Quote:
Originally Posted by William Campbell
I think ebooks should have no formatting. Leave that up to the reading device, which should offer all the choices.
An ebook should be comprised of chapters, passages, paragraphs, and sentences of words, nothing more. Let the device determine fonts, justification, spacing between lines, paragraphs and passage breaks, which the reader can adjust to their desired preference. Then every book could look completely different, but for one particular reader, every book would look exactly the same. The reading experience becomes transparent, allowing the reader to better indulge in the story, not how it "looks."
My question would be--which format (as in container) are we going to use? Having all these file formats is a messy affair. What do others think? Is EPUB where all this will end up someday? Or...?
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That would be the most awesome solution, yes. And epub would be a good container for this. As you'll need some form of XML formatting (defining blocks, without inherent layout). It is actually the way I'm formatting all books I reformat. As I want to be able to make epub, mobi and PDF from the same source, I needed to formalize my content layout. Especially for the PDF generation. I have made a tool (being a developer does help) that can transform my HTML into LaTeX and by defining "LaTeX templates", I can generate my PDF exactly as I want it, without having to change my source HTML.