ZedDist Lightweight ModuleRC Strawman Proposal

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Strawman proposal for a lightweight view of a book

Version 0.3 Produced February 18, 2009 by Dominic Labbé on behalf of the Lightweight Comitee.

Objective

Develop a strawman proposal for a lightweight view of a Daisy book. This proposal will highlight a solution where the same book has three different views depending on the type of player that is used to play the book. Those views are developed to live side by side thus making it possible to deliver all views on the same media. However, certain constraints would be put on the production level. This proposal mainly takes care of audio books. For full-audio/full-text books, only the top level would get access to the text/audio synchronization.

As a disclaimer, this only a first draft. Further discussion is necessary to improve that. Revision by DTD experts will also be needed if we decide to move ahead.

Description of views

View 1

Lowest level designed to play in very limited resource players including mass market audio player. This level will not have any additional files.

This view consists in the MP3 audio file with all part of the book in alphanumerical order in one folder.

View 2

This layer will contain some structure information to allow for basic navigation. The objective of that layer is to give access to a portion of Daisy Navigation. Compared to a full Daisy book, the most notable feature is the lack of proper SMIL files. SMIL files are very useful to synchronize audio and text, but they also add a big overhead that requires processing power and memory to handle.

The proposal would be to have a simple NCS file along with an optional page structure. The NCS would simply give information on each section of the book along with its level (1-6)

Here a sample: 

<ncs version="0.0.0">
 <head>
   <meta name="dtb:uid" content="my_unique_id" />
   <meta name="dtb:depth" content="3" />
   <meta name="dtb:generator" content="organization name" />
 </head>
 <docTitle>
   <text>Geography 101</text>
 </docTitle>
 <structure>
  <NavElement level=”1” src=”part01.mp3>Chapter 1: Oceania </NavElement>
  <NavElement level=”2” src=”part02.mp3>Chapter 1.1: Australia </NavElement>
  <NavElement level=”3” src=”part03.mp3>Chapter 1.1.1: New South Wales </NavElement>
  <NavElement level=”3” src=”part04.mp3>Chapter 1.1.2: Victoria </NavElement>
  ...
  <NavElement level=”2” src=”part05.mp3> Chapter 1.2: New Zealand </NavElement>
  ...
  <NavElement level=”1” src=”part06.mp3>Chapter 2.0: Africa </NavElement>
 </structure>
</ncs>

As the pages would be optional both from the specification and the product side, it is probably best to have them in a separate file. That page would be build using some SMIL-like markup. That file would have a .page extension.

Here’s a sample: 

<pagestruct version="0.0.0">
 <head>
   <meta name="dtb:uid" content="my_unique_id" />
   <meta name="dtb:generator" content="organization name" />
 …
 </head>
 <docTitle>
   <text>Geography 101</text>
 </docTitle>
 <pagelist>
  <page type=”front” value=”i” src=”part01.mp3” begin=”0.000s”> introduction i</page>
  <page type=”front” value=”ii” src=”part01.mp3” begin=”98.200 sec”> introduction i</page>
  <page type=”normal” value=”1” src=”part01.mp3” begin=”212.900 sec”>page 1</page>
  …
 </pagelist>
</pagestruct>

In all case, a package file would list all those files plus the audio files.

View 3

This level consists in current NISO book structure with a few restrictions.

Those restrictions are:

  • Limitation to mp3
  • One audio file by navigation element in the NCS, typically one for each “navpoint” entry of the original NCX.
  • All audio must be in order without any gap. (In Daisy/Niso, one can use SMIL properties to scramble the audio)

Special considerations

  • Multiple books on a media would simply result in files in a different folder (view 1) and each of them would have a separate NCS (view 2).
  • Book spanning multiples media would not be fully supported and consider as separate books. But a significant audio message could help people understand the links between parts of the book.


Table of functionalities by views

Function View 1 View 2 View 3
One level of navigation Yes Yes Yes
Six levels of navigation No Yes Yes
Page Navigation No Yes Yes
Phrase markup No No Yes
Escapable Structures No No Yes
Skippable Structures No No Yes
Resource file No No Yes
Footnotes, sidebars, etc… No No Yes
Table navigation No No Yes
Special functions for multiples Medias No No Yes
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