It would be nice to be able to access my library through an opds feed, especially when reading on an ebook reader.
It would be nice to be able to access my library through an opds feed, especially when reading on an ebook reader.
This OPDS is new to me. I've never heard of it before your post. Live and learn.
From a quick scan of the documentation, it would require a complete rebuild of the site in a new language other than HTML. That's a huge job for a site like storiesonline.
I can understand the potential benefit for users. But as the site provider, I don't seen any obvious benefits to the site itself.
From the stated purpose of OPDS (distributed publishing) it seems to circumvent many of the things that the site uses to get subscriptions (advanced search, content management and curation), so it seems providing this interface to Storiesonline's contents would be very counterproductive to the site.
I can see providing such an interface for Bookapy.com —where how you get the book doesn't matter as long as you get to it to pay for it— as it may be beneficial, but not for Storiesonline. For storiesonline, how you get to the contents matters a lot.
How popular is this thing? It started in 2008 and I just heard of it now despite being in the content business for over 25 years.
from my quick check of the OPDS it looks to me like an e-book cataloguing and access program, much like the catalogue aspect of Calibre, except OPDS requires it in an e-book format while Calibre will accept other text based formats as well. It clearly does not accept standard html files which means it would require many users to switch from a standard browser to an e-book reader..
I was actually just thinking about the paid accounts where you have a library and access to epub format of the stories. That way it would be easy to access books from the library on the ereader. I think it should more or less just be to provide an index in the opds format.
Are there eReaders that handle OPDS and are unable to handle simple browsing?
Again, having never heard of OPDS before your post, I would find it amazing that an ereader managed to implement this and not managed to have a basic browser. Even paper white kindles have basic browsers.
I've been using opds with koreader and various ereader apps on android. I always read in epub format. At the moment I download the epubs and put them in calibre and then access the calibre opds stream, I was looking at eliminating the extra steps (especially for work in progress). But maybe there's not that many people that use ereader or ereader apps.
I read epubs in the program FBReader on my tablet and on my PC. I simply have a set of folders on each device and click on the epub and read the story with no issues at all. I download the epub with no problems using normal download software or have them emailed to my when I buy them. This is good because I've found the ebook reading apps usually do not work on my tablet because most of them require you to have an Internet connection / link to get the app and the stories, and my tablet doesn't have that. Copy to microSD or USB drive with OTG then copy from them to the tablet memory or microSD plugged into it.
But maybe there's not that many people that use ereader or ereader apps.
When I'm reading mobile, I use my iPad. It has no issues with the epub format that SOL puts things in. Certainly people complain about how proprietary the Apple stuff is, I completely understand that. But this old iPad I have - it has no issues and stuff just works.
Maybe I should have phrased it better, it's about how to get to the epubs, the stoiesonline epubs are perfect, it's just how to get them on the reader where opds helps, but from the feedback here it looks like there isn't much interest for it.
Maybe I should have phrased it better, it's about how to get to the epubs, the stoiesonline epubs are perfect, it's just how to get them on the reader where opds helps, but from the feedback here it looks like there isn't much interest for it.
Interest is there, but from the documentation that I found, it seems like total navigation would be required, interfaces to search, etc. It's a huge job to provide an additional interface to storiesonline contents.
For now, there is just me building stuff.
Totally understandable. I actually think it shouldn't be that big for a minimal set which would provide a lot of functionality. I think 2 xml pages would be enough.
One static index page with something like
urn:uuid:2853dacf-ed79-42f5-8e8a-a7bb3d1ae6a2
OPDS Catalog Root Example
2010-01-10T10:03:10Z
Spec Writer
http://opds-spec.org
Popular Publications
2010-01-10T10:01:01Z
urn:uuid:d49e8018-a0e0-499e-9423-7c175fa0c56e
My Library
And the library page based on users libary entries like this
urn:uuid:433a5d6a-0b8c-4933-af65-4ca4f02763eb
My Library
2010-01-10T10:01:11Z
Spec Writer
http://opds-spec.org
Some Story Title
urn:uuid:6409a00b-7bf2-405e-826c-3fdff0fd0734
2010-01-10T10:01:11Z
Name of author
http://opds-spec.org/authors/1285
en
1917
Some Summary
....
If you want I can provide you "correct" templates.
I've checked the documentation. A properly functioning system needs a root document.
The site has Atom feeds already for selected pages, so it would be easy to provide OPDS feeds for the same pages, it's the other stuff that I'm not sure about.
One aspect of the issue that needs to be kept in mind is the number of scum who steal stories from SoL and sell them via their own sites and Amazon, so anything that Lazeez does to make it easier to access lots of stories has to be balanced against keeping the stories reasonably safe as well. That is likely to require a lot more work with extra services like this.
One aspect of the issue that needs to be kept in mind is the number of scum who steal stories from SoL and sell them via their own sites and Amazon, so anything that Lazeez does to make it easier to access lots of stories has to be balanced against keeping the stories reasonably safe as well. That is likely to require a lot more work with extra services like this.
Maybe not, such an extra service should definitely be a premium member service which should keep the scum from accessing it. At least for now. I can see where stealing stories from SOL becomes lucrative enough to get monthly premium accounts just to siphon stories from the site.
I'd guess that Lazeez has some idea as to which accounts could belong to vampires, if they went for premium membership he would then have billing information for them as well.
A premium member has access to 300 stories a day but I'd be v-e-r-y suspicious of an account which came anywhere remotely close to that limit, particularly if the stories accessed were longer ones.
(thinking about it, I came at around 80 one day - all stories from one newly-discovered author along with my normal two or three. It was for personal use! Really! And it took me over a year to read them all)
I'd guess that Lazeez has some idea as to which accounts could belong to vampires, if they went for premium membership he would then have billing information for them as well.
A premium member has access to 300 stories a day but I'd be v-e-r-y suspicious of an account which came anywhere remotely close to that limit, particularly if the stories accessed were longer ones.
I know and agree with what you said. For one, the 300 limit is supposed to be temporarily and should be back to 100 at some time. The main problem is that someone with a premium membership can 'legally' download 300 stories every single day and there's not much you can do about it because they paid for it. Unless of course you can link them to a site that offers the same stories. With 50000 stories and a 300 limit you can download everything on the site within 6 months. Personally I think Lazeez should set another limit to make such a thing impossible. For example a 1000 limit per month or whatever he thinks best.
About the 300 limit: this is a result of the way extra downloads are allowed for the free members, a way to support home-locked free members in these corona times. I think it is 3x the previously 10 limit which resulted in 3x the 100 limit too. Even the 100 limit is pretty excessive so if it should become a problem I doubt there are premium members who have a problem with a 50 limit or something like that.
Even the 100 limit is pretty excessive so if it should become a problem I doubt there are premium members who have a problem with a 50 limit or something like that.
It's not so simple.
I personally know of a few members (military types) that subscribe for a full year, download the maximum for a couple of days and then they go away on their deployment and don't access the site for months on end (military networks block storiesonline) and then they come back, renew for another year and repeat the process.
It's not so simple.
I personally know of a few members (military types) that subscribe for a full year, download the maximum for a couple of days and then they go away on their deployment and don't access the site for months on end (military networks block storiesonline) and then they come back, renew for another year and repeat the process.
I didn't know and didn't think of that possibility. On the other hand, if you know which accounts those are it might be interesting to set up a sort of special 'military' membership for those allowing unlimited download for a short period of time. They can request the period and you can verify it's not a scammer before allowing that kind of access. Just an idea, not a feature request :)