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Sony To Convert Online Bookstore To Open Format

Posted by Soulskill on from the who-are-you-and-what-have-you-done-with-sony dept.

Dr_Barnowl writes "The BBC reports that Sony is to convert its online bookstore to the EPUB format. While this format still allows DRM, it's supported on a much wider variety of readers. Is this a challenge to the Kindle? It's nice to see Sony opening up to the idea of open standards. Even if you still have reservations about buying a Sony device, you might be able to patronize their bookstore sometime soon."

1 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great Scott! It Actually Makes Sense! by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Informative

    That was actually one of the goals for the format--all you need to make an ePub is a text editor and a zip utility. However, the zip file must be assembled a certain way (a mimetype file must be the first file and zipped with no compression so the rest of the file starts at a certain byte offset). I've been fiddling around with the format for a few months and it's really quite nice and fairly robust (as far as ebook formatting goes).

    --
    This guy's the limit!