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wallcraft · 10-22-2011, 02:52 PM

This thread has been concentrating on the user experience, but the other advantage of a "standard" is that the publishers can produce one ebook for all markets. I think it is very likely that ePub 2 (the current ePub) will translate almost perfectly into KF8. If not, Amazon screwed up and they don't usually screw up purely technical issues. So publishers may be much closer to being able to provide one ebook source to everyone for "narrative" ebooks.

I usually download AZW's in Kindle 1 files, because its DRM is never doing to be strengthened. However, the inverse of the ePub to KF8 correspondence is also likely to be true. If you want an ePub-like ebook KF8 is going to be a better starting point for conversion than KF7 (MOBI). So I may have to switch to the Fire or K4PC (once KF8 enabled) for my downloads. However, Zeebra has a point - MOBI is almost good enough for all narrative ebooks in languages supported by the built in font.

It is less clear to me how close ePub 3 and KF8 are. This may lead to a split in the technical ebook market and the illustrated ebook market. On the other hand, I would not be surprised if KindleGen 2 included ePub 3 as one of its input formats. Note that ePub 2 is already an input option for the existing KindleGen, but ePub to MOBI is a non-trivial conversion that Amazon does not do optimally.

10-22-2011, 02:52 PM	#36
wallcraft reader Posts: 6,977 Karma: 5183568 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Mississippi, USA Device: Kindle 3, Kobo Glo HD	This thread has been concentrating on the user experience, but the other advantage of a "standard" is that the publishers can produce one ebook for all markets. I think it is very likely that ePub 2 (the current ePub) will translate almost perfectly into KF8. If not, Amazon screwed up and they don't usually screw up purely technical issues. So publishers may be much closer to being able to provide one ebook source to everyone for "narrative" ebooks. I usually download AZW's in Kindle 1 files, because its DRM is never doing to be strengthened. However, the inverse of the ePub to KF8 correspondence is also likely to be true. If you want an ePub-like ebook KF8 is going to be a better starting point for conversion than KF7 (MOBI). So I may have to switch to the Fire or K4PC (once KF8 enabled) for my downloads. However, Zeebra has a point - MOBI is almost good enough for all narrative ebooks in languages supported by the built in font. It is less clear to me how close ePub 3 and KF8 are. This may lead to a split in the technical ebook market and the illustrated ebook market. On the other hand, I would not be surprised if KindleGen 2 included ePub 3 as one of its input formats. Note that ePub 2 is already an input option for the existing KindleGen, but ePub to MOBI is a non-trivial conversion that Amazon does not do optimally. Last edited by wallcraft; 10-22-2011 at 02:58 PM.