You're hitting the same old problem with proprietary formats, wgrimm. But in fairness, I'd point out that the eReader and RocketBook formats are just as proprietary as Sony's format, and Sony has just as little obligation to support other folks proprietary formats as eReader or RocketBook have to support
Sony's.
The only real solution to this will only come with a standard e-book format, that's universally accepted. We're still getting there. For the moment, the fact that the Reader accepts RTF files (plus the fact that eReader
doesn't) means that I can get a lot more stuff on it, with a lot less trouble, than I can get stuff into e-Reader on my Palm. In my view, the Reader's actually easier to use, as I don't have to convert stuff to get it on there. But if I want to, there are a number of tools to make my own LRF files.
As to PDF's, yeah, it would be nice if the Reader had support for encrypted/locked PDF files, but as they're all pretty much going to be A4 sized, they won't look good on any display smaller than A4. PDF really just isn't a good format for e-books in the first place, due to its lack of re-flowability.
I understand the frustration with having a large library of proprietary format files that can't be used on another platform, but that's kind of a gamble we take when we use
any proprietary format. That's the main reason I've decided to minimize my exposure in proprietary formats.