Electronic book platform provider
eBook Technologies, Inc (ETI), US, has made two related announcements regarding IDPF standards. Formerly called the Open eBook Forum (OeBF),
IDPF is the trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry.
The company has become the first to offer eBook publishing tools that support the new Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) container format (OCF). The public beta of the OCF compliant tools is available at
http://www.ebooktechnologies.com/support_publisher_download.htm.
OCF provides publishers with a single transport format for sending publications to the distribution or sales channel. It is also the recommended format for delivering the final publication to an eBook reading system. For consumers, OCF enables the exchange of unencrypted books and documents between reading systems that support the new standard.
In a related announcement, the company also announced that ETI members are leading a new IDPF working group seeking to update OEBPS 1.2. This is expected to improve the adoption and viability of the standard as a cross-reading system interchange and production format as well as a final publication delivery format.
The original OEBPS 1.0 specification was published in September 1999 followed by two updates to the specification, 1.0.1 in June, 2001, and 1.2 in August, 2002. The next-generation OEBPS working group charter has proposed three main areas of desired enhancement. This includes improved presentation flexibility; alignment with W3C standards; and enhanced navigation and accessibility.
The Working Group plans to have a draft specification submitted to the IDPF output process later this year.
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