[hacker]

Originally Posted by TadW

Ok, but what advantage does that give me? If I had the original as (x)html, I could always choose the format to convert it into, for instance Plucker.

Now you're just not making any sense. First you said:

Originally Posted by TadW

Plucker format is open, but not easily converted to another format. At least to my knowledge, there is no way for the normal user to convert a Plucker e-book to another format.

To which I responded with some options to convert an existing Plucker document back to HTML.

Then you said:

Originally Posted by TadW

But using your method, I would have to first translate the Plucker file back into (x)html, and then reconvert it again. Plus, as you said earlier, the transformed (x)html file wouldn't be identical to the original.

This is correct. When you convert an HTML, RSS, PDF, etc. resource to Plucker format, much of the unnecessary items are stripped (for example, font faces, sizes, inline css classes, comments, and other items). When you convert from Plucker back to HTML, you aren't going to get any of that back, because none of that was preserved in making the Plucker document (obviously).

Originally Posted by TadW

Sorry, I just fail to see the advantage of supplying e-books in Plucker format as to supplying them in (x)html.

And I agree. If the publisher wants to supply their books in XHTML, they are free to do so, with all of the downsides of validation, authentication, size constraints, and portability that the choice of using XHTML as a base format brings.

If you want to change the minds of those publishers, I'd start with them.