Quote:
Originally Posted by Mak5
Which format (epub or mobi) is more futureproof?
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epub is the new industry standard format. aside from being an excellent ebook format in many ways, that also makes it by far the most "futureproof" format available ; it can be read natively by more and more devices (currently : the sony 505 and 700, the iphone / ipod touch via stanza, soon many more like the txtr, the BOOX and many others), is an excellent archival format, and can also be easily converted if necessary to other formats, although you will inevitably lose some of the special formatting features which aren't compatible with older, non-standard and less well-developped formats like mobipocket. it's an open format based on xhtml and css which means that it continues to improve and can already support much richer book layout options than any other format.
most european publishers getting into ebooks are supporting epub from the start, some of them exclusively.
you can easily create your own epub books with personal content using calibre, a free library management app developped by one of our members and, and epub allows you to specify whatever font you like (i personalise all my epub books with Fontin or DejaVu which are two free fonts that look very good on a screen), including full true italic and bold options.
to find out more about the epub format you can check our
wiki, and read the first page of
this thread to find out why the standard format is important.
i would strongly recommend getting a device with epub support.