Adobe recommends open source
Francis Turner
September 23rd, 2009
I use an open source ebook management package called calibre to handle my ebooks and most format conversions. It is a very good package and one that is updated and improved frequently. In many ways it is a classic example of the top quality software that more popular open source packages become.
One of the big problems of the ebook world is format conversion and here is where Calibre scores highly because it can create very good (not perfect but good) versions of the same book in multiple formats and convert between formats. Amusingly it seems to do this so well that Adobe now recommend that content creators who use Adobe InDesign and Adobe Digital Editions, should install Calibre to handle the conversion from the ADE standard output (epub) to the proprietary Kindle/Mobipocket (mobi) formats.
Given that currently the two major standards seem to be epub and mobi this white paper endorsement of open source software is somewhat surprising as it would seem to indicate that neither Amazon nor Adobe have put much thought into how to create multiple formats of ebooks. One can only hope that this attitude continues and that just maybe Adobe will donate a little money to the Calibre project.
Tags: ebooks adobe amazon