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sourcejedi · 06-05-2010, 07:33 AM

I agree with Ralph a little bit as well. The first challenge is to actually keep the files.

I buy ebooks on my PC, organize them in a folder on my hard-drive, and use a file synchronizer to keep my e-reader in sync. So without any extra effort, I have two copies of everything. When my e-reader or PC spontaneouslly combusts, I'll still have one copy of everything. (And I'm fortunate enough to be able to run backups as well).

I'm a bit leery of the "keep converting your files" idea though. It kind of relies on every conversion being perfect. But e.g. Calibre's conversion definitely isn't perfect. IMO it takes more of a pragmatic approach that lets you read the 10s of existing formats on your existing e-reader. That's why it has different output profiles for different devices (even for the same format e.g. EPUB readers).

At the very least, I think you'd need to keep the original, and a "master" version for each format you convert into, so that you can always back-track if necessary. IMO that's not convenient enough that people will do it as a matter of course. Using Calibre would help, but I don't know that it makes it easy enough to convert to both <my XYZ e-reader> and <generic format with lots of future-proofing>.

For example, I've snarfed a few Baen-CD ebooks. I've taken the Mobipocket/Palm files because they work best in FBReader (there's also one-webpage-per-chapter HTML, but that's not as quite as convenient for reading, and a pain to download and organize). But in the long run these are dead file formats, and you'd have to consult the computational archaelogists.

So I've also downloaded the RTF versions. RTF is still a proprietary format - MS keep on adding new features that no-one else can read - but it's more a sort of proprietary HTML. You can actually open these RTF files in a text editor. I could write a five minute script to strip the formatting commands and just dump out paragraphs of plain text. More realistically, RTF is an important file format and there are lots of readers, editors and converters for it. FBReader can also read it, so it's not a complete dead weight.

I wouldn't rule out buying mobipocket or rtf in future, it's just that I probably won't have to make that decision. I can't read DRM'd files, and anything thats not DRM'd is going to be available as EPUB. (Other than PDF, but in practice my e-reader can't read that either).

06-05-2010, 07:33 AM	#11
sourcejedi Groupie Posts: 155 Karma: 200000 Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Britania Device: Android	I agree with Ralph a little bit as well. The first challenge is to actually keep the files. I buy ebooks on my PC, organize them in a folder on my hard-drive, and use a file synchronizer to keep my e-reader in sync. So without any extra effort, I have two copies of everything. When my e-reader or PC spontaneouslly combusts, I'll still have one copy of everything. (And I'm fortunate enough to be able to run backups as well). I'm a bit leery of the "keep converting your files" idea though. It kind of relies on every conversion being perfect. But e.g. Calibre's conversion definitely isn't perfect. IMO it takes more of a pragmatic approach that lets you read the 10s of existing formats on your existing e-reader. That's why it has different output profiles for different devices (even for the same format e.g. EPUB readers). At the very least, I think you'd need to keep the original, and a "master" version for each format you convert into, so that you can always back-track if necessary. IMO that's not convenient enough that people will do it as a matter of course. Using Calibre would help, but I don't know that it makes it easy enough to convert to both <my XYZ e-reader> and <generic format with lots of future-proofing>. For example, I've snarfed a few Baen-CD ebooks. I've taken the Mobipocket/Palm files because they work best in FBReader (there's also one-webpage-per-chapter HTML, but that's not as quite as convenient for reading, and a pain to download and organize). But in the long run these are dead file formats, and you'd have to consult the computational archaelogists. So I've also downloaded the RTF versions. RTF is still a proprietary format - MS keep on adding new features that no-one else can read - but it's more a sort of proprietary HTML. You can actually open these RTF files in a text editor. I could write a five minute script to strip the formatting commands and just dump out paragraphs of plain text. More realistically, RTF is an important file format and there are lots of readers, editors and converters for it. FBReader can also read it, so it's not a complete dead weight. I wouldn't rule out buying mobipocket or rtf in future, it's just that I probably won't have to make that decision. I can't read DRM'd files, and anything thats not DRM'd is going to be available as EPUB. (Other than PDF, but in practice my e-reader can't read that either).