Voyager Japan and Sharp are planning to develop a new ebook format.
Sharp Corp. (TSE:6753) and e-book software developer Voyager Japan Inc. will submit the specifications of their formats free of charge to the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan.
The trade organization, consisting of 41 major publishers, will then create a common format by the end of March. The government will provide 150 million yen (US$1.8 million as a subsidy.
P.S. If anyone has access to the original Nikkei story (or if you know some background details), please let me know. I’d like to follow up.
via Trading Markets
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.voyager.co.jp/&ei=0xXITJ61F8P68Aa8zaQy&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DVoyager%2BJapan%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3D5qk%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26prmd%3Divn
RSS
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Here is the original source (from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication) of Nikkei article, Japanese only though.
http://www.soumu.go.jp/menu_news/s-news/01ryutsu02_01000005.html
It seems one of their main purposes is to add features to ePub and make it more suitable for Japanse text – such as vertical writing.
Currently there are many Japanese ebook formats and none of them is directly compatible with world popular formats such as EPub, PRC and so on. Voyager’s .Book and Sharp’s XMDF are the two major Japanese ebook formats at the moment.
Thanks!