The VitalSource Resource

Recently, VitalSource retired our venerable, 18-year-old proprietary ebook format, known as Dash, DashML or VitalSource XML. As part of Dash’s retirement ceremony, we transitioned students using Dash books to EPUB versions, seamlessly maintaining all of their licenses, bookmarks, notes and highlights to make sure the big change, years in the making, was painless.

Engineering work on Dash began all the way back in 1997 with the (then quite risky!) decision to go with the new XML format for our product, rather than the “industry standard” at the time, SGML. Creating the format was what lead us to develop the flexible VitalBook format (for which we received a patent in the United States, Australia, Canada, The Peoples Republic of China, The European Union, Hong Kong, and India) in 2004. Dash survived for years – through the launch of our early apps VitalViewer and vitalsource KEY, and of course it was the first format built into our popular Bookshelf textbook apps still available today.

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