Book People Archive

an open-source e-book viewer-program for x.m.l.

finally, there's an open-source e-book viewer for x.m.l.

"openreader?", you might think...

well, no, actually.   in spite of all the hype
from jon noring and david rothman's blog,
that "open-source" effort hasn't produced
one line of publicly-available code so far...
indeed, openreader isn't even on sourceforge.

but "osoft" has come out with "thoutreader",
an open-source viewer that reads x.m.l. files --
as long as they are in the "thoutreader format".

some free content is already set for download,
as the viewer has been in beta for a while now,
and authoring tools will also be made available,
in the form of xslt scripts to convert x.m.l. into
the thoutreader format.   not much help, however,
on getting your content into x.m.l. in the first place.

osoft is targeting the technical books sector, and
concedes its viewer might not be best for novels...

one of its innovative features is for "public notes",
annotations that you can make that will then become
available to other owners of that e-book.   interesting.
(you can also make "private" annotations, of course...)

all in all, the program -- written in java -- feels solid and
is quite responsive, at least with the smallish user-guide.

here's their "#1 asked question":
>    Q: If the ThoutReader[tm] is free and the documentation is free,
>    how do you make money to sustain the project?
>    A: We are open source developers who understand OS issues
>    and share passion for the open source community.
>    In addition to the free content, we also offer
>    best-selling reference books and original works
>    from leading experts in the ThoutReader[tm] format.
>    Prices are generally 30% off publisher list price and
>    can be downloaded and added to your reference library immediately.
>    We make a few dollars off of each sale.

they also offer you "up to 80% off" on electronic copies
of books that you already own in paper-form, a nice touch.

and yes, this alliance with paper-publishers means d.r.m.
-- although they describe it as being minimally invasive...

visit http://www.osoft.com for more information...

-bowerbird

p.s.   oh, and what a boon for openreader, some source-code
that they can finally use to get themselves off-and-running...