## Foreword

When Garret told me he was writing this book, I thought "Thank, God!" The world really needs a good book about the Open eBook Publication Structure. And when I read a draft, I was even happier. It's clear and concise, direct and thorough and addresses a crucial audience. The authors of the publication structure did a great job designing and writing the technical specification, but the specification is, well, let's just say it's not gentle prose you'd read at night to relax! It's unforgivingly hard-nosed, technical and (usually!) unambiguous. And that's what a technical specification needs to be. The primary audience for the specification is software developers who are building tools and reading systems, and the hyper-concise form is needed for those folks.

But that doesn't help the rest of the world understand what the specification is, what it allows, how it works and how it nails the needs of the eBook world on its head. Understanding OEB tackles this task.

David Ornstein

President, Open eBook Forum

Manager of Planning and Architecture for eReading, Microsoft