End of IDPF, Start of a New Era for Digital Publishing Standards

Finally, International Digital Publishing Forum, or known as IDPF, has been absorbed into W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) as Publishing@W3C. The end of IDPF as a stand alone organisation ended the eBook standards early days journey which commence in 1999 with introduction of Open eBook Publication Structure (OEB) that later on contributed to the EPUB standards (which was governed by IDPF). This evolution in the journey of digital publishing standards is inevitable due to modern eBooks mimicking too much of the web. After all, the core of modern eBooks is HTML, and also perhaps other web technologies.

We at e-Sentral welcome any progressive change which can take digital publishing and EPUB standards to the next level. Whether if eBooks of the future will still maintain the looks of a traditional book or will blend with looks of the web is actually a secondary matter, what is important is that eBooks will better spell digital content for users.