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Your ePub Is fine

andreklein.net

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Re: Your ePub Is fine

#241

Post by cygx »

qubidt wrote: post #231
port11 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we blaming the spec and the author of the post for trying to conform to the checks, instead of blaming Adobe or Kobo for using 16-year old technology that ISN’T spec-compliant? -.-

Yes. sometimes specs are badly designed. Targeting a constantly moving goalpost for a spec mainly implemented by embedded devices seems to me like, best case, questionable judgement

True, but that doesn't get Adobe off the hook: CSS mandates that unrecognized declarations should just be ignored, so the worst that's supposed to happen in the average case is some layout funkiness - not catastrophic failure.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#242

Post by al_borland »

wccrawford wrote: post #220
srpablo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today Show me the JavaScript framework (or tool that exports JS) that you can give it to a middle schooler and have them make a cartoon with audio and moving images that they can draw themselves, while responding to user input. Have the exported artifact be consistent across all major operating systems and browsers. Yeah,…

https://threejs.org/

The intro is all code. Flash opened a wysiwyg editor and a timeline.

While I’m sure some exceptional middle schoolers are using threejs, I don’t think this is approachable to the average middle schooler.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#243

Post by dredmorbius »

afiori wrote: post #229
dredmorbius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Image-wise, SVGA + JS probably gets you the clarity. Standard gif / image animations not so much, if that's what you're referencing. This isn't my baliwick, so I've absolutely nothing to say about the ease with which these options can be created.

Conceptually maybe you can compile flash to SVG+js but this has nothing to do with the point. Many insist (I have no direct experience) that the flash ecosystem (especially the editor) was and is unsurpassed as a publishing platform for interactive experiences. Today with the current focus on mobile+low latency+e-commerce optimizations flash would probably have shown a lot of limitations, yet JavaScript, SVG, canvas,…

The narrow point I was addressing was the claim "it looked sharper and smoother than even current websites".

SVGA graphics, being vector-based (as the name suggests), are indeed sharp, most notably when scaling up or down, and I've encountered SVGA-based interactive graphics which are reminiscent of Flash-based animations in that specific regard.

Again, I'm not addressing other aspects of these options, and I do very little direct development of this type.

I'm quite familiar with the claims that Flash was attractive to publishers and creators. On the receiving end, I was less impressed. Odd Todd excepted. The proprietary nature (I generally run Linux) and constant security concerns, as well as hiding web content within an inaccessible format (e.g., text couldn't be readily extracted) were all frustrations. I'm also generally not a fan of any animation.

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

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#244

Post by cjfidpwmwn »

Is it just more or hn has become a place to come and complain and consume tech drama disguised as a tech forum? It's all "I hate dario ", "I hate altman", "corporations are evil".

It's getting very tiresome.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#245

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#246

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#247

Post by giancarlostoro »

willXare wrote: post #191
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…

[flagged]

I wonder which one's more "Evil" Oracle or Adobe, it's surprising they didn't eat each other alive.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#249

Post by pbronez »

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?

That’s really cool! I’ve been thinking about how LLMs could help me with long running series. I read lots of stuff that’s thousands of pages long with a huge cast of characters and locations. Amazons X-Ray is okay ish but (1) not supported everywhere and (2) amazon.

It would be really fun to have a progress-aware AI that can give me a quick definition of entities like people and places. The other thing that would help is details about fictional mechanics. How exactly does FTL work in this universe? What were all the cultivation stages? I don’t need help with reading comprehension, I need a better way to flip back through everything and surface the key detail that was mentioned one time 500 pages ago.

Also, unfortunately my library lives in Kindle. Help me get it out, at least the DRM free stuff. I also use Royal Road extensively and pay for that. Would be great to have those live serials supported somehow.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#250

Post by Anonyneko »

yoavm wrote: post #227
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...

One can also just run Linux on most Kobos. I wrote and am using this every day: https://github.com/bjesus/air

Amazing! Do you know if anyone tried to run this on a Sage?

After getting that Kobo I realized that my hyper specific reading needs require a web browser with extension support (in particular support for Yomitan or similar dictionaries; the built-in dictionary functions on e-readers are awful for most non-English languages even with custom dictionaries, and KOReader isn't any better in that regard)

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