WoodWing Software, which supplies cross-media publishing solutions, and has quickly established a good reputation in the tablet publishing market, has made the data format used in its Tablet Publishing Solution available as an open format, free of charge, in an attempt to create a standard for tablet publishing. Woodwing is calling the standard Ofip (Open Format for Interactive Publications).

The company notes that while PDF became the de facto standard for print, and the web was standardized from the outset with HTML, there is currently no standard format for interactive tablet experiences. As a result, there is a direct dependency between the creation tools and the tablet apps. If the same scenario existed on the web, says WoodWing, developers would have to use different creation tools for each of web browser.

“Our mission is to serve the publishing industry,” says WoodWing president, Erik Schut. “As a front-runner, we feel it’s our duty to catalyze standardization of a common format, which otherwise could easily take a few years. Publishers will seriously benefit from standardization, as it avoids vendor lock-in and will allow (them) to pick and choose different suppliers and technologies for the various parts of the supply chain. Both the tools to create your publication, as well as the reader apps for the various platforms can be chosen freely.

“Before making this decision, we have carefully analyzed the existing and upcoming standards, as well as proprietary formats. As our tablet publishing solution is currently the most mature, and has the most extensive feature set, we came to the conclusion that our format is a good starting point for an open industry standard. Being XML-based, it’s easy to transform from and to other formats, to allow quick and easy interoperability.”

An important and pressing reason for standardization, says WoodWing, is the many upcoming multi-publisher digital kiosks. In these kiosks, such as PUBBLES from Bertelsmann in Germany, customers can shop for interactive magazines and newspapers from various publishing houses, just as in a physical kiosk, without distraction. With a standardized format in place, publishers can easily extend their audience via these kiosks, says WoodWing. The company adds that it is already actively engaged with other leading technology suppliers to further evolve the format, and that any industry player is welcome to participate in this process.
There are more details on Ofip here.