Kindle eBooks with Improved Typography Use New KFX File Format
When Amazon first announced in May that the Kindle platform would be getting prettier ebooks, they left a lot of questions unanswered, including exactly how Amazon was pulling it off.
Yesterday’s update has answered some of those questions.
Reports are coming in from a couple different directions that the new typography, kerning, and other improvements are tied to a new Kindle file format. Alles eBook.de reported yesterday, and a couple readers on MobileRead Forums confirm, that ebooks which have the new features also come with a file suffix of KFX.
Little is known about the file format at this time, but we do know that you can’t build one on your own (ebook developers have tried without success).
Someone has already unpacked one of the new KFX files and revealed clues in the metadata that suggest Amazon has a new ebook generator tool which they use to make the KFX files:
{key:"kfxgen_package_version",value:"PackageVersio n:YJReaderSDK-1.1.67.2 Month-Day:06-18″},
{key:"kfxgen_application_version",value:"6.24.1.0″ }
I can also report that Amazon is claiming that many ebooks have the new features when in fact they do not. I bought three two books which Amazon promised would have the new typography,but when I read the ebooks in the Kindle iPad app they did not have the formatting. Also, when I downloaded them, they were still in the older AZW3 file format.
While I am annoyed to have wasted my money, I can also see that Amazon has given us an obvious indicator that tells us which ebooks have the new features.
Now we can start taking the file apart and seeing how it ticks.
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