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I'm a PDF supporter, not because I really love PDF (I don't), but because currently it's the only format that comes close to convincing me that I'm actually reading a book, which is the culmination of a number of different arts being brought together in a literary presentation, rather than flat content in a glorified text file on a glorified calculator.
True true, the small formats currently still suck for full size PDFs. With the small screen sizes, you just don't have the real estate to use large documents efficiently. A4 printed gives you quite a bit of space that you just don't have on ebook reader devices now. How does one resolve that? You could...
a) demand an offering for a large format and small format document, one that would much more cleanly display, with requisite compromises made in initial design to allow for legibility. Extra time, money, hassle, and not enough solidarity among end-users to be a trustworthy methodology.
b) demand technology improvements that allow for more seamless global-local navigation. Currently, navigation systems in ebook readers is pathetic. Zoom is insanely slow, panning is awful, screen resolution and contrast make the reading experience pretty wretched. When capacitive multi-touch screens hit the press, I was just imagining how all that fingerwork on a good touch screen with some OK hardware behind it could really make moving around large media on a small display...well...less unpleasant. It would be far from ideal from linear text as in novels, but then again, the current restrictions of the technology don't really allow for quality books anyway.
I'd currently rather gouge my eyes out than read magazines on my ebook reader. My computer handles them well enough, but I have a 24" display, very easy and convenient and instant zooming and panning for getting in close to the details.
If I'm going to pay for an ebook or for a magazine, I want some kind of presentation work involved. I want to be looking at a product of visual creation, not merely a transcription of someone's thoughts and imagination. I'm sure that satisfies a lot of people, but it's not good enough for me.
PDFs are far from perfect, and their rigidity puts them at odds with pocket and handheld devices. If ebook reader devices weren't quite as lame with regard to maneuvering about in documents, some of the problem would be ameliorated. However, that's really just not the case.
Format unification is all fine and well, but people are trying to choose the lesser among evils of the current formats...most of which seem to be patchwork jobs that only fulfill the most primitive of needs and cannot perform anything especially well. The market is fragmented and polarized and hostile to properly unified formats or unified content access.
For now though, if I want to view something that at least gives me *some* feeling of visual quality and complete presentation, I am bound to PDF. Everything else is a word processor document, and I don't want to pay for that unless I can reformat it myself (which, of course, most formats are not too keen about with their licensing being what it is).
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