A silly question: what is the advantage of ePub for a reader?

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I think I need to come up with a little jingle for all the PDF apologists

"
PDF is crap
PDF is obsolete
PDF will die
If you need to know why
Just resize your PDF window
Or try, please try,
To convert your PDF to something else
"

:snaps his fingers:

It's got a funky beat...and I can dance do it.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I think I need to come up with a little jingle for all the PDF apologists

"
PDF is crap
PDF is obsolete
PDF will die
If you need to know why
Just resize your PDF window
Or try, please try,
To convert your PDF to something else
"

It's still the most popular ebook format.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Is this available on some kind of t-shirt or a mouse mat even

I must start selling some

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I must start selling some

I will take three, but remember, you'll have to offer them in eighty-billion different sizes...because with PDF one-size never fits all

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I think I need to come up with a little jingle for all the PDF apologists

"
PDF is crap
PDF is obsolete
PDF will die
If you need to know why
Just resize your PDF window
Or try, please try,
To convert your PDF to something else
"

We can pretty easily see how you feel about design and aesthetic standards just by looking at Calibre and its output. Don't need a jingle for that.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

We can pretty easily see how you feel about design and aesthetic standards just by looking at Calibre and its output. Don't need a jingle for that.

Ah you are one of the many refugees from Plato's Republic that still believe in Ideal Forms, and that too in something as individual as aesthetics.

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by ahi

That will stop being the case when eBook readers become reasonably universal and have to stop primarily being toys and pulp novel reading devices.

Are you saying when they will become universal, they will also become one size? I don't think so.

The only (arguably) cogent argument for reflow formats is the desire to arbitrarily adjust the font size at the press of a button. Doing so necessarily comes at the cost of any hope of decent typography... which is the cornerstone of bookmaking.

PDF is the only eBook format. Everything else can only make documents of whatever quality or bad to terrible electronic Books.
- Ahi

I think you are confused about the difference between books and ebooks.

Typeseting is important for books same as binding material, paper quality etc, it is of little to no importance for ebooks.

I don't want set margins, I don't want set font sizes. I care very little even about font face the publisher thinks I want to have. Same publishers that give me eye breaking no line in between text in paperbacks
I want reflow, I want my footnotes to be on the bottom of my page, not a hypothetical 8x10 inch. I want to be able to read my book on my iPhone and my 24" computer screen with the same user experience.

If I want to have typesetting I'll buy leather bound folio sized paper book. Actually, sometimes I dream of having this ideal electronic device, that will give me all typeseting you talking about, but then I realise I would have to have it on the desk in my library room near comfortable leather chair and realise I dreamt too much. We live different lives.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Ah you are one of the many refugees from Plato's Republic that still believe in Ideal Forms, and that too in something as individual as aesthetics.

True as it may be, your observation is only superficially erudite and a pretty poor artificially progressive excuse for ugly work. Calibre is good for what it is...it's a great program for people who have very low visual standards, which is actually pretty necessary to tolerate ebooks these days anyway.

When something good comes along that obsoletes PDF for quality design, I'm all for its demise. Until then, I'll live with the evil PDF.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Is this available on some kind of t-shirt or a mouse mat even

Why, all you need to do is create a PDF of it, print it on an inkjet printer with iron on ink and iron it on!

BTW, has anyone tried copying from a PDF and pasting it into word, you wanna talk about screwed up formatting; there's some!

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by dmikov

Are you saying when they will become universal, they will also become one size? I don't think so.

I think you are confused about the difference between books and ebooks.

Typeseting is important for books same as binding material, paper quality etc, it is of little to no importance for ebooks.

I don't want set margins, I don't want set font sizes. I care very little even about font face the publisher thinks I want to have. Same publishers that give me eye breaking no line in between text in paperbacks
I want reflow, I want my footnotes to be on the bottom of my page, not a hypothetical 8x10 inch. I want to be able to read my book on my iPhone and my 24" computer screen with the same user experience.

