Book protocol

The book:// protocol syntax:

book://example.org/whatever/whenever/publication.hpub/filename.html#anchor

Two great advantages:

• We are able to uniquely identify a book: the path is unique, identifies a uniquely owned domain (i.e. example.org), a specific path (i.e. whatever/whenever), a specific publication (i.e. publication), format (i.e. hpub).
  • Once identified, we can also refer to items from its content: filename (i.e. filename.html) and anchor (i.e. #anchor).
• We are able to download a book: the protocol used is the standard HTTP, so you can easily convert book:// in http:// and download the book from that specific location.

Notes:

0. The specific extension can be omitted: in that scenario, the reading software might try to download the extension that is best suited. Baker will download .hpub files by default, but the book:// protocol is agnostic so it could point also to a .epub version or .mobi version or even a pure textual .html version.

Usage in Baker

Baker will recognize book:// links from the currently opened book page, and will automatically download and open the current book with the downloaded one.

There's one extra URL recognized by Baker: book://local that will go back from a downloaded book to the default book contained in the published Baker app.

This will allow:

1. Manual updates of the current book.
2. The creation of a lightweight version or some kind of "shelf book" that downloads the book you want (using book://local to go back to the "shelf book" and download another one).
3. The creation of chains of books, of downloadable references and so on.