WPF based Digital Publishing Application Launched - Xiine

  • Article

Xiine, pronounced 'zeen', is a WPF application that you can download that provides access to digital content feeds that are loaded into a FlowDocument based reader. Cool factor of 10!!! Here are some interesting facts about Xiine:

Xiine Facts

  • We have succeeded in building a next generation digital publishing platform that is entirely based on .NET 3.0 (in particular WPF and WCF), that provides a much better reading experience then the web or other current reading technologies.
  • The reading experience is based on “flow documents”, which allows us to create a very professional layout, yet at the same time adjust to people’s preferences and hardware, such as screen size, font size, number of columns, and much more. So one of the core features of Xiine that is often overlooked is that Xiine content simply reads better than any of the other content that is out there right now (HTML, PDF,…)
  • Xiine at core is made for reading digital content, but we go beyond plain text and include all types of media, from audio, to video, to 3D visualization. (More demos for such “unusual” content will be forthcoming).
  • Xiine is a managed library. Unlike other digital reading systems such as Adobe Acrobat, Xiine helps users to collect and organize digital reading content. For instance, with Xiine, a user can add a book to his library in the office, then go home, log into Xiine, and the book will be right there!
  • Xiine is a unified reader. It is open and the goal is for all kinds of publishers to make content available in Xiine. We are already talking to numerous publishers in the software business and even beyond. We will also make a large amount of content available completely free of charge, in particular through our “Xiine Classics” channel. And all this will happen within a single reader. (You may have seen the New York times reader and other readers, but who wants to download and install tons of different readers, just to take a peek at an article?).
  • Xiine enables content annotation. And it does so not just locally, but users can synchronize annotations back to the server, so they can move to a different machine, open the same content again, and their annotations will be right there!
  • Xiine provides non-intrusive digital rights management. All reading content within Xiine is encrypted in a workstation specific manner. This means that people cannot share their content illegally (although they can through Xiine if the publisher allows for it). Content can also not be illegally changed or manipulated (unless the publisher wants to allow content manipulation). Content can even be flagged so it is actively removed from a user’s library, which allows for rental scenarios as well as time-critical material (such as legal texts). Xiine also allows publishers to define whether content can be printed, copies (CTRL-C) and so forth. This even works on a paragraph-by-paragraph level. For instance, we could decide that readers are now allowed to copy text out of code magazine articles, except for code snippets.
  • Xiine provides a reliable delivery platform, allowing publishers to make sure content users subscribe to (and potentially paid for) does get delivered as promised. This is currently a very problematic issue for digital publishing companies. Xiine solves this problem.
  • Xiine provides an advanced and non-intrusive advertising platform. We have a fully integrated, WPF based ad engine, that can provide much richer and at the same time less intrusive ad experience, with the ability to target advertise and measure ad results directly. This solves another of the major problems publishers face today.
  • Xiine integrates age rating for either entire publications or issues/books, and all the way down to individual paragraphs within content.