[fjtorres]

LIT is in many ways a precursor to ePub; both are derived from the OpenEbook spec, both are HTML/XML based internally and can be easily converted from one to the other. Most of the differences between LIT and ePub stem from attempts to make ePub more PDF-ish with embedded fonts and hard-wired formatting, etc. Calibre loves LITs as feedstock for conversion, and turns them into ePub in a wink of an eye.

MSReader on PC is an underappreciated reading app with some of the best typographic rendering available despite receiving essentially zero updates in five years. MS Reader on VGA Pocket PCs was and is a delight, usurpassed until the current 5in eInk screens arrived.

Unless MS gets serious about it (maybe as part of their Courier project) LIT will remain a second tier, legacy format much like the way eReader seems to be going.

The main problem is that non-MS LIT Reader apps tend to be crude, unstable and generally flaky. (Tiny Reader on Windows Phones seems to be the exception.) My experiences with the Hanlin LIT parser for the V3 series is that it will rarely glitch with LITs created with the MSWord add-in, will often glitch with LITs created out of a single HTML file using Readerworks, and will *never* work properly with LITs created out of multiple HTMLs (say, one file per chapter).

After 18 months waiting for a fix, I just moved on from the BeBook.