Quote:
Originally Posted by tech_au
If epub gathers support like I hope it does in 2009 it will come down to whether you want to read your ebooks in mobi or epub format and which ereader you prefer rather which one is "better".
Lets hope so anyway  |
ePub is very nice technically - it can provide much "richer" formatting that Mobipocket. Unfortunately if has, IMHO, a
major flaw which is that the ePub standard allows anyone to add their own DRM system to it, and still call the resulting file "ePub".
We already have Adobe DRM on ePub in the form of "Adobe Digital Editions", and I'm sure you've seen the recent announcement that eReader are also going to start producing ePub files using
their DRM scheme. Goodness known how many other different "ePub" files we'll have in a year or two's time.
The end result will inevitably be an even worse confusion for the novice end user than we have now. At least at the moment most people know what book formats they need for their own devices, but we're soon going to have the situation where, for example, the Sony Reader will read ADE-encrypted ePub files, but not eReader-encrypted ePub files, and vice versa for whatever devices will read eReader files.
It's a real mess.