Against my better judgment , I let myself get swept up by the undulation of eastward - publishing rumors in the days leading up to Apple ’s education - theme announcement . Apple could do it , I thought to myself . The companionship had both the resources to build a majuscule tool , and the reasons to do so .
The ePub format , a package of XHTML and CSS , has been available for almost five years , now . It ’s supported bynumerous appsand devices , include Apple ’s iBooks , Google Books , and the Nook . Proprietary format , like Amazon ’s KF8 and MOBI , use the same basic social organization , but provide a better way to wrap the data file in DRM ( digital rights management ) . Between the Kindle Store , iBookstore , and Google Bookstore , the ebooks mart has exploded .
And yet , our tools to build these books are as primitive as those for former 1990s hypertext markup language . There is exactly one program that can redact ePub file directly — Sigil — and while I applaud what the app endeavor to do , it ’s being worked on by just one developer and ported to multiple operating systems . As a result , it ’s unpolished , unoptimized for the Mac , tiresome , and bug - turn on .
Even so , Sigil is the best WYSIWYG editor on the market place correctly now for the ePub data format . If you do n’t want to use Sigil , you have only a few option : you may export your ePub from any figure of other program and hope it ’ll still lookrelativelythe same as your original layout ( not likely ) ; hire a troupe who helping hand - builds customs ePubs ( too expensive for most people ) ; or attempt to code the integral thing yourself by hand — which , while admirable , is a nuisance - and - a - one-half if you ’re pass water a long book , or incorporating more than a few image .
It ’s softheaded that we have so few options after five years : The ebooks market place is intelligibly making money . If Apple ’s spill of an authoring tool has shown anything , it ’s that the need is certainly out there . The publishing industry require a Dreamweaver or Hype - type ePub practical software — one that wo n’t be limited by EULAs , or repetitive on proprietary format .
I ’ve already writtena indirect request - listfor my double-dyed app ; had I the talent , the skill , and the prison term to build it , I ’d be half - tempted to try coding it myself . Silly , of course , but when it come down to it , I just want to be capable to make awe-inspiring ebooks . It should n’t take two weeks and six computer programme to create a book with images and interactive cognitive content .
I want our designers to be able to lay out a book by sight rather than by computer code . I want to be able to export my rule book in any data formatting I choose , to be distributed on any and every platform . And , more than anything else , I want others to start produce awesome ebooks , too . I want masses to be able to focus on the content they ’re putting together , rather than the laborious outgrowth of turning it into an ePub .
[ Macworld staff editor Serenity Caldwell verify that this is the last piece she ’ll pen on this topic . For now . ]
