[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. EPUB 
specifies a way to Zip all the needed components up in one file, so the 
"book" is self contained, not needing an Internet connection 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.

A recent example of this is the "Inspiring Australia" report launched 
by Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and 
Research: 
<http://www.innovation.gov.au/General/Corp-MC/Pages/InspiringAustralia.aspx>. 
Ironically this report is about communicating effectively, but presents 
its results as large PDF files, designed for printing on paper. As a 
result it fails to communicate effectively its message about 
communicating effectively.

Agencies will not produce their reports primarily in web format as they
do not see web pages as being formal 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. 
A PDF verson of the document could also be generated automatically.

I suspect almost no one will bother actually downloading the ebooks,
they will read the individual web pages instead. The ebook is just a way
to get around the bureaucratic mindset of what a report should look 
like. The technique I used successfully with academics was to hold up a 
printed, bound report and tell them the "digital library" held the same 
content: <http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/qpublishing.shtml>.
In the case of the public service it would be a matter of holding up the 
printed report in one hand and an e-book displaying the same report in 
the other hand and then mumbling "and we would do a web version as well".

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 not to use the fun features which make web 
pages hard to read. It should be much easier with ebook formats which 
leave out these features and which "books" do not have.

>Is it a proprietary format?

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

It mostly consists of a collection 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 canned 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