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Originally Posted by ibu
Which rational motives do you see for the jailers to use stoneage rendering machines on their devices?
Why do they like it, when it's complicate (instead of easy) to create rich layouts for books with the full possibilities of modern HTML and CSS?
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Because they got started with stoneage rendering tools when those were the most modern and efficient ones available, and they work tolerably well (at least as far as "produce ebooks that the general public is willing to pay for"); they have no incentive to follow the cutting edge of the industry and re-tool their production process with new software every six months.
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We read answers in this thread of a professionell who suffers because of the lack of standard conformity of the several devices. Which advantages do the producers of devices have by that suffering?
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Standardization would meant total market dominance by whoever creates the standard. All manufacturers--of ebooks and devices--are invested in that creator *not* being their competitor. That means deliberately not doing things the way the competitors do it, regardless of how well that works.
If one method had a sharp, noticeable,
commercial advantage over the others, it would catch on. (See: dominance of epub; decline of LIT and LRF.) However, the general public does not care whether chapter headers are "properly" formatted H1, or <span> sections with specific formatting details. They care that chapter headers start on a new page and are bold. (Sometimes. Sometimes they don't even care about that.)
"Clean" ebook files are for formatting fanatics; readers, especially paying readers, aren't seeing the code. Readers care about whether the book "looks nice," but that's a subjective standard; there's no universal agreement on the best basic look. (I prefer indented paragraphs with no space between. Many readers prefer flush-left with spaces between. I like slab serifs; some people like serifs; some prefer sans. And so on.)
There is no universal method because there is no way that works "best," especially with many specific requirements in play for niche markets that don't matter for the larger crowd. And there's no cooperation to create a universal system, because the major developers are competitors.