cd357843cb
git-subtree-dir: fbreader/fbreader git-subtree-split: 7abc80d12fab06b05ea1fe68a0e73ea5e9486463
153 lines
7.9 KiB
HTML
153 lines
7.9 KiB
HTML
<h3><center>Electronic Book Formats (supported and unsupported)</center></h3>
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<p>Firstly, FBReader is an open source application, and as result all formats FBReader
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currently supports are open formats. Theoretically, FBReader's engine could be used as a part of a
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closed-source application that would be supporting books in some DRM-ed/non-open format. However this
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requires desire not only of FBReader developers, but also that of owners of the corresponding
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format.</p>
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<p>Secondly, since FBReader's authors have limited resources, formats that have the following properties are
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considered first:<ul>
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<li>popularity of the format (usually this means that there are at least several books in this
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format :))</li>
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<li>the format is expected to be used for books and, first of all, fiction books (we do not have
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any short-term plans to add support for any spreadsheet format)</li>
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<li>the format is text based, and not image based (e.g. if a book is just a collection of
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TIFF-images within a container of some sort (archive or other), then it's most likely that
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implementation of this format will be prioritized rather low)</li>
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</ul></p>
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<p>We do not aim to make support for a particular format as complete as possible so it would cover
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all options listed in the format description, e.g. those that would unlikely to be used in real
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life. In many cases that would require a significant effort that would not result in
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visible effect for the end user. However if a particular file is rendered incorrectly
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from your point of view, please contact us and if possible include the offensive file and we will
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try to fix the situation.</p>
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<p>In the foreseen future we plan to make format support pluggable — this will help to separate the
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application from the actual format support.</p>
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<h4>Issues Common for All Formats</h4>
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<p>There are two non-implemented features that many formats required:<ul>
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<li>support of style sheets included in the book (e.g. for HTML that would be CSS declarations)</li>
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<li>table support</li>
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</ul>
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We plan to implement both, when it becomes clear how they should be rendered (this is especially
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important for small screens).</p>
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<p>These features are not metioned in the table below.</p>
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<h4>Missing formats</h4>
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<p>If your favourite format is not listed here, please tell us about it. If you are able to give us
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[a link to] the format description and can give a few books in this very format, we might be able to
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implement support for it.</p>
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<h4>List of formats and information about their support in FBReader</h4>
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<table class="formats" align="center" width="90%" border="0">
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<tr style="line-height:150%;font-weight:bold;">
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<td class="formats">Format</td>
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<td class="formats">Comments</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://www.plkr.org/">plucker</a></td>
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<td class="formats">This format has commands for “absolute positioning”, which are targeted to the
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devices with specific screen resolution (e.g. “put the item 2 pixels away from the left
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border”.) Since FBReader aims to allow reading on devices with different screen sizes and
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resolutions, such commands may be interpreted depending on the context and, in some cases, be
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completely ignored.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_eBook">Open E-Book (oeb)</a></td>
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<td class="formats">The format specification is quite extensive, while there's no a great deal of available books
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[yet?]. As far as we know, FBReader reasonably well renders books in this format.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://www.openreader.org/">OpenReader</a></td>
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<td class="formats">The situation is the same as with the Open E-Book.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://www.idpf.org/">epub</a></td>
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<td class="formats">Support for this format is far from being complete, however we plan to improve it.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">html</td>
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<td class="formats">Generally speaking, HTML is not a book format. It has many elements that are related to the
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visual rendering, while it lacks elements related to the book structure (as result, it's quite
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impossible to determine a table of contents for an arbitrary book in HTML format). FBReader has
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limited support for HTML, however it proved to be sufficient for the majority of books available
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out there.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://www.fictionbook.org/index.php/English">fb2</a></td>
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<td class="formats">From practical point of view, version 2.0 of the format specification is fully supported. To
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be compliant with version 2.1 of the standard, FBReader lacks support of tables.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">plain text</td>
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<td class="formats">This format is supported. However FBReader might not always correctly split text into
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paragraphs.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">ztxt (<a href="http://gutenpalm.sourceforge.net/">Weasel Reader</a> format)</td>
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<td class="formats">This is just a compressed text. Comments for the previous format are also applicable for this
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one.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmDoc">Palmdoc (Aportis Doc)</a></td>
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<td class="formats">This format is fully supported.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">tcr (Psion Text)</td>
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<td class="formats">This format is fully supported.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://www.mobipocket.com/">Mobipocket</a></td>
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<td class="formats">DRM-ed and/or files compressed with secret algorithm of Mobipocket are not supported.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">chm</td>
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<td class="formats">There's no complete open description of this format, while there is an open source library
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called chmlib that allows to work with the format as well as many open source applications that
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use this library to read and render files in this format. FBReader's support is implemented
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independently from chmlib as result rendering might be different.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format">rtf</a></td>
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<td class="formats">FBReader has minimal support for RTF.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format">pdf</a></td>
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<td class="formats">This format is not supported. Files in this format may contain just text as well as image
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representation of pages. We plan to include PDF support in FBReader: first support for files
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that are using text only.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://djvu.org/">djvu</a></td>
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<td class="formats">This format is not supported. Our current plans do not include this format either.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">doc (Microsoft Word)</td>
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<td class="formats">This format is not supported. Probably this format will be partially supported using catdoc.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">odt</td>
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<td class="formats">This format is not supported. It might be supported in future, however the specification is
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way too big, so most likely there will be some limitations.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://www.msh-tools.com/ebook/lrfformat.html">lrf</a></td>
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<td class="formats">This format is not supported. Our current plans do not include this format
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either.</td>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats"><a href="http://www.isilo.com/">iSilo</a></td>
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<td class="formats">This format is not supported. Actually there are two kinds of iSilo format: old one and new
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one (iSiloX). Old format is open however, to the best of our knowledge, currently it is
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practically not used at all. On the other hand iSiloX is a proprietary format, so as result it cannot
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be supported in FBReader.</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td class="formats">.lit</td>
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<td class="formats">This format is not supported and is unlikely to be ever supported. It is a closed format
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created and owned by Microsoft and any attempts to support it would be quite questionable from
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legal point of view.</td></tr>
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</table>
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</body>
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