Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirtel
Choosing PDF as the preferred format seems very odd to me, but YMMV. I would never use fixed layout myself, because I often reread something years later and my preferences might have changed by then. With reflowing formats I can still have the book look exactly as I want at the moment, but also be able to easily change things (such as font size or line spacing or margins) later without reformatting the entire book.
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My preference for PDF is mainly due to my experience. With PDF I can count on it looking on my ereader exactly as it looks on my computer when I set my word processor to Page View.
Often with other formats I can't count on what the ebook will actually look like. As an example, I had a Sony Reader that supported RTF. It looked like a no-brainer since I can easily create RTF ebooks since I used an RTF word processor at that time (Jarte) plus there are dozens of word processors that can save as RTF. Unfortunately, something as basic as reliably rendering a serif typeface (not a specific typeface, just have it appear in a serif typeface) was not reliable. Likewise for a san serif typeface.
The only other format I've had a good experience with as an ebook format is .pdb (the format used for ebooks on Palm PDAs). There was an application that allowed you to easily convert text files into ebooks for the Palm Reader and it was excellent. The reader itself was excellent too, keeping it simple and easy to use (the typeface wasn't embedded in the ebook, you selected it in the Palm Reader software).