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Originally Posted by Katsunami
For this once, I'm agreeing with JSWolf.
If plain text is an e-book format, you can count every document containing text to be an e-book. Plain Text, doc, docx, pdf, rtf... everything.
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That doesn't follow. Formats that specify a "page" are radically different that reflowable text.
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In my view, an e-book format is a format specifically designed to be able to:
1. Allow reflowable text
2. Mimic a real book, including markup, images, front cover, and metadata such as author, title, blurb...
3. Be read on devices with varying screen sizes, mainly due to feature 1, and/or by repositioning images.
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I strongly disagree with the first phrase in #2 and hold that everyone who feels the ebook must mimic paper books are idiots stuck in the past. Printers, like Gutenberg, started with that same mindset and were quickly proven wrong. Printed books changed away from slavishly mimicking the hand written and illuminated books that preceded them for good reasons. Typography improved massively over the years.
Keeping similar structure is fine and in most cases a good thing. It can be done adequately in plain text or at least markup text. I do agree that those formats that specify a "page" and loose reflowable text are "documents" and at best stand on the extreme edge of what could be considered an "ebook".