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Old 01-12-2008, 05:27 PM   #22
kovidgoyal
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LRF simply supports more features than any other reflowable format short of full-blown HTML+CSS. RTF might actually support most of the same feature set, but I find its design to be a nightmare (I know because I've tried writing parsers for RTF). LRF on the other hand is based on an XML format, so writing parsers for it is relatively easy, I know, because I've written one.

PDF is not reflowable and was never intended to be reflowable. It's just not an ebook format. And PDF tends to be a blackhole, once content ends up in PDF it almost never escapes from it.

The "doc" format is again technically inferior, in fact because it's plain text, I dont see it ever becoming a dominant ebook format. However, the format I was talking about is prc which became mobi which became azw.

Even if epub doesn't take off, SONY is still left with LRF which thanks to community efforts is still the most "open" format out there. I define "openness" in an operational sense. i.e. there are open cross-platform tools to get content in and out of the format. SONY got this advantage because it was a first mover.
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