Hi, as you probably know
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12387
Cybook announced its new device with support for mobipocket encrypted.

It would be nice to have some authoring guidelines for mobipocket and this device. Some information will be implementation-specific (obviously).

But I'd like to have a better idea about image support:

1)Will it display images with the hirsc attribute? What about .jpegs or png?
http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/article.asp?BaseFolder=prcgen&File=images.htm

I had other questions, but I forgot what they were I'll add them here as I think of them (give me a day or two).

I think any book created for the iLiad should work. I have not yet seen any authoring guidelines which apply to specific devices for Mobipocket. The books must be viewable on all devices Mobipocket supports so all limitations apply.

Unfortunately, there is no content preparation documentation for the iliad (I think).

It seems logical that the iliad/cybook would be able to show high resolution images.

I realize that that the best way to test is using the device itself.

But it would be nice to learn about how it would render using the Desktop program.

Here's a feature request. In Desktop reader, the dropdown menu for View mode (next to the Search window) should have a mode for e-ink device mode. The result could have the typical page dimensions and be in grayscale. It doesn't need to be device-specific, but merely a mode for larger screens not on a desktop.

Or is there a way to already do this?

The images are limited to 64K. The current beta versions of the reader can handle jpeg. For the iLiad and other eink devices GIF images seem best. Since the devices can only handle max 16 levels of gray, jpeg does not make sense. GIF has only 256 colors and is a compressed format so it usually outperforms jpeg for such images. Apart from that there is not much you can do except optimize the HTML a bit. See http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/article.asp?BaseFolder=prcgen

here are the specs for the vizplex displays (which cybook will have).


Eink says that vizplex supports 8 levels of grayscale.

http://www.eink.com/products/matrix/imaging_film.html

so let me ask my question again.

When I'm creating .prc files, do you think that Cybook mobipocket support images with the hirsc attribute?

(cybook says 6" E Ink® Vizplex screen
[4.8"x3.6"- 122mmx91mm]
600x800 pixels, 166 dpi
B&W, 4 gray-scale
Daylight readable
No backlight
Portrait and landscape mode
http://www.bookeen.com/specs/ebook-specs.aspx

(BTW, I think these specs have a typo; vizplex is 8 gray scale, not 4 gray scale).

It's too bad you don't have an attribute for a grayscale image. Managing the files for mobipocket on e-ink devices and mobile devices will be hard. (I'll have to manage files for low resolution color, grayscale, and high (desktop) color. And eventually jpegs!

I do not know if Mobipocket does support the attribute. What i can tell you is that you should not try to make device specific books. If images are that important for your books then you should simply stay away from ebook devices.

The problem is that ebooks compete with the web browser experience.

It is difficult to talk about ebooks to friends and coworkers about ebooks because they expect jpg color graphics and more visual possibilities. And it's hard for publishers and web designers to become interested in producing content for the ebook platform because they perceive it as a specialized platform requiring a different work process.

Ebooks are perceived as "inferior" to the web browser experience by at least 5 years because of mediocre graphics.

Here in US we have blackberries and now the iphone. The iphone has made lots of improvements in the browser experience on portable devices.

From my standpoint, ebooks I create must include visual elements only to compete with the web browser experience. That is a minimum. If I offer ebooks without trying to give it a rich visual experience, then people will only regard it as an inferior kind of browser. Right now ebook platforms offer much better navigation controls and customizability and annotation features than web browsers.

But web browsers clearly are better in graphics and visual presentation and are making progress with some features people normally think of ebooks as superior at. Even encryption is something you can do with web browsers (with member IDs and passwords, etc).

Let me say that mobipocket is much better than the other portable formats. That is clear. But gif support made sense in the days when memory cards were expensive and devices were small. But things have changed quickly. If people believe that they must compromise on graphic design to read/buy an ebook, that is a guarantee that ebooks as a platform will fail.

By the way, I wrote an article a year ago about ebooks vs. web novels.
http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5297

You simply not understand what an ebook really is. The biggest device you will ever see is the size of a paperback. The reason is simple: no bigger device is portable without a separate bag to carry.
The content of an ebook is always mainly text. There is no compelling reason to model an ebook after web pages. If you want that then make web pages with internet connection. Talking about "inferior" is utter crap. I do not see any reason to "improve" a classic work with images. Color is much less important than you think. Presenting information with only a few images in grayscale is something which worked for millenia. Most of the websites i know use the color image mainly to hide that they present no information at all.

It seems that you do not understand what i write about GIF. I said that jpeg is inferior to GIF for images with no more than 256 colors. Such GIF images compress better than jpeg. Also the quality is superior because GIF is a lossless format so the image does not contain compression artifacts.

