Abstract:

EPUB, like PDF and Word, is a format for representing documents in electronic form. It is used by many eReaders such as iBooks, Blackberry Playbooks, Sony Reader and so on. There is also browser add-on for Firefox to read EPUB files. One drawback of eReaders is Platform lock-in, and one drawback of an add-on is the inability to easily sync page positions across multiple devices. In this project, we will create a pure Javascript web application for the EPUB format which will solve both of these problems.

CS297 Results

• Learn what is EPUB and EPUB format
• Create a sample EPUB file
• Did research on several compression algorithm to understand how ZIP works
• Implement one compression/decompression algorithm “SEQUITUR” using Javascript
• Create a database schema to handle page position data for multiple users and books

Proposed Schedule

Key Deliverables:

• Software
  • A JS library to read and write ZIP files
  • PHP API to handle page position data
  • Cloud data storage
  • A workable EPUB reader application
• Report
  • Detail description of software deliverables.
  • Final report and presentation

Innovations and Challenges

• This application is platform independent
• This application can easily sync page positions across multiple devices and scales
• Create a pure Javascript library to read and write ZIP files
• Implement PHP API to handle page data in database

References:

[Garrish2011] What is EPUB 3? Matt Garrish, O'Reilly Media, 2011.

[Davies2012] Creating and formatting documents for e-readers using ePub, Davie,E , University of Leicester, 2012.

[Chris2013] Grammar-based compression algorithm SEQUITUR, Chris Pollett, San Jose State University, 2013.

[CakePHP2014] Guide of CakePHP: the rapid development php framework, Cake Software Foundation Inc., http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/index.php, 2014.

[Wiki] References of compression and decompression with Javascript,