08-13-2009, 01:48 AM | #31 |
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08-13-2009, 02:06 AM | #32 |
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This is great news indeed. Now we can shop for the best book price from store to store. Also, I bet the textbook market will move as a herd toward ePub.
Sounds like Sony is pulling a "BetaMax" on Amazon... |
08-13-2009, 02:07 AM | #33 | |
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Quote:
PDF is designed as a print-ready format: what you see on the page is what prints out. That means it's set to a page size when created--and that page size is almost never 3.5" x 4.5" to fit on a 6" reader's screen. Most commonly, publisher's PDFs are about 6 x 9, and individuals' PDFs are letter or A4 size, which are very tiny indeed when displayed on an ebook reader. PDFs can look very good when displayed on the right size screen. However, on the wrong screen, they look awful. And a lot of publishers don't bother putting in the extra parts that make ebooks work well--a table of contents, the title/author info in the right places, and so on. EPub is based on HTML. (It is HTML, in an "ePub wrapper"--zipped up with some bits that tell the reader program how to display it.) That means there's no fixed size or shape to it; it fits whatever screen it's shown in. If you increase the size of the text, it just wraps to fit the screen again. The other info ("metadata")--title, author, contents, and so on--are much easier to set in an ePub file, because they're done with HTML, and anyone (or any program) that knows how to do the formatting at all, can also add those elements. EPub is read on more readers than PDF. And it can be read on very tiny screens, like iPods or PDAs; PDFs are very troublesome on those screens. Even more briefly: PDF can look nicer. EPub is more practical. There are other differences, but those start to get technical and perhaps obscure. |
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08-13-2009, 02:08 AM | #34 |
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I wonder if I should now go back into the Sony store and backup all the books I've purchased from them, just in case.
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08-13-2009, 02:22 AM | #35 |
book creator
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Good idea! And you might need to take good care of your reader, because you don't know if you will be able to read those books on the new generation hardware at all!
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08-13-2009, 02:22 AM | #36 |
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Now if only Adobe will fix their crappy ePub renderer on the Sony. And at least Adobe's DRM has been cracked.
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08-13-2009, 02:30 AM | #37 | |
book creator
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Oh, and a nice GUI for that other software would be really nice, too! |
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08-13-2009, 02:44 AM | #38 |
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I'd like this a lot more if the PRS-500 supported ADE/ePub. It is my contention that the PRS-500 could support a firmware upgrade that could allow ePub documents on a PRS-500.
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08-13-2009, 02:48 AM | #39 |
Connoisseur
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For a while epub looked like becoming an industry standard. Is that any closer to happening?
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08-13-2009, 02:49 AM | #40 |
Groupie
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This is great news, finally the tower of eBabel is beginning to wobble, just another couple of nudges....... Apple anybody?.....
did anyone spot this in the NYT report?? 'Later in the year, the company will begin selling a third Reader that will, like the Kindle, allow users to buy e-books wirelessly.' Is this wireless one to be the 300, the 600 or another model? |
08-13-2009, 02:55 AM | #41 |
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And global or US centric?
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08-13-2009, 02:59 AM | #42 |
book creator
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08-13-2009, 03:00 AM | #43 | |
book creator
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08-13-2009, 03:02 AM | #44 |
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08-13-2009, 03:11 AM | #45 |
book creator
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