"AZW3 is an ancient format and (although king of the hill in its time) is in many ways lousy by modern standards. (.KFX)"
There, we have come full circle.
Also this community - much too eagerly - accepted to loose all formating features we had available with .mobi - when JBPatch could still be installed, in favor of a much tighter dependency on Amazons "undocumented features" to do any real sort of acceptable typsetting or layouting on the device.
But to their credit - there was no real alternative at the time. Amazon controls the Firmware Update cycle - and thats it. Also Amazon actively moved against giving endusers control over margins, or hyphenation that is done on the device - for user- or publisher created content.
And sometimes a consensus in here is created so some people dont have to talk about specifics or the format history.
And then again - segmentation. If we look at the azw3 (kf8) format entirely segmented - its all flowers and rose petals - but if we take usability, user accessible layout options and easy of use considerations in to account - starting from the arbitrary "JBPatch still worked" starting point - it's pretty much a story of regression.
Of course - if you want to change a cover, now thats where azw3 and the independent development scene really shine. Now THATS progress (sarcastically spoken).
(edit: Dont use .mobi as an archival format though. Use .azw3 or .epub.)
(edit 2: KPVBooklet and KOReader might be a workout - even usability wise, to get a better reading experience on jailbroken Kindles. Start reading here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=243532 )
The real issue here by the way is, that Amazons reading environment on Kindles has some serious flaws.
Hyphenation for them (in the old paradigm) isnt a priority - although it really - should have been from the beginning. And in their new paradigm (.kfx) hyphenation and the best inter word spacing is exclusively reserved for their .kfx titles. No open format on Kindles probably will ever be able to support it.
Hyphenation/inter word spacing and an optimal outcome is strongly related with better control over margins - but Amazon refuses to grant that to their Users. We had it with JBPatch at one point in time - but Amazon cracked down on it aggressively.
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The need for (variable) inter Line-spacing is strongly related to "font used". Amazon itself hasnt even begun to conceptualize this. Their three settings (small, medium, large) can be seen as having been optimized for their default font - if at all. Amazon to this day hasnt been able to standardize font size "brakets" meaning - even their own font families have differing line heights. Inter Line-Spacing should be much more adjustable than it is (same as with margins) - but it isnt.
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User added fonts and adding hyphenations through a concept called soft hyphens - are an ordeal on Kindles - that is better stomached fast, before thinking to much about it - because Amazons "solution" to this mess is "reserve the better implementation for their proprietary file format (little chance of being reverse engineered any time soon)" - and call it a feature (maybe use the prepackaged "publisher font?", hey - value we provide...) -
something that wasnt discussed within this community at all - even some time after the .kfx release.
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Its really a mixture between being objectively evil and dont knowing what is important to get a better reading experience - on Amazons part.
Also - their default fonts suck. Really. Ask anyone in here.
