Hi,
I do not see any acceptable current format encopassing the wide range of possible ebooks.
Pdf does it to a great extent but is so bloated and rigid to be unacceptable.
For most fiction books you do not really need more than txt or html, so why bloat the file? And again I believe strongly that we need narrative in our lives, so fiction as written/sung/narrated since humanity exists will still exist with us for a long time.
For nonfiction, I see great advantages in "externalising" the book (through links, notes, comments...) but again I see a need to balance that against bloat.
Anyway the slow progress of e-books is not due to a lack of a universal format, but to a lack of affordable ereaders and to drm stupidity. Until a 100$ or less colour, paperback or less sized, 400 grams or less in weight, 800x480 resolution minimum ereader and tons of 5-6$ drm free ebooks arrive, we can have the perfect format and it still would not matter.
Liviu
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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
On the other hand, is it really possible for one format to do all those things well?
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