Fujifilm has launched GT-EpubAuthor for Fixed Layout. GT-EpubAuthor is an authoring software that allows the easy output of images such as e-comics and e-books in EPUB3 format, the official international standard for digital publishing. The software has full English support; hence it can be also used by publishers worldwide.
EPUB has already gained global recognition as the standard format for e-books. In Japan, the use of EPUB is rapidly becoming widespread as evidenced by the increasing number of publishers and electronic distribution companies who have adopted the format for publishing e-books. Most of the e-book terminals sold today and reader software for iOS and Android are compatible with EPUB format. There are two types of EPUB in use: Reflowable and Fixed Layout. Reflowable types automatically create a new line in response to the mobile's screen size while Fixed Layout types lock the page layout and prevent characters from reflowing. However, reflowable e-books with layouts made complicated by the insertion of images or illustrations get easily corrupted. Because creating reflowable e-books consumes cost, the number of e-books to be created in Fixed Layout EPUB format is expected to increase in the future.
Last August, Fujifilm launched "GT-MangaAuthor", an authoring software for fixed layout EPUB3-based e-comics which uses the unique technology in image recognition. The software earned a good reputation in the e-book industry because of its ease of use. In order for the upcoming "GT-EpubAuthor for Fixed Layout" to be also used by publishers worldwide, editing and production companies, a bilingual (Japanese and English) feature is added to the software. In order for the software to be compatible with comics that are read from left to right, the reading order direction automatically extracted comic frames and the page binding direction can be set to either left or right. Furthermore, the software has a variety of functions necessary for EPUB3 format-based e-comics and e-books such as the "Clickable Mapping Function" that embeds a link into an image and will move to the link's specified location once clicked or the "Table of Contents File Setting Function" that links items from the Tables of Contents and actual pages.
In the future, Fujifilm will sequentially release E-book production tools which are compatible with the EPUB3 standard, and software modules for generating more beautiful image data which are compatible with terminal screens whose resolutions are improving. Through these image processing technologies, Fujifilm will contribute to the expansion of the e-book market.
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