EPub Plugin for Firefox under Unix
EPub Plugin for Firefox under Unix |
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This is an NPAPI plugin built to run on Unix platforms to display epub books using the Firefox browser.
epub is an open standard for ebooks. It is based on XML and (X)HTML and contains no proprietary components. However, epub documents may be DRM encrypted using a non-open system. Despite this, by its nature epub is a more open and flexible system than the outdated Mobibook, the proprietary Kindle, etc. epub was originally authored by Adobe and it is now managed by the IDPF. It is often referred to as the Adobe Open Ebook format.
epub is supported as a format by epubbooks for free epub books and by vendors such as Pan MacMillan and O'Reilly Books
There are a number of dedicated ebook readers which support the epub format (among others). See Wikipedia. There are several software systems to allow reading of epub books on ordinary computers. See Wikipedia. This is just another one, but allows reading from within a major browser.
These instructions shoild all be run by a normal user (including root), and will install the plugin for use by that particular user. These instructions do not install the plugin for all users - that would need some changes to the plugin.
Unpack:
tar jxvf epub-0.1.tar.bz2 cd epub-0.1
Configure and build:
./configure make
At this point, the customary step is to perform 'make install'. However, that will not do anything useful for this plugin. Execute:
make install-plugin
This will install the plugin into ~/.mozilla/plugins which is one of the standard destinations for browser plugins in a Unix environment.
It will also create a directory ~/.epub in which several files are stored. This is also the directory in which the plugin will install and unpack epub books.
In Mozilla/Firefox browsers, check the "about:plugins" page. The EPub plugin should be registered.
To test the actual plugin functionality, load an epub url such as http://www.epubbooks.com/book/54/dumas-ten-years-later.epub . This should display a table of contents of the book. Selecting one of the entries should display the contents of that book part.
This plugin does not claim compliance with IDPF standards. It will not manage DRM protected epub documents. Tests have only been performed on epub documents with a simple non-encrypted structure.
It does not support any bookmarking facilty.
Many possibilities
For feedback regarding this plugin, and only this plugin, send email to Jan Newmarch