob to deliver full functionality even back then in the early 2000's. Adobe never even vaguely pretended to be the good guys, they would have enshittified as soon as they possibly could, as hard as they possibly could (as they have done with the rest of their software). The entire web would be held to ransom at this point.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#75

Post by 2cynykyl »

fnord77 wrote: post #53
acdha wrote: 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

I also learned this term pretty recently, loved it. Another fav tech term is automagically :-)

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#76

Post by preg_match »

Kaliboy wrote: post #59
drtz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. Is this a troll? What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today (excluding the obvious answer of runtime vulnerabilities that allowed apps to escape the sandbox)?

There was more unique content/UI in the Flash era.

This went away not only because flash died, but also as the internet commercialized.

I mean, consider this: McDonald’s used to be fun and colorful. Now every McDonald’s is boring and gray. And, wait, every store is boring and gray! And flash had nothing to do with that.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#77

Post by eichin »

fdgfikgfv wrote: post #51
drtz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. Is this a troll? What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today (excluding the obvious answer of runtime vulnerabilities that allowed apps to escape the sandbox)?

Flash had its problems but as a user, it looked sharper and smoother than even current websites. And its editor gave non-tech users ability to create amazing animations, interfaces, and even games.

wasn't some of that smoothness because it ran at a 100hz tick without any way of adapting it (and still running existing code)? That was the complaint I kept hearing from people attempting to make flash on phones viable (this led to ludicrous battery consumption)

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#78

Post by hardwaresofton »

ndiddy wrote: post #70
hardwaresofton wrote: post #54

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 fun…

> 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.

This note was in the original comment, did you read it? The fact that it is $400 (more expensive) and has less out of the box software is literally mentioned to alert people to that.

> 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.

This is patently false, the latest Kobo Libra Color is using secure boot which completely locks out custom development:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=363175

So much so that QuillOS which used to be Kobo focused rewrote to support the PineNote

https://github.com/Quill-OS/quill

https://quill-os.org/

The point is to buy hardware that is built for you to freely modify and fully own, from the start.

My post was to make sure everyone knew the PineNote was an option, because I certainly did not know it until someone on HN made me aware.

Could you maybe make your point more concrete? Are you attempting to completely dissuade people from using the PineNote because it may not be easy to side load apps to it on hacker news?. Obviously different people have different propensities to do hacking, and some may not be able to afford the PineNote due to how expensive it is, but it's not clear what the goal of your comment was.

If your goal was "invest in Kobo instead of PineNote", I disagree with that. I'm not interested in investing (whether money or time) in an ecosystem that is just going to rug pull me eventually, over nickels and dimes.

BTW for those who agree, another great option is XTeink -- very hackable, and I've bought one myself:

https://www.xteink.com/

And there's a Linux phone out there which looks pretty encouraging too:

https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1splus/

Graphene is likely still the easier more polished option, but it's great to have options these days.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#79

Post by Papazsazsa »

echelon wrote: post #24
acdha wrote: 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…

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'll get hammered for this on HN, but the web was magical and weird with Flash around, and now it feels quite vanilla and boring. I long for the days of weird experimental art and goofy animations and bonkers UIs.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#80

Post by [deleted] »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #54

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...

[deleted]
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