Why epub (mobi, etc)?

[Quexos]

My format of choice is epub, I don't like stuff in .pfd (except maybe comics) txt, doc, lit etc ...

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Quexos

My format of choice is epub, I don't like stuff in .pfd (except maybe comics) txt, doc, lit etc ...

Comics are better in CBZ or CBR, I get 2000AD in CBZ, much easier than PDF. It's just a zip archive of the images, so it's easier for a lot of devices to handle.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

PDF seems to do everything that ePub/MOBI does and adds consistent formatting. The problem is that it's a page description language. Describing a page doesn't work that well when the page can range from less than 4" to over 10".

Huh? PDF doesn't do nearly all that epub/mobi does. At best, if the PDF is tagged properly, it will allow text reflow to fit variable page sizes. But good luck with changing font face or size, or margins, or line spacing.

PDF, as you pointed out, is a page description language. It's best suited for typesetting documents intended for paper, not for digital reading. HTML, on the other hand (the language behind epub and mobi) was designed first and foremost for flexible rendering. What you lose in pixel-perfect page layout, you gain tenfold or more in actual functionality.

Epub2 and mobi are great for narrative fiction/non-fiction. Where they fall down (mostly due to reader implementaiton) is technical books with lots of footnotes, side bars, and complex layouts. Thankfully, epub3 and KF8 address most of those concerns, and are gaining more widespread adoption. There will come a day relatively soon that PDF will no longer be necessary for anything.

It is possible to blend the two. That's sort-of what TeX does. Yet anyone who has used TeX can relay the horrors of describing a document that renders properly at one page size, never mind multiple page sizes.

That's not quite right. TeX/LaTeX is a primary or intermediate format, not a final format like PDF or PS or epub or mobi. TeX/LaTeX vs PDF is like a word processor/RTF vs epub. You write your manuscript using TeX/LaTeX or RTF, but you publish it in PDF or epub. TeX/LaTeX can generate many different outputs (postscript or pdf for printing, html/sgml, etc), and in fact I'm sure there are plenty of epub/mobi books that were generated from TeX/LaTeX manuscripts. The biggest hurdle right now is that epub2 does not offer any mechanism for displaying mathematical equations (TeX's forte; epub2 doesn't support MathML). That's addressed in epub3, though.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Comics are better in CBZ or CBR, I get 2000AD in CBZ, much easier than PDF. It's just a zip archive of the images, so it's easier for a lot of devices to handle.

Everybody always ignores CB7! It uses 7-Zip compression (vs. CBZ's zip and CBR's rar), which is free, open source, and not patent encumbered. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as popular as the others, and thus is not supported by many readers.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by toddos

Everybody always ignores CB7! It uses 7-Zip compression (vs. CBZ's zip and CBR's rar), which is free, open source, and not patent encumbered. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as popular as the others, and thus is not supported by many readers.

And the compression, used for comic files, is usually pretty irrelevant as the contents are mostly jpg files (of various types) which are already compressed - compressing compressed files doesn't usually give much if any saving but does slow down access when reading...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Comics are better in CBZ or CBR, I get 2000AD in CBZ, much easier than PDF. It's just a zip archive of the images, so it's easier for a lot of devices to handle.

Where do you get it from? I don't see it in any of the regular ebook stores. I used to read this as a kid - I'd be interested in seeing how it's changed over the years.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Where do you get it from? I don't see it in any of the regular ebook stores. I used to read this as a kid - I'd be interested in seeing how it's changed over the years.

I get it from Clickwheel.net, which is owned by Rebellion who now publish it. It's £1.49 for a single issue in either CBZ or PDF format (same day release as print) and the Judge Dredd Megazine is £1.99 (includes a bundled reprint so you get 100+ pages).

They also do subscriptions, the real kind where you pay up front and get a bunch of issues rather than the sign up for infinite microtransactions.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by toddos

Everybody always ignores CB7! It uses 7-Zip compression (vs. CBZ's zip and CBR's rar), which is free, open source, and not patent encumbered. Unfortunately it's nowhere near as popular as the others, and thus is not supported by many readers.

Nor by many sellers, there are a few places I can buy CBZ, and I can get CBRs at the Digital Comic Museum, but I'm not sure where I could buy CB7 files (and I've been using 7zip for over a decade).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I get it from Clickwheel.net, which is owned by Rebellion who now publish it. It's £1.49 for a single issue in either CBZ or PDF format (same day release as print) and the Judge Dredd Megazine is £1.99 (includes a bundled reprint so you get 100+ pages).

They also do subscriptions, the real kind where you pay up front and get a bunch of issues rather than the sign up for infinite microtransactions.

Thank you very much indeed - I'll definitely buy an issue and take a look. At the time I was reading it, "2000AD" was the distant future .