Your article does not impress me. It does not address the normal book which is the main content presented as ebook.
Multimedia is not ebook. The idea to augment a book with video or other blinkenlichten does not make it really more usable.
"Access to HTML source". This we already have because all ebook formats base on HTML. DRM blocks the access.
"(Possibly) better/more metadata". Sorry, but current publishers are not smart enough to even add the soft hyphen for a better reading experience.
" Ability to print/Copy/Paste". Sorry, this is what publishers try to avoid at all cost. It is the first thing DRM makes impossible.
"Excellent editors/creation tools". You talk about tools to create web pages. Not useful for ebooks which are different. Adobe Digital Editions is the only tool available trying to address ebook creation at all. All the other tools only try to make web pages into ebooks (including Mobipocket).

I can only speak of Sony Reader, but the grayscale graphics on commercial ebooks I have seen on their device look pretty bad. Partly this is because publishers of books I have seen started out with images which wouldn't look good in grayscale. Publishers are not creating content with the idea of making them ebooks; they merely are trying to convert a print book into another form.

I accept your point about why gif is superior for 256 colors. But are telephones and PDA's able to display more colors than that? (I honestly don't know the answer).

You are probably right that smaller screens don't allow a lot of graphics. But the iphone is creating a standard for what the portable reading experience should be. Server-based functionality can do a lot of things ebooks can do now. If a mobile css can make protected-content friendly to iphone readers, then people might reject the need for reading software.

(I haven't tried the iphone, so I have no idea how functional the Safari browser is).

Mobipocket is very friendly toward ebook creators who start out with html content, but many writers these days are publishing first on the web (where jpeg or png is the dominant format) and then looking to mobipocket to package their content.

PDAs often have 4096 colors which is already a problem when displaying jpeg. The colors can distort visibly. This is where GIF again gets superior. A color reduction to 256 of a small image by a graphics program looks definitely better than the color reduction algorithms of most PDAs.

Most ebook creators are clueless. They do not understand that there is a difference between ebook and web page. Unfortunately most ebook programs (including Mobipocket) try to lure in creators by telling them how easy it is to use web pages.
For example an ebook needs to be self-contained. All content is in the book. A website may have other websites as integral part. An external link from an ebook is an disruptive element and should stay an disruptive element. For a website there is no difference between internal and external link.

I think you should read http://www.idpf.org/
The current .epub format is what Digital Editions from Adobe implements. Do not let yourself deceived by the fact that the content is largely HTML.

BTW we should think about moving this discussion to http://www.mobileread.com

Sure.

One thing I wanted to mention. Mobileread has forums for all kinds of ebook things, but nothing about mobipocket!


only this
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=110

sorry, one more thing

nokia 770 65,536 colors (2006)
dell axim x51v 64K colors (2005)
iphone 16.000.000 colors (2007)
palm treo specs 64,000 colors

these are somewhat expensive devices and mobipocket needs maximum compatibility (i understand that),

But i'd be curious about what percent of mobipocket readers are reading from devices with 64K colors.

You forget the devices already sold. They do not go away fast. I still read on a Palm T3 which has 4096 colors. Even with 64K colors you can run into a bad color reduction algorithm.
I also recall at least one class action suit where 64K colors were advertised, but only 4096 colors implemented.

This discussion has wandered a bit from being Mobipocket-specific. I think we get more opinions about what an ebook should be there.

By the way, I received a reply from a representative of Bookeen.

He says that he has tested and confirmed that Cybook mobipocket support images with the hirsc attribute.


He also says that the display supports four shades of gray.

(He said that they are using the vizplex display but have not changed the display controller--which uses four shades of gray).

Confirmation of hirsc support is excellent news.

idiotprogrammer wrote:

By the way, I received a reply from a representative of Bookeen. He says that he has tested and confirmed that Cybook mobipocket support images with the hirsc attribute. He also says that the display supports four shades of gray. (He said that they are using the vizplex display but have not changed the display controller--which uses four shades of gray). Confirmation of hirsc support is excellent news.

Glad to hear some actual facts in this thread. 4 shades of gray means, of course, that there are only 2 bits of data per picture element (00,01,10,11 in binary) which will result in good resolution of only line drawings but not photographs. This is acceptable for most ebooks which, as has already been mentioned, consist of text with very little, if any, graphics. High resolution of 166 bits/in results in the best eye experience in reading for a long period. PDA's are mostly 16 bit color (16,000 plus colors) and it is the color device with its requirement for backlight that kills battery life. The ebook experience can use a battery that will allow the reading of the entire book without having to plug it in.