About Phoenix Editions

Why Phoenix Editions?

With the already available tools, converting files to eBook formats is not a big task. You can use a plugin in MS Word and with just one click have a lit file. You can drag and drop html into Adobe Acrobat and create a pdf file.

If we can be happy over the possibilities given to anyone to publish and to be published, we must nevertheless look at previous experiences from the history of the computer and the internet in order to get some needed advice:

• The lack of standards threatens the persistance of data.
  We are able to access data from tablets from 3.000 year B.C. but not from files created 10 years ago in a proprietary format, stored in some specific non standard media, or even in previous versions of existing products.
• If not enough care is taken, some operations like drag and drop or cut and paste can result in the production of corrupted data.
• Many ebooks come from html files. But outdated tags are still being used, and one only needs to view the source to find beginning tags without their corresponding end tags, improper nesting, and proprietary or non standard encoding. If the source code is not cleaned up, all this will make its way to the derivated ebook.
• Not every user knows how, is able to or wants to use the more advanced standard features of available ebooks formats, resulting in a work that very often doesn't make for the most pleasing reading experience.
• Centuries of history and experience in graphical and printing arts should not be lost for the sake of speed in converting to an ebook format. Much can be done in our search for excellence to adapt and improve, the end result of which is a ebook of higher quality.

But, we must be very careful in our search for quality and in our establishing criteria to meet this lofty goal. Otherwise, as we know and are aware of, a new kind of elitism, censorship or snobism can arise out of this endeavour.

Finding the proper and fair way to achieve this quality of ebook without such detrimental effects led us to implement what we at Phoenix-Library call Phoenix Editions.

What is a Phoenix Edition

At Phoenix-Library we call a Phoenix Edition, an ebook with the following characteristics:

• It is converted from clean and standard xhtml/xml files
• It uses meta tags to identify content, and other data
• The available resources specific to each ebook format are used to give the reader a pleasant reading experience.

This means: objectives and normative criteria, regardless of taste, aesthetic or otherwise subjective evaluations of contents and/or presentation.

Phoenix Edition of a rb file:

An ebook with a cover, a table of contents with active links, chapter breaks, a "go to" touch access at least to a TOC, oeb compliant metadata, indentation if required from a pEdition reproduction, internal links to notes.

Phoenix Edition of a lit file:

An ebook with a cover, an external table of contents with active links at least to an internal TOC, chapter breaks, images, oeb compliant metadata, indentation if required from a pEditon reproduction, internal links to notes.

Phoenix Edition of a prc file:

An ebook with a cover, an external table of contents with active links at least to an internal TOC, chapter breaks, oeb compliant metadata, indentation if required from a pEdition reproduction, internal links to notes.

Phoenix Edition of a pdf file:

An ebook with a cover, images, chapter breaks, matching page numbers, oeb compliant metadata, indentation if required from a pEdition reproduction, internal links to notes.

Note 1: These criteria will be discussed in the Phoenix eBook newsgroups in order to be refined and then implemented in a Phoenix Edition guideline, that will be available in the near future to all Phoenix-Library associates.