Chris J. Karr, July 10th, 2008

In addition to working on Books 3, I’ve been putting in some time working on the Books 4 application suite.

I’ve revamped the interface slightly for the Book Editor app. Below is the new “Versions” tab:

In this instance, I’m using “Ultimate X-Men #3″ as my record. In my personal collection, I have two versions of this work: the original comic book, and a PDF version of the comic. In the screenshot above, I’ve attached the two versions to the “Ultimate X-Men #3″ record.

The PDF version was created by clicking the add button under the version list and filling out the metadata and adding a cover for that version. To add the file, I dragged the PDF file over the image well in the bottom left, and the application took care of the rest.

As for the comic book version, I filled out the metadata as before, but I did not add a file to that version.

If I go back to the “Summary” tab, I get the following view:

As you can see, both versions are visible from the summary and the PDF file version can be opened (or revealed in Finder) from this tab as well. The idea for doing it this way is that you can open a .book file by double clicking it and get to the content with a minimum of effort.

Now, in terms of getting this to work with electronic readers, you would take the .book file containing the various versions and drag it to the new “Portable Reader” application:

(This is actual running code and not mocked-up example data.)

This application autodetects any potential eBook readers attached to your system and lists them under “My Devices”. To copy the a version of “Ultimate X-Men #3″ to the Sony PRS 505 I have listed, you would simply drag the .book file over the device in the list.

The device would look into the .book file and determine if any versions contained within would work on the device. If a suitable version is found, it is copied to the device and will be available for reading as soon as the device is detached from the computer. If a suitable version is not found, a message is given to the user explaining the problem.

Using this scheme, devices can support multiple formats (and versions). For example, the Sony Reader supports PDF, BBeB (Broadband eBook), MP3, and AAC files (among others). The iPod Nano supports audio files, images, and iPod Notes. (The iPhone, I’m still working on.) Using .book files as a container for the variety of electronic book formats out there, this approach will allow me to support the widest variety of devices and formats (open and proprietary) on the Mac platform.

None of this code is ready for public use yet, but I am using some of it here at home. I am hoping to make Book Editor available by the end of the summer, and Portable Reader soon thereafter. I am planning on initially shipping Portable Reader with support for the following devices: iPod (classic), iPhone, Sony PRS-505, and (maybe) Amazon’s Kindle.

If you have a device that isn’t in that list, I’ve created a forum for discussing this topic and to create plans for adding support for those unsupported devices. Likewise, if you’d like to contribute and earmark some funds for support for a particular device, please check out the donation page. Please be sure to attach a note to the donation saying what device it’s earmarked for.