MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Under new Overdrive model users will no longer choose a file format, just 'ebook'

toddos · 06-17-2011, 05:13 AM

You speak of lowest common denominator, yet that's exactly what PDF is -- it's the simplest way to bring a PDF to market, because pretty much every printed book becomes a PDF at some point during its printing process. It's the least amount of work that publishers could do and still tick the "provided an ebook" checkbox.

Ebooks are to paper books as the web is to desktop publishing. The old format was a fixed size, and designers were able to place their elements exactly where they wanted them because the size of their paper would never change. Control was in the hands of the publishers, because their output was static. The new format is fluid and dynamic and as a result designers no longer get to have pixel-perfect control. The reader is in control, where he can choose where to read the content (on a phone or a 1366x768 laptop or a 1920x1080 large screen, in a maximized browser window or one that's tall and narrow or one that's short and wide) and even how that content looks (font overrides, custom stylesheets, user scripts, ad blockers, etc).

Are you suggesting that we should all have multiple readers? A 6" device for "mass market paperbacks", a 12" device for "hard-cover books", a 20" device for coffee table books, etc? You're limiting yourself by your adherence to the old ways. If you want a 12" device, great. Buy one when you can. I'm happy with my 6" and 4.3" (and previously 3.5") readers, and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to read the exact same content and get just as much out of it as you would on a larger device. Except that adherence to the old ways, that you have to lay out things just so, and if you don't have an A4 page to work with you can't do it.

DOS vs. GUI is a ridiculous comparison here (and you're putting us on the wrong sides, anyway -- I'm advocating the future, aka GUIs, while you're stuck in the past, aka DOS). I've already given you a better bad analogy with web vs. magazines. If you can't see it, think back to web pages from the 90s, with their "Best viewed at 1024x768" buttons, or even early-2000s flash-based web sites that would not resize the flash interface even if you changed the browser's size. Why did they have to tell us what resolution to view their page at? Because they tried to put paper on the web. We've moved past that, and as soon as we move past trying to put paper into ebooks I'll finally shut up about PDF not being a valid ebook format. Because PDF as an ebook format will finally be dead.

06-17-2011, 05:13 AM	#41
toddos Guru Posts: 695 Karma: 822675 Join Date: May 2010 Device: Kobo Aura, Nokia Lumia 920 (Freda)	You speak of lowest common denominator, yet that's exactly what PDF is -- it's the simplest way to bring a PDF to market, because pretty much every printed book becomes a PDF at some point during its printing process. It's the least amount of work that publishers could do and still tick the "provided an ebook" checkbox. Ebooks are to paper books as the web is to desktop publishing. The old format was a fixed size, and designers were able to place their elements exactly where they wanted them because the size of their paper would never change. Control was in the hands of the publishers, because their output was static. The new format is fluid and dynamic and as a result designers no longer get to have pixel-perfect control. The reader is in control, where he can choose where to read the content (on a phone or a 1366x768 laptop or a 1920x1080 large screen, in a maximized browser window or one that's tall and narrow or one that's short and wide) and even how that content looks (font overrides, custom stylesheets, user scripts, ad blockers, etc). Are you suggesting that we should all have multiple readers? A 6" device for "mass market paperbacks", a 12" device for "hard-cover books", a 20" device for coffee table books, etc? You're limiting yourself by your adherence to the old ways. If you want a 12" device, great. Buy one when you can. I'm happy with my 6" and 4.3" (and previously 3.5") readers, and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to read the exact same content and get just as much out of it as you would on a larger device. Except that adherence to the old ways, that you have to lay out things just so, and if you don't have an A4 page to work with you can't do it. DOS vs. GUI is a ridiculous comparison here (and you're putting us on the wrong sides, anyway -- I'm advocating the future, aka GUIs, while you're stuck in the past, aka DOS). I've already given you a better bad analogy with web vs. magazines. If you can't see it, think back to web pages from the 90s, with their "Best viewed at 1024x768" buttons, or even early-2000s flash-based web sites that would not resize the flash interface even if you changed the browser's size. Why did they have to tell us what resolution to view their page at? Because they tried to put paper on the web. We've moved past that, and as soon as we move past trying to put paper into ebooks I'll finally shut up about PDF not being a valid ebook format. Because PDF as an ebook format will finally be dead.