[Booki-dev] epub as data exchange format

[adam hyde]

hey

thanks for this. I wasnt thinking of objavi->booki data exchange but
establishing epub as the format for imports. as it stands, we can take
epubs and make booki files, so if we tell anyone wanting to make an
importer for booki that they just need to deliver us epubs then we have
retained the flexibility to change the internal data format of our
system and its potentially an easier dev pathway for 'external'
developers given that there are some existing conversion tools available
for conversion to epub.

so, for example, if ck-12 wanted to import content into booki, rather
than say they need to give us their files in our format we ask them to
give us epubs...

this means also that we put the emphasis on developing our importer to
handle epubs very well which in turn opens up more possibilities for
exchanging content with other projects

what do you think?


adam


On Wed, 2009-11-18 at 16:32 +1300, Douglas Bagnall wrote:
> adam hyde wrote:
> 
> 
> > would it be sane to keep epub as the data exchange format for imports?
> > 
> 
> Not quite.  Real world epubs have a characteristics that don't suit
> Booki, and Booki can produce documents that don't natively suit epub.
> 
> Epubs:
> * can't have xhtml files bigger than 300k (for e.g. Sony reader)
> * have files with arbitrary paths
> * have no necessary relationship between files and chapters
> * must be well formed XHTML
> * have indexes/metadata scattered across arbitrarily named XML files
> * can contain all kinds of content that Booki doesn't support.
> 
> Booki:
> * has a 1 to 1 chapter/file relationship (so files might be big)
> * has constrained paths for files
> * has limited content types
> * uses editors that can produces dodgy XHTML
> * wants easily accessible/editable contents and metadata
> 
> Perhaps there's more that I've forgotten. So while epubs and booki-zips
> are superficially very similar, underneath they are shaped by quite
> different constraints.  If Booki and Objavi were to talk to each other
> via epub they would each have to incorporate the whole of Espri and the
> epub part of Objavi.  I don't think it would be worth the trouble.
> 
> Douglas
> 


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