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What's the difference between Kindle and PDFs
PDF and EPUB both let you read text and look up words. PDF is like a printed page and the words and lines are fixed in position. If you enlarge, then the text 'goes offscreen' and you have to cursor all around the page. By contrast, when you enlarge an EPUB the text automatically reflows to the next line as needed. EPUB reading software (like the viewer in calibre) lets you read on computer screens of any size and you can even configure the text into any number of multicolumn settings as well as make the text larger or smaller. calibre even has a 'content server' so that you can send and read on your phone instead of your computer. By and large, calibre has more options than any and all physical hardware readers. Dedicated hardware readers like Nook (Barnes and Noble) and Kindle (Amazon) are proprietary. You must accept their limitations and rules for what works with their machines. Same goes for Apple, etc. PDFs seem to be used for legal documents a lot. PDFs are also used to send to a printing company to make a paper book. For actual reading of books, nothing is better than EPUB because of the ability to resize for any screen and reflow of lines. EPUB is the generic official type of file but Amazon has created its own proprietary format which goes by several names. It is the old conumdrum: do you like Ford or Chevy? Although calibre can convert from Anything to Anything-else there is a problem converting PDF to EPUB. Results obtained are quite often not good and this requires lots and lots of manual tweaking, so much so, generally, it's hardly worth doing. The program K2PDFOPT is the best option for this. If you must read a PDF as-is the best option is a large-as-possible monitor. calibre has a built-in EPUB reader but does not have its own PDF reader. However, calibre will open your own PDF reader from the calibre library. For example if you have a book with two formats, EPUB and PDF, hitting 'V' will open that book in calibre's ereader. I set my calibre key-combos so that 'ctrl-E' opens the PDF in Evince. I also have set it so 'ctrl-O' opens the PDF in Okular. There are many PDF readers, some better than others. Best regards, Pop
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