Quote:
Originally Posted by bokolobs
May I ask why you give EPUB such premium? Thanks.
|
Very often, a book is not formatted as I want it to be. For example, there is white-space between the paragraphs, the indentation of the paragraphs is not to my liking, or there is a font embedded that I don't like. Sometimes, depending on the coding of the book, this causes the reader not to display the font and size I've chosen, but the font and size as coded in the book. Sometimes, the cover is missing. Most of the times I wish to embed the tags directly into the book.
The EPUB format has the best editing tools available, especially the later versions of Sigil. Also, EPUB is an open format, which means everybody who wants to (and has the programming skills) can write a viewer for it; this means that, if a new format comes along, the chance is quite big that EPUB can be onverted into it, especially if the new format is also open.
Buying a book as an EPUB makes sure that I do not need an extra conversion step. If I'd buy from Amazon, I would need to convert the book to EPUB first, which would replace all of the coding with generic Calibre code such as ".calibre8" for a class, instead of ".chapter". It works fine, but it's harder to understand if I ever need to edit something. And of course, if you need to convert a book to a new format in the future, it's always best to start with the pristine original book, instead of starting with a book that has had one or more conversions already.
To summarize, I am of the opinion that:
1. EPUB has the best editing tools available.
2. After de-DRM-ing, it can be read on all readers, (except Kindle).
3. It can relatively easily be converted into other formats (including Kindle).
4. Because it's open, I think it's the most future-proof format.
5. If a new format comes along, 3 and 4 make (almost) sure that an EPUB book can be converted into it.
Most other formats can be converted to other formats, but you must keep in mind many of these formats are mostly closed; therefore, all conversions are based on reverse-engineerd information insstead of actual information. I don't care if I convert EPUB into a vendor-specific, closed and reverse-engineerd format, but I want my base format to be open, with an officialy available specification.
By the way: before editing a book, I always keep an unedited, original copy that was not modified, except with regard to removing DRM.