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Originally Posted by nekokami
Perhaps more correctly, PDF originated as a page layout format. As it has become more of a cross-platform standard, and reflow features have been added, it may evolve into something quite suitable for eBooks.
I personally think something like HTML is much better for supporting a wide variety of reading devices, though it too has its limitations. Something in XML would be ideal. But since we have so many documents already in PDF (I too have a stack of journal articles in PDF to read), we need to find good ways to support PDF, if only as legacy content.
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For portable reader devices page layout is a good thing. A simple low power device can easily navigate the document, unambiguously grab the page to display, easily raster it onto the display and get back to sleep.
Portable devices that support annotations can easily attach those annotations and can easily insert blank pages as needed.
Marked up documents (HTML/XML) are nothing but an un-ending series of compromises to be made. After all, if the markups were unambiguous it would be a page layout language.
What does <strong> mean? How far up the x-box do you move for a super script? Uh, what exactly does page forward mean, how forward is a "page"?
The adjustable font issue of course is where PDF is struggling.
Gemstar understood this. Their pioneering eReader document format was a page layout, but contained two ebooks inside each document. One was laid out using a small font, and the other copy was laid out using a larger font. Both could be read with no compromises forced on either by the other.