Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
I'm not sure that pdf is here to stay. Last year's report from O’Reilly:
They should have the numbers for 2011 soon, but if it follows the trend, pdf is going down. |
PDF as a commercial ebook format for novels and linear nonfic is going down. (And it should; PDF sucks for novels.) PDF as a business document format and as an archive format, is not going anywhere--and that means ebook readers will still need to support it. As a magazine, journal and textbook format, it's still on top; it'll be a long time before publishers accept that the print version & the e-version can look *entirely different.* (Also, it means adding a lot to the layout time if they have to take the PDF-ready content and reformat it for *good* epub.)
If CBR ever figures out how to support searchable text (I can imagine some ways; having txt file or files & a load file to relate them to the pages), it may displace PDF as an image-based format, but unless that happens, PDF is going to remain the format of choice for commercial picture-text books, like children's books.
There's less and less need for "this is an ebook! It looks just like a paper book!" But there'll always be a need for "this shows up
exactly like we planned it." And right now, PDF is the best widely-available format for that.