Although e-books cannot replace and displace printed publications from the market, they are quite popular, since they can always be nearby, for example, right in a smartphone, which has become a constant companion of a modern person. You can carry a whole library with you in your pocket. And read – anytime, anywhere. Books are presented in electronic libraries of the Internet in numerous formats, including FB2, FB3, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, RTF, DjVu and others, supported by reading programs – readers and devices. The FB3 format is a more recent version of FictionBook, and although it is no longer a novelty, such files are not opened by all “readers”.
General information about fb3 file structure
FB3 (FictionBook) is a format for storing and processing data, an improved version of the FB2 electronic book format, popular in Runet, developed by Russian programmers Dmitry Gribov and Mikhail Matsnev in order to meet the increased requirements for formatting book texts and cataloging. FB3 is freely available and open source.
A new approach to organizing the structure, including the use of an extended set of tags used in FB3, allows you to display not only a fiction book, as in the case of the previous format, but also those that require more complex layout, which made it possible to work with textbooks, reference books and technical literature.
For a more precise understanding of what this format is, note that in the new specification FictionBook FB3 is a ZIP archive where metadata, text and images are packed in separate files (the format is based on the Open Packaging Convention standard). That is, there will be several files in the container, each of which has a different content that represents the individual elements of the book. Among the improvements in terms of formatting – underline, spacing, and also added a “block” (this object forms sections of book text in the form of a quadrilateral and can be integrated into text with wrapping). Another important plus of the innovations is the appearance of bulleted and numbered lists.
The names of the elements in the archive are compared case-insensitively, the required ones are / [Content_Types ].xml and /_rels/.rels (the first contains the description of MIME types for all objects in the archive, the second contains links to the cover, meta information, etc.). FB3 uses meta tags that describe structured metadata such as <description>, <subtitle>, <body>, <stylesheet>, <p>, <v> and others. So, the description.xml contained in the archive is a file with meta information, body.xml is the text of the book, _rels / description.xml.rels is a file with links to the description of the book, where the cover, text will be indicated, _rels / body.xml.rels – a file with links to the body of the book, where all the elements included in it are indicated. Of the graphic formats, there is support for GIF, PNG, JPG and SVG.
Programs to open FB3 files
The container version of FictionBook has not yet become widespread, so not every reader can open FB3. To read books downloaded by the archive, you need to extract the file to the selected folder using a program installed on your computer (for example, WinRAR, WinZip or 7Zip), or simply open the book from the archive, while the device must have a reader for reading files of various formats. If you have an advanced reader that supports playing books directly from archives without unpacking, unzipers are not required.
FB3Reader and FB3Editor online editor can be used to work with the format. You can open files with the extension “.fb3” on your computer using the latest versions of FBReader and Ebook Reader. Besides FB2, FB3 and FB2.zip, the programs open other popular text formats. In the case of an Android device, you can find and download the required software from the Google Play store, an excellent option would be AlReader, a convenient reader that supports numerous book formats (there is a version of the program for Windows).
Converting FB3 to other formats
E-books with various extensions, including FictionBook (FB2), can be converted into a convenient format for reading by the installed application using a special converter. At the same time, the FB3 structure does not imply conversion to other extensions, and attempts to convert can lead to damage to the source, so translation of this format into any other is not practiced.
Why FB3, and what are its advantages
The development of a new version of FictionBook was planned for a long time, but was suspended and resumed only in 2014. The introduction of the new format was necessary because it became clear that FB2 was already outdated. The limited functionality of FB2, for example, does not allow you to mark in the fields, there is no support for vector graphics and numbered lists, which means that it can be used only in the case of fiction. In the improved version of FictionBook, a number of solutions have been implemented to correct these shortcomings, as a result of which it became possible to work with technical literature. So, FB3 from FB2 will differ in a more complex layout.
The differences in terms of solutions in general are as follows:
- the “.fb3” file is a ZIP archive containing meta information, text and images, while FB2 is an XML file;
- meta-information is represented by one file, and the text of the book with footnotes is already another, images are taken out of XML and will also be separate objects in the archive;
- all connections between elements are performed not via xlink, but are described using a relationship mechanism (FB3 is based on the Open Packaging Convention);
- the structure provides for subheadings, a block for descriptions of periodicals, the ability to add not only authors, but also illustrators and everyone who was involved in the creation of the book;
- there is support for binder sets (several books in one ZIP file);
- enhanced formatting capabilities (the most significant change is the selected blocks, in addition, lists have been added, the footnote mechanism has been redesigned, etc.).
With all the numerous transformations of FictionBook, the format has retained a very valuable quality – it is still adapted for reading a book on any device, regardless of its hardware resources, display size (you can read it, including on black and white screens) and other characteristics.
Despite the fact that the great popularity of FB3 is still far away, “Liters” is expanding support for the format, in addition, books with the “.fb3” extension and other electronic libraries are offered. Modern devices for reading e-books also support FB3 functionality, for example, recent ONYX e-book readers can work with the default format.
