View Single Post
Old 01-21-2008, 02:48 PM   #52
kovidgoyal
creator of calibre
kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kovidgoyal ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
kovidgoyal's Avatar
 
Posts: 45,451
Karma: 27757438
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Mumbai, India
Device: Various
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiderMatt View Post
Except when you can format your own PDF files to your liking then they are already superior to p-books. With the right program, converting and reformating PDF books is simple, as well. Why should a reading device tell me how my ebook is going to look when I can know exactly how it will look before I even load it on my Reader.
No converting and reformatting PDFs is not simple. Indeed, it cannot be simple, because in a PDF file there is no structural/semantic information. You're arguing from an end user perspective, basically I can do what I want with PDF therefore ODF must be a good ebook format. Look at the larger picture.

An ebook, unlike a pbook, should serve multiple purposes. One is presenting the information to humans, PDF is great for that. The other is presenting the information to computers for processing/extraction/indexing/transformation, PDF sucks for that. And PDF by its very nature will always suck for that. Thus, PDF does basically what a pbook does (somewhat better, I agree), but that's not nearly enough.
kovidgoyal is offline   Reply With Quote