XWD as an enhanced ebook authoring system

[gwpriester]

What I found when we were developing our three iPad apps is Apple is very hostile to Windows users.

Even though I created the apps in Windows, we could only submit the app to the iTunes store on a Mac. And the process of submitting the app files was so convoluted that Gene, my stereogram partner who works on a Mac threw up his hands and said, no way. So we had to hire an expert to shepherd our apps through the process.

I was writing a review of Adobe's app creation process for Communication Arts Magazine which is the bible of the professional arts industry, and I asked my media contact at Apple why I could not submit my files via Windows and why the process was so user unfriendly.

Her response after I asked the same question repeatedly and was put off, was they had sold X millions of iPads and have x hundreds of millions of downloads. Translation, go pound sand. Or get a Mac and get real.

What I liked about an app vs an epub was epub was only supported in portrait mode and our images are primarily landscape and the apps let up use both orientations differently. The landscape mode is for the full size stereograms and the portrait mode shows the grayscale reveal image, the title and authors copyright.

So, if Xara made a product for creating mobile apps that were WYSIWYG and in the hundred dollar price range, they could pretty own that field. Especially on Windows. An Android app builder would be killer!

[spudmachine]

Gary - I totally agree with you.

I'm a Windows guy for desktop and laptop, and an Android guy for phone and tablet.

I will not allow the "contagion" that is iTunes on my machines :-)

My daughter's MacBook Pro is running Snow Leopard, and I have to upgrade it to Lion to use the iBook Author package. I have to say at $30 it's not a bad price to do the upgrade. I'll probably do it tomorrow as my ISP meters by bandwidth after 16:00, and the upgrqade is likely to be fairly big.



It's now even clearer to me that if anyone from Xara is reading this thread they could "own" the non-Apple market if they were clever.

One thing I would point out with the iBook Author package. They allow KeyNote presentations to be embedded in the book. As far as I'm concerned that means I can create some really nice interactive, animated diagrams in the publication without having to learn something like Adobe Edge.

I can't imagine that Xara could "embed" a Powerpoint presentation with animations into an EPUB (gosh it would be wonderful if they could). They'd probably have to use Flash for animated diagrams, and that means a lot of conversion work plus the cliff face of a learning curve for Flash authoring.


The EULA for the iBook Author is pretty interesting too. If I decide to charge money for my iBook, I have to sell it through iTunes. I cannot distribute it any other way.

As an author, I still own the content. But since the content is rich media arranged by the iBook Author, I wonder what that really means.

Bottom line...iBook Author exists today and it looks pretty good. BUT...I definitely think there's a huge market opportunity for Xara with the non-Apple demographic.

Cheers,
SPuD

[steve.ledger]

An Android app builder would be killer!

Have a look at Android Apps Maker ► http://www.android3apps.com/
Their Ebook maker is ► http://www.android3apps.com/ebook-android-apps/

Another ebook maker ► http://www.androidzoom.com/android_a...ker_bbwxs.html

[spudmachine]

Hi sledger,
Thanks for these, but the first link didn't work for me. Maybe I was supposed to look at it on a phone?

The second one did.

Personally I would not want to use Android as a development environment for ebooks. I'd want to use a PC and then output an Android-friendly EPUB.

That's just my 2 cents :-)

Cheers,
SPuD

[steve.ledger]

Hi sledger,
...the first link didn't work for me. Maybe I was supposed to look at it on a phone?

Nope, works fine for me in Google Chrome, IE9 and FF 11.0 in Windows 7 Pro

Personally I would not want to use Android as a development environment for ebooks. I'd want to use a PC and then output an Android-friendly EPUB.

OK cool, but my post was quoting Gary who does

[spudmachine]

Hi sledger,
Maybe the link did work - it's just that the site looked a bit "odd" (that's probably me being suspicious, I used to work for a content security company).

Maybe Gary can clarify, but I interpreted his comment, here "An Android app builder would be killer!" as meaning something like,

"Using XWD as a computer-based (ie. desktop or laptop running Windows, Linux or OSX) development environment for Andoid apps would be a killer".

A lot of Android apps are actually developed on another platform and are then "compiled" (or equivalent) for the phone or tablet.

I would totally agree with you that developing small apps directly on an Android device is possible.

Cheers,
SPuD

[steve.ledger]

You're getting confused. Neither Gary nor I suggested building Androids apps on an Android device.
Neither are the links I offered for his no obligation perusal.

Right now, using Xara Designer to create the graphics for android apps is already being done, it is in fact ideal.
I can't see XWD being turned into a Java development tool.

[pauland]

Isn't the thing that makes Xara great as a design package (WYSIWYG), also the thing that makes it weak as an eBook system?

Ebooks need to adapt their layout according to form factor, but Xara has always worked with fixed layouts. If we want fixed layouts, then PDF is fine.

[pauland]

Gary - I understand the frustration that is Apple's app submission programme, the tortuous route to app submission combined with the need to pay Apple a licence fee and have access to or own a Mac.

I too have been frustrated by that, but I do understand what a genious thing it is for Apple. It has allowed them to boost their bottom line and bring back software development to the Mac.

-Apple gets a yearly licence fee from all Apple developers.
-Apple sells Macs to those developers
-Apple encourages developers to use their tools and development language
-Apple is set to reinvigorate Mac software development by bringing the same skills learnt by "iDevelopers" into play on a Mac AppStore.

Not great for cross-platform windows developers, but an inspired stance by Apple who managed to leverage their hardware advantage into a software advantage when Mac had gone way down as a software development platform.

They did a great job for the company.

[spudmachine]

Hi Pauland,

To your point...

Isn't the thing that makes Xara great as a design package (WYSIWYG), also the thing that makes it weak as an eBook system?

Ebooks need to adapt their layout according to form factor, but Xara has always worked with fixed layouts. If we want fixed layouts, then PDF is fine.


You're right - the first generation of ebooks were variable layout (text reflowing). But there is now a fixed layout EPUB "standard", and more specifically is that the enhanced ebooks (ie. with video, animated figures, quizzes etc.) that Apple is selling are all fixed layout.

It's exactly because XWD has great WYSIWYG capability that I thought it might be a good fixed-layout, enhanced ebook development package.

BTW - I'm not arguing against PDF. I guess I'm saying that I need a good development environment for enhanced ebooks. If the output is PDF and it looks as good as the iBooks then I'll be happy.

However, if Xara did become interested in adapting XWD to this role, then I suspect EPUB would be an easier output option for them. From what I understand of EPUB it's basically HTML in a ZIP file.


Cheers,
SPuD