After a few days' worth of hacking (well, a couple of hours a day), I've added EPUB support to Fanficauthors.net.
From wikipedia:
EPUB (electronic publication; also sometimes ePub, EPub, or epub) is a free and open e-book standard, by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Files have the extension .epub. EPUB is
designed for reflowable content, meaning that the text display can be optimized for the particular display device. The format is meant to function as a single format that publishers and conversion
houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale. It supersedes the Open eBook standard...
In a more open language, it's a way of displaying stories on iPhones, Android, and other mobile devices, including a load of the new ereaders. it isn't, however, supported by Kindle, that uses a
proprietary format.
While I've tested it as much as I can, there still may be problems - especially as I don't have a device capable of reading them. I've tried one of the examples on O'Reily's Bookworm, and run quite a few of the archives through the epubcheck tool. As such, there is a beta flag next to the download link. I don't normally like doing this, but being unable to do rigourours testing of anything other than creation and validation, there's not much else I can do.
Irritatingly, the major problem I had was creating the container, as the mimetype file has to be both the first file in the archive, and NOT COMPRESSED. The zip software I was using was compressing the file, and debugging it was a pain in the rear. Second problem was the actual xhtml itself. In order for FFA.net to be as compatible in it's base form as possible, I deliberately use things like the bold tag, rather than a style="" attribute. The xhtml, of course, required the opposite, so some playing around was required.
If I may make one suggestion, it appears you are explicitly setting the page background to "white". This prevents the Stanza reader on my iTouch from setting the background appropriately. This is somewhat regrettable since it means I can't read your files in "night" mode (black bg, white text) as the background doesn't change colour where as the text does, leaving me with a solid white screen with a black border.
Regards,
Olafr.
I've checked loads of the epubs with epubvalidator, and they all worked - except Nightmares of Futures Past, that I've now fixed.
JaCee
It would be nice if you applied a style without the blue frame, though. The dark bars left and right of the text aren't annoying or anything, but they're stealing tiny bits of screen real-estate.
Alternatively, you can use calibre (it's free!) to convert things to ePub. I've used it to convert some of the prc and pdb files to ePub for reading on my iPhone. It worked quite well.
