Quote:
Originally Posted by cstross
On ePub versus Mobi:
We forget that we aren't the folks who determine which format will win. That's up to the publishers.
Early signs are that ePub is going to win. Adobe is providing free ePub export filters for all their tools, including InDesign. InDesign has cleaned Quark's clock over the past couple of years in enterprise publishing -- I've been watching the galleys I get from my publishers switch from Quark to InDesign filenames (outside the crop marks) -- and at least one of the five major mutlinational publishing groups, Hachette, has already made a strategic decision at board level to go with ePub (because it integrates with the ebook provisioning workflow they've just spent eight-digit-dollars building over the past three years).
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Yes and no.
Agreed on InDesign: an old friend is a DTP specialist at a major publisher, and one of the folks who turn copy edited manuscripts into files printers can make plates from. She's peeved, because she spent considerable time learning how to work around Quark stupidities and make things come out as desired. InDesign is apparently a better program over all, and all of her hard won expertise has become irrelevant...
But the larger question is whether ePub will really become a dominant
end-user format. Lower end devices like handhelds may not have the processing power to really handle ePub. But ePub might be just dandy as an intermediate format, readily convertible to Mobi, LRF, eReader, or whatever.
One you have an ePub file and conversion tools, output to other formats ought to be easily automated.
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Dennis