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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Until they're dealth with, basic formatting limitations will circumscribe the reach of eBooks, and will force readers who care to retain at least a partial investment in printed books.... No eBook format should be less flexible than the most basic letterpress.
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Formats like ePub and Mobi are radically different than typesetting a printed page; they're designed for the end-user to change font size, to use a variety of screen sizes, even different fonts.
PDF, in contrast, is designed to more closely replicate the experience of a printed page. It is perfectly capable of dealing with columns, text boxes, illustrations, specified fonts, indentations, and whatever else you're used to with a letterpress.
In other words, the "flexibility" with ebook formats gets shifted from the designer to the end-user. If the designer needs to exert near-total control, you need to use a different format, such as PDF.
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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
I suspect [typographic issues] might have something to do with copyright protection and attempts to make reverse engineering impossible, but the end result is less control over design and typography than any self-respecting graphic design person finds tolerable.
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Nope, it's purely a technical aspect of those formats. ePub is an open format and mobi is basically a wrapper on HTML. There's already an open source app (Calibre) which can convert ePub, Mobi etc to dozens of other formats. If for some reason you can't access the content, that's because someone put DRM on it, which is unrelated to format.
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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Here's what would be great: If Amazon, Sony and B&N all agreed to back a single extended format in addition to their proprietary ones.
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They do. It's called PDF.
Amazon's PDF support is somewhat lacking, but everyone else is pretty much on board, as much as the devices allow. If someone formats a color PDF for 8.5" x 11" and you've got a 7" diagonal eInk screen, you're not going to have good results no matter what.
You might have some issues with the dominant distribution channels (e.g. Amazon will only take mobi), but there are plenty of other ways to distribute your content.