If I want to have typesetting I'll buy leather bound folio sized paper book. Actually, sometimes I dream of having this ideal electronic device, that will give me all typeseting you talking about, but then I realise I would have to have it on the desk in my library room near comfortable leather chair and realise I dreamt too much. We live different lives.

I'll admit some of us are unreasonably fond of the art of the book, and feel betrayed by its translation into essentially its crudest raw form possible. There is a minority that feels that this same move is a liberation of content from the jaws of an inflexible beast of antiquity. Some feel that traditional typesetting methods and presentation are something that should be trusted to experts, and others do not like extending that trust to a rigid format that is not personally tailored to them. It can be an artistic entity, or it can be pure information for direct consumption. Depending on your romantic inclinations, either could be an attractive choice.

I'm not wholly traditionalist, as I've seen too many well-meaning projects that were absolutely atrocious to read due to poor design. It can be a restricting factor to be shunned, or it can be an artistic factor to be appreciated. Naturally any rigid format with a long history is going to be polarizing in that way. I have always bought books partially on the visual medium itself, and not simply on the content. I've always been able to acquire content through libraries or borrowing from people, but I would buy the book itself for the content and presentation. If it were a badly-enough executed book, I wouldn't buy it unless I were forced to. And I'd never even dream about buying a book for someone else if it were of poor visual quality. Not everyone has those (somewhat arbitrary) standards, and it's pretty obvious on this forum.

To me it's got a bit of a semantic catch to it. A book to me is a form of presented content. A unit that is complete and somewhat rigid in itself. It includes the encapsulating presentation, which is otherwise raw information. I like the idea of buying ebooks, but I'm not particularly fond of buying estories. Semantic nonsense? Absolutely, but nevertheless one of the primary sources of my reluctance to embrace digital format books.

As far as eliminating alternative formats in favor of PDF? I don't think that's a great solution, and I don't think offering pdf-only is a great solution. However, I will continue to invest hours on basically every "quality" ebook I want to own, converting it to an appropriately-sized PDF for my Sony Reader. It's a bit futile with the low quality of the display, but it's the most satisfactory I can get, and the only way I can convince myself I like reading on my reader. Snobbish? Absolutely. PDF is not for everyone, but trying to act like an iconoclast and proclaim PDF is evil and wrong because it lacks a malleable low-quality presentation is as ridiculous as saying that RTF and Doc have no place in an office because everything should be done as PDF. Both assertions are patently ludicrous in their absolute form.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

True as it may be, your observation is only superficially erudite and a pretty poor artificially progressive excuse for ugly work. Calibre is good for what it is...it's a great program for people who have very low visual standards, which is actually pretty necessary to tolerate ebooks these days anyway.

When something good comes along that obsoletes PDF for quality design, I'm all for its demise. Until then, I'll live with the evil PDF.

Aww you can't actually think of anything intelligent to say so you're descending to insults. I won, I won, yippeee!

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Aww you can't actually think of anything intelligent to say so you're descending to insults. I won, I won, yippeee!

No, I started with an insult. There was no descent in any case.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by dmikov

...
I think you are confused about the difference between books and ebooks.

Typeseting is important for books same as binding material, paper quality etc, it is of little to no importance for ebooks.....

Hm, I am sure there were some, who made similar arguments, when the Web was all text-based, most computer monitors were 8" or less and monochromatic, and DOS was cool....

And now, the poor souls are faced with OS X and fixed layout web pages, and Flash....

But, they should look on the bright side: now there is also internet porn, on big, color monitors..., 'cause they have no chance of getting laid otherwise.

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by Sonist

But, they should look on the bright side: now there is also internet porn, on big, color monitors..., 'cause they have no chance of getting laid otherwise.

For some reason, I feel incredibly insulted...

[griffonwing]

PDF is what Kovid despises
Mobi and ePub he prizes
HTML, Fb2
Txt, Rtf too
At least until Adobe revises!!