Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
That would be a clear loss for the consumer, however. Format shifting to a less sophisticated format is (sometimes) simple. But you cannot, by design, so easily format shift to a more sophisticated one.
If publishers never take it on themselves to take eBooks as seriously as they do real books (and they do find the money for their backlist titles to be retypeset and reprinted on dead-tree books, so I don't see why saving a few bucks in making eBooks would make a world of a difference [particularly since unlike physical ones, eBooks have no shipping or other distribution costs]), eBooks will never be a realistic replacement for dead-tree books.
ePub, unless it starts encapsulating multiple display size and font size PDF files, will never be able to match the quality of physical books; so eBooks will either have to opt for PDF or will remain only for a nieche audience or only for typographically primitive books. In either case, for most things other than casual reading, people will find themselves stuck with paper books.
That seems to me more unlikely than the reasonable enough wholesale adoption of PDF (with, perhaps, ePub as an also supported standard to allow quick and dirty content generation for those with less sophisticated software tools or know-how).
Good discussion we are having though. 
- Ahi |
Very much so, and it's great to hear someone in support of PDF as a format, because I'm learning it's strengths and not just its weaknesses
Now let me ask, and it was on a point you brought up before about the 10 + years of HTML & CSS and how it hasn't been able to replicate the book or magazine. Do you not see a point in the future (when MS finally puts standards compliance into their browser) that web rendering will match PDF typography/layout etc? Do you think this is possible, or improbable?