Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I'm one of the don't-want-single-format people; while I'd like all ebook readers to read all formats (erm, or many popular formats; I don't feel slighted that my Sony doesn't read Tealbooks or TeBR formats), I don't believe one format is every going to be perfect for every type of ebook.
I certainly don't want to eliminate the .txt file as an ebook format, even though it's very limited; I don't want readers to lose the ability to read .txt even if all commercial ebooks switch to ePub. And while I agree that .pdf has severe limitations, there are also things it can do that nothing else covers, and I don't want to lose those.
I'd like it if all commercial novels were available in ePub, and Mobi while we're still doing the format wars. But I don't want other formats to vanish.
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interesting and very good point. i did answer i think all books should have a standardised format (i think they should work on all devices) however to nuance my reply i'll add that i don't think it should necessarily be to the detriment of other formats either, i.e. a standardised format but not necessarily a single format ; for instance, i agree that having .txt support and .pdf support are valuable as well, and even html can be handy sometimes (although really it's not hard to transform html into epub, and keep the advantages of html while gaining other advantages in addition). what i mean when i say that is probably more accurately that all books should be available in a standardised format
at least. i do have pretty high hopes for the epub format once the standard is more thoroughly defined and the renderers are more sophisticated (that's no secret
) however i also know that particularly now there are some specific formatting situations which epub can't handle (or at the very least, it's not the best format for the job). and, i agree that pdf has specific strengths which make it very attractive to a specific reading population, and those should be addressed as well.
i do think though that all readers should be able to read the same format(s), and all books should be available in the format(s) supported. none of this "mobipocket or pdf only" nonsense for novels (still often the case, including of a book i just bought recently) when mobipocket is supported only on a subset of devices, requiring conversion for other devices, simply because while i have personally no problem converting to a different format, i think there are many people who find it intimidating, and this creates an unnecessary hurdle for them.