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Originally Posted by Sonist
Thanks, JSWolf. I just looked at the file in Calibre, and it looks good. But am I wrong to assume, that everything your EPUB file does, can be done just as well, with the new version of Adobe?
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"Here's an $800 piece of software that works just as well as that free open source program!" is not going to be a convincing argument for many people.
[quote]Just like the web, e-publishing will evolve from mostly text-based, limited design pages, to richer, more print-like look - see for instance the image attached.[quote]
Why should it move towards fixed-size, fixed-shape, publisher-established instead of reader-adjustable settings? Why not move toward more flexibility--hyperlinked documents, search features, choice of standard layouts plus the option for customized views? (Which part of the web has moved to be "more print-like?")
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A page like this should not reflow, because it will lose its visual effect.
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Granted. But novels and articles should reflow... and PDF is poor with that. And I suspect reflowable prose is more important to more readers than flashy visual layouts are to those who like them.
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My point is, why not just use one format, from desktop to ereader, for complex layout pages which should not reflow, as well as for simple text pages which should reflow? The only format I know, which can do all this, is PDF.
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PDF doesn't reflow well, especially if the original is complex. It doesn't edit easily; changing the fonts is not a matter of a simple search & replace in an html file. Learning to edit the aspects of PDF that are editable is difficult. Good PDF layout is a learned skill that many people don't have, and generic Word formatting thrown to PDF is a lot harder on readers than generic Word formatting thrown to ePub or mobi. (Neither of which have 1 1/4" margins as default settings.) Good PDF creation & manipulation software is not free, and not cheap.
PDFs don't easily resize for smaller screens than they were designed for. Even if we have "standard size" readers & files, there'll be more than one, and textbooks designed for a 10" screen still won't work well on my Sony PRS-505.
All of these are non-fixable drawbacks of PDFs. The problems with ePub--lack of good, simple, open source creation software; lack of some CSS features, lack of DRM varieties (if one considers that a problem) and so on--are fixable.