Feature request: EPUB 3.0

[marisademeglio]

This is a feature request to support EPUB 3.0 [1]. This would allow me to generate content and then add media overlays, which is a new feature of EPUB 3.

1. http://idpf.org/epub/30

[v0lk3r]

The initial reasoning to use the ePub 2 Specification was that all content in Wikipedia currently is xhtml transitional. It seemed easier to transform that into "xhtml strict" than HTML5 (epub 3.0).

Currently there are no plans to move to the epub 3.0 spec. I also do not know how that would affect compatibility of the readers.

[marisademeglio]

By the way, another advantage of EPUB 3 is having better mechanisms for citations such as footnotes:
http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-contentdocs.html#sec-contentdocs-vocab-association

As for reader compatibility, I believe support for EPUB 3 is becoming quite widespread. iBooks and Readium, to name two. Which readers have you been testing with so far?

I understand the potential challenges in going from XHTML transitional to HTML5. One project that I work on, the DAISY Pipeline, plans to have a converter from a wide range of XHTML to EPUB3's XHTML5 sometime in 2013. The Pipeline is an open source project, built around XProc. You can learn more here:
http://code.google.com/p/daisy-pipeline/

Anyway, just food for thought.

[v0lk3r]

Thanks for the info!

Regarding the readers:
I am testing the epubs with

• Calibre on my desktop machine
• Aldiko, Moon and Cool Reader on Android
• Tests on iOS are done mainly with iBooks by a colleague

[rastus-vernon]

This issue is old, but I would regardless like to note that MediaWiki now produces HTML5 content. It has done so for some time already, and this should make it easier to switch to EPUB 3. I think it would be possible, if compatibility is a problem, to provide output for both EPUB 2 and 3.