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First
Annual Meeting A Success
DATE:
May 22-24, 2000
LOCATION: The Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers
The Open eBook Forum (OEBF) recently hosted its
First Annual Spring Meeting Series in New York City. Events included
the Forum's first General Membership Meeting on May 23. The main
sessions, on May 22 and 23, were standing-room only events, each attended by
over 200 people.
DCL's Mikhail Vaysbukh was one of the OEBF
members in attendance at the meeting. Commenting on the meeting,
Vaysbukh tells of the meetings' focus on digital rights management and the
forum's ultimate goal of encouraging standardization across the ebook
industry. "With companies like Rocketbook, Softbook and Palm
introducing their own handheld devices, there is a real danger of
fragmentation in the e-publishing industry. Such fragmentation will
not serve the end user well. What's important about a book, is, and
has always been, its content. Regardless of the electronic device you
decide to use - you should have the same access to the same content as
everyone else."
These sentiments, are of course, in
keeping with the true spirit of XML, SGML, and HTML. That publishers
and device manufacturers are recognizing this early on is certainly good
news for the user.
SGMLNY on eBooks:
"With major vendors such as Adobe, Microsoft, Palm and Gemstar (of Rocket
eBook and SoftBook Reader fame) lending credibility to e-books, and the
recent popularity of Stephen King's novella on the Web, e-books are
becoming more popular with consumers and more of a challenge for
publishers.
Fortunately, the Open
Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) has recently published its new XML-based
standard for e-books "that will benefit creators of content, makers
of reading systems and, most importantly, consumers."
ABOUT OEBF: The OEBF is
constituted of representatives of some 35 organizations. This group
will focus primarily on initiating discussions, among stakeholders involved in electronic book publishing,
regarding standards, digital rights management,
and "dual-stream" publishing - the simultaneous publication of
print and electronic versions.
Data Conversion Laboratory is an OEBF member
and looks forward to working with this important new body in the
e-publishing world.
Click
here for more details.
ABOUT SGML FORUM OF NY: The SGML Forum is an independent, nonprofit corporation established, and administered, by and for the user community--corporations, end-users and implementers.
Members come from a variety of industries, professions and
institutions, including publishing and other information providers,
telecommunications, securities, insurance, pharmaceuticals,
technical documentation, libraries, museums, defense and many
other fields.
Click
here for more details.
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