Portable EPUBs (willcrichton.net)

Article summary

The article discusses the development of a portable EPUB format, aiming to bring EPUB up to parity with PDF. The author has written a viewer and is exploring ways to improve layout capabilities in EPUB. The article itself is displayed in a browser-based wasm port of the viewer. The goal is to create a format that can reproduce layout precisely and look reasonable on various devices.

Main themes

• EPUB format development
• Portable document formats
• Layout and rendering
• Security and tracking
• Interactive functionality
• Offline readability
• Format adoption and support

What commenters say

• EPUB3 already provides the necessary features for a portable format, making a new standard unnecessary.
• Allowing network assets in EPUB is a setback for format adoption due to security concerns.
• Interactive functionality, such as JavaScript, is necessary for a universal ebook format to support features like math rendering and graphs.
• EPUB should be an inert data format, without JavaScript or interactivity, to ensure offline readability and security.
• The use of JavaScript in EPUB can enable valuable features like interactive tables and graphs, but also raises concerns about security and tracking.
• A portable EPUB format should prioritize simplicity, readability, and offline accessibility over interactive features.
• The EPUB standard is already widely adopted and supported by major vendors, making further development and investment unnecessary.
• The inclusion of MathML in EPUB 3 addresses the need for nicely rendered math in ebooks.