Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
The larger point I was making is that the great advantage of digital information is that it can be post-processed far more easily than printed information. This post processing is done by computers. Computers dont post-process PDF well. The ability to post process - recombine, manipulate, search, display in different contexts, etc. is going to be far more important the the ability to control the exact placement of text.
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I have to disagree strongly.
Look at how the UI of operating systems has evolved. Look at how page presentation on the web has evolved.
Ereaders are still primitive devices, limited by both hardware and software. On the evolutionary line, they are probably where DOS was, or where pre-Mosaic browsers were.
But to be successful, they have to become general reading devices, which can accommodate not only books, but also much more complex layouts, such as magazines and visually "rich" books (think of
Rizzoli or
Taschen).
And I see the EPUB file above, but that's like showing a prefab blog page and claiming it is sufficient for all web needs. I see that it is very good for reflowing text, but it is still at a "word processor" level, and can't do nearly what a PDF can (see below).
In two-three years there will likely be hardware which can do much more than display dark gray text on light gray background. With a view to this future, I'd hate to see another dead-end format being introduced, to confuse an already fragmented market.
I am not saying that the format which will win will be PDF, but at the present, PDF is already a standard for desktop and widely used on the web, and is more robust than any of the competition. Plus, Adobe is actively developing it (see the new Mobile SDK) and will likely address many of the issues it currently has.