Which format is appropriate when?

KamisamaNoIuTori · 06-19-2011, 04:16 AM

I have a large collection of e-books: it ranges from photography books, just text text books, computing books, cookbooks, plain essays, and novels. The majority of these are in .pdf, and because of that I wanted to convert most of these to .epub.
But, I was wondering, when is it appropriate to use one format over the other; I'm going to assume that with the novels and plain text text books that it's good to use .epub, but with the things like computing books and cook books is there any benefits of it being a .pdf, or should it be a different format altogether, like .djvu? (e.g. does having pictures/graphs lend itself more to being in a format either than .epub?
Any help on this would much a appreciated.

pdurrant · 06-19-2011, 04:19 AM

Anything with complicated text formatting or page-specific layouts will be best left as PDF.

HarryT · 06-19-2011, 08:18 AM

You should also be aware that converting FROM the PDF format will rarely work well. PDF is a "terminal format" - it's very difficult to convert back from it to something else. If you have to do so, using an OCR program is often the best way to do it.

06-19-2011, 04:16 AM	#1
KamisamaNoIuTori Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: none	Which format is appropriate when? I have a large collection of e-books: it ranges from photography books, just text text books, computing books, cookbooks, plain essays, and novels. The majority of these are in .pdf, and because of that I wanted to convert most of these to .epub. But, I was wondering, when is it appropriate to use one format over the other; I'm going to assume that with the novels and plain text text books that it's good to use .epub, but with the things like computing books and cook books is there any benefits of it being a .pdf, or should it be a different format altogether, like .djvu? (e.g. does having pictures/graphs lend itself more to being in a format either than .epub? Any help on this would much a appreciated.

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06-19-2011, 04:19 AM	#2
pdurrant The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠 Posts: 71,496 Karma: 306214458 Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Norfolk, England Device: Kindle Voyage	Anything with complicated text formatting or page-specific layouts will be best left as PDF.

06-19-2011, 08:18 AM	#3
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	You should also be aware that converting FROM the PDF format will rarely work well. PDF is a "terminal format" - it's very difficult to convert back from it to something else. If you have to do so, using an OCR program is often the best way to do it.