Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Step 2 is to use ePub as a source format. Then when Calibre converts to something else, it does a good job as long as the ePub is well made.
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I've found that's not neccessarily true, as epub is a superset of features found in legacy formats.
If the epub doesn't do anything complex then it's true the conversions are very clean.
However if you use any advanced layout features you can have problems. Dropcaps get screwed up. Floating elements get stuck inline, which may cause real problems in the text layout. Variable margins in Mobi are a mess, which is why there are endless threads with users asking how to fix the margins of their epub sourced files. Even if the majority of the book uses no margins if there is some content in the book with variable margins this could be a problem. Epub has left and right margins support, mobi only has left nested blockquotes/indenting... There are probably a good list of other gotchas, those are just the ones off the top of my head.
Because mobi layout features are a subset of epub if you're going to choose a single format to support mobi is probably better if you don't want to support epub conversions that may have the types of problems listed above. I also agree that two formats would be nicer (I'm a sony/epub user), but the OP did ask what is the best 'single' format to support.