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Originally Posted by Fringecup
Hi! I've been reading the posts here for the first time because i just got my new Sony 600 reader and Sony sent me a message that they're switching to Epub for the books they sell and I wanted to know how it's different from .pdf, which I've been using for the books I've downloaded from Gutenburg. Is it actually better than PDF and if so, how?
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PDF was not intended to be an eBook format. It is a digital representation of a specific size physical page - that's something that it does very well. The problem with PDF is that you have to create your PDF file for a specific sized display page, and there's no good way to display it different sized screens. Eg, if you create a PDF that's optimized for a 6" screen, then it's going to look pretty bad on a 10" screen.
An ePub book is basically a collection of HTML pages in a "wrapper" and, just like any web page, it can adapt itself to different sized screens by "rearranging" itself (this is called "reflow") to fit the screen. It's a much, much better idea when you're dealing with devices with differently-sized screens. Plus, you can change the font size and do all sorts of other things that you just can't do with a PDF file.
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Can I use it for converting books from Microsoft format (I haven't figured out that one yet),
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Yes.
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and will it support color? I ask this because I know that Sony has been working on a color reader for at least 5 years and since I like to read gardening books, color is important to me.
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Yes, it supports colour.
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I've found much of the discussion here pretty technical (I'm a beginner at this topic), so please keep it fairly simple. What is DRM anyway? Folks keep referring to it.
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DRM is "digital rights management" - the "encryption" technology that's used to "lock" an eBook to a particular user's devices. Some people don't like it. Personally, I'm not bothered.
Hope this helps.