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electronic publication (EPUB)

Electronic Publication (EPUB) is a standardized file format developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum( IDPF) for displaying documents on e-book readers. The EPUB format has the advantage that it is based on open standards and can dynamically adapt documents to the screen size of the display.

With EPUB there is no fixed page layout, the text flow adapts to the screen. This is especially important for display on mobile devices and e-book readers. As a result, EPUB e-books are paginated differently. This technique is called reflowable text. The text is also dynamically adapted to the display when the font is enlarged or reduced. The situation is different for files in PDF file format, which have to be adapted to small screens by scrolling when enlarged.

E-book reader with EPUB file with dynamic text adjustment

E-book reader with EPUB file with dynamic text adjustment

EPUB files consist of three open standards Open Container Format( OCF), Open Publication Structure( OPS) and Open Packaging Format( OPF). The OCF container data is a ZIP-based standard used to map a specific directory structure for arranging and storing data. The OPS structure contains package files that define the format for the actual content of the EPUB file. And the OPF format contains information for navigation, table of contents and metadata.

The first file is an uncompressed MIME file and contains the EPUB type. It consists of a few bytes and is read by the programs. The following file is a container file, container.xml, which contains meta information about the EPUB files. The metainformation file points to a content file and contains the default directory of biographical metainformation, which includes the title, author, publisher, edition, year, chapter information, and more. This package file points to the beginning of the text, which is in Extensible HypertextMarkup Language( XHTML). The extension of EPUB files is: *.epub.

The EPUB format will replace the older and more inflexible OEB format, it cannot be read by all e-book readers, including the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, which supports the proprietary AZW format among others.

Informations:
Englisch: electronic publication - EPUB
Updated at: 21.10.2013
#Words: 333
Links: file format, international digital publishing forum (IDPF), display, text (TXT), arsenic (As)
Translations: DE
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