[LINK] Ebooks for government reports?

[Tom Worthington]

Pilcher, Fred wrote:
> Tom wrote:
> 
>> Ebooks could be a good way to convince the Australian Government to
>> use accessible and efficient web formats for reports instead of the
>> poorly formatted PDF files used now. ...
> What's the advantage of EPUB or its ilk over HTML?

EPUB uses HTML and other common web formats, such as CSS and PNG. The 
key point is that EPUB specifies a way to bundle all these up in one Zip 
file and display it like a "book". The document is self contained, not 
needing an Internet connection in order to be read. This can then be 
used in place of PDF.

Faced with having to produce an electronic copy of a report, what most 
Australian government agencies do is to produce a PDF file based on the 
typesetting file used for the printed document. The PDF file is not 
optimised for reading on screen. If they have extra resources, the 
agency might then produce a web version of the document, but most do not.

Agencies will not produce their reports primarily in web format as they 
do not see web pages as being good enough. My suggestion is therefore to 
have them do the reports as an ebook instead of PDF. As a by-product of 
this, the web pages making up the ebook can be made available online.

I suspect almost no one will bother actually downloading the ebooks, 
they will read the web pages instead. The ebook is just a way to get 
around the bureaucratic mindset of what a report should look like.

An additional benefit of the ebook approach is simpler, more accessible 
web pages. I have spent a lot of time trying to convince government (and 
non-government) people to make simple, readable web pages. It is hard to 
to convince web designers to use simple designs. Ebooks are designed to 
emulate static, printed, monochrome books, thus forcing the designer to 
produce simpler designs.

>Is it a proprietary format?

No, EPUB is a free open source format: <http://www.openebook.org/specs.htm>.

It mostly consists of web standards.

>Can't e-book readers read HTML?

Yes, most e-book readers read HTML, but as they are not normally
connected to the Internet, you need a way to get the HTML and other
files to them. That is what the ebook formats are for. Think of them as
an offline web format.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890