I recently downloaded a free eBook in ePub format that Waterstones were kindly giving away. It happened to be zipped and needed decompression. Not something that typically poses a problem since you simply double-click and zip files open hey presto in Finder. Some
thing you might not know, however, is that ePub files are in essence zip files with their extension renamed from .zip to .epub. Therefore, when you are unzipping an ePub it is a bit like unzipping a zip.
StuffIt Expander handles the task without a fault, but Finder's 'Archive Utility' has greater difficulty and so, if you simply double-click the file, Finder displays all the files contained within the ePub and you'll see the following: a META-INF folder, a mimetype file, and an OEBPS folder. None of these files will open in Adobe's Digital Editions or in fact any eReader. This is an incompatibility between the 'Archive Utility' and the ePub format, which also has an impact on developers (see here).
The answer for consumers when faced with this problem is to have StuffIt Expander installed and to right-click or ctrl-click and choose to open the file with StuffIt Expander not Archive Utility.
thing you might not know, however, is that ePub files are in essence zip files with their extension renamed from .zip to .epub. Therefore, when you are unzipping an ePub it is a bit like unzipping a zip.StuffIt Expander handles the task without a fault, but Finder's 'Archive Utility' has greater difficulty and so, if you simply double-click the file, Finder displays all the files contained within the ePub and you'll see the following: a META-INF folder, a mimetype file, and an OEBPS folder. None of these files will open in Adobe's Digital Editions or in fact any eReader. This is an incompatibility between the 'Archive Utility' and the ePub format, which also has an impact on developers (see here).
The answer for consumers when faced with this problem is to have StuffIt Expander installed and to right-click or ctrl-click and choose to open the file with StuffIt Expander not Archive Utility.
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