Amazon has released Kindlegen V2 to generate Kindle documents with the enhanced KF8 format. At the moment the KF8 features will only work on Kindle Fire, although Amazon promises future support for KF8 by other "latest generation" Kindles. I took a quick look at the output from Kindlegen V2 and I see that it produces a MOBI that is mainly the MOBI header records and HTML. Almost all of the binary index content of standard Kindle files is absent, so I'm assuming Kindle Fire will be using HTML-driven navigation for KF8 files, which is good. I'll add to this thread when I've had a chance to analyze the format and how it's interpreted on the Fire.
For anyone interested in the tools, here is the email I received from Amazon.
For anyone interested in the tools, here is the email I received from Amazon.
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Were pleased to announce that Kindle Publisher Tools with Kindle Format 8 (KF8) support are now available for download. Kindle Format 8 is Amazons next generation file format offering a wide range of new features and enhancements including HTML5 and CSS3 support that publishers can use to create all types of books. KF8 adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including drop caps, numbered lists, fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics - opening up more opportunities to create Kindle books that readers will love. Kindle Fire is the first Kindle device to support KF8 - in the coming months KF8 will be rolled out to our latest generation Kindle e-ink devices as well as our free Kindle reading apps. Publishers have created thousands of KF8 titles already and customers are enjoying the improved formatting and reading features across all types of books. Additionally, KF8 features such as Kindle Panel Views and Kindle Text Pop Up enable great fixed layout books including graphic novels, comics and childrens books. Weve updated our Kindle Publishing Guidelines to help publishers get started with Kindle Format 8. Please download the new versions of KindleGen (http://www.amazon.com/kindleformat/KindleGen) and Kindle Previewer (http://www.amazon.com/kindleformat/KindlePreviewer) to get started today. More information about KF8, Kindle Publishing Tools & Guidelines can be found at http://http://www.amazon.com/KindleFormat. |