Most "future proof" format?

[dordale]

Dave--

Not that I'm a proponent of DRM, but the big difference is that when you give a physical copy of the book to a friend, you no longer have access to that book. When you give a non-drm electronic copy to your friend (or to many friends) you can easily keep a copy for yourself.

dordale

[rleguillow]

Originally Posted by llasram

I don't know what publishers care about. LIT has been broken since at least 2002 (or so I'm guessing by the copyright statement on most of the ConvertLIT source files) and Mobipocket and eReader are broken as of last year. If publishers were actually afraid of piracy they would stop publishing books in those formats.

I've been poking all over the 'net trying to find out what to use to strip the DRM from my eReader .pdb files.

This damned DRM... I've already lost use of 104 books that I purchased for my dead Rocket eBook reader because of DRM - even though I now have the eBookwise device that will read the .rb files, it can't read mine because of the DRM (if anyone can me with this 4ever. I keep the books on my PC in hopes of someday being able to convert them.). Now, thinking of switching to either a Sony 505 or BeBook reader, I expect to lose not only the 135 eBookwise books I have purchased but also the 47 eReader books on my T|X that I no longer use for reading (older eyes aren't happy anymore with it). I'm not up for piracy, just progress!

So, can anyone point me toward something to strip DRM from my eReader files? Maybe then I can convert them to something readable on whichever reader I choose.

[igorsk]

The keyword is ereader2html.

[sealbeater]

[QUOTE=HarryT;301799]Hmmm. Those are two of the worst possible choices of format, IMHO - text because if has no formatting, and PDF because it's not an eBook format at all and is tied to a fixed page size.
[Qoute]
I have literally thousands of txt files, most of which are formated quite nicely enough for me. Proper word layout is not dependent on data format. As for PDF, that's incredible to me, because pdf2txt is one of the greatest book tools I own. It's part of the reason my txt files look so good. I agree, for some multi-column texts, it's, not so good and you lose images, but CRC.Press, Oxford Press, I've got so many great looking txt files converted from PDF that I have to say, I think it's your method that's at fault. I didn't say I was loading the pdfs, I was referring to archival future proofing.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Far, far better to store books in a "rich" format which can easily be converted to whatever "terminal" format one prefers for reading. I would always store books (as opposed to reading them) in a format such as HTML or RTF.

You know, you raise a very good point with this. I've certainly got nothing against HTML, and it converts beautifully to .txt as well.

As for RTF, you should probably have a bit of my background. I've been reading books on computers for over 10 years and I've been a linux user for longer than that. RTF is not the most convenient format to read on the linux console which is my preferred method of reading books on the computer (which I haven't done since I got my reader). In fact, at the time, there was not a lot of options of reading RTF files in linux. So, when I say txt and pdf for archival futureproof storage, I'm considering my own personal ease of use.

With that being said, you are absolutely right, RTF does have advantages, and I've only appreciated those metadata tags once I got my reader. It's made me regret deleting all those rtfs over the years but I don't <i>personally</i> care enough about metadata to convert anything to rtf for it. If it comes that way, good enough.

[sealbeater]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Text with the correct markup can be converted back into a proper eBook for all the formatting. We see this done at PG all the time and it works. PDF on the other hand is a nightmare to convert. But, if it's just plain text with no markup, then forget it, it'll ruint he reading experience for sure. Storing in PDF is a really bad idea.

I really have to disagree with the last. What method do you guys using? PDF2TXT for linux(sorry, but it's your choice) part of xpdf. I can't believe all the hating I'm hearing on pdf. Agreed, it still kinda sucks on the reader but we are talking about archiving. I have had very few complaints with the pdf format.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

For storing purchased eBooks, I think the best thing to do is remove the DRM and then convert to HTML and save both the DRM free copy and the exploded copy. If you've converted to another format, store the converted copy as well.

I do agree that HTML or RTF would work for storing eBooks. A properly made ePub edition without DRM would do as well.

I agree, I like HTML as well, that's why I like .lit, even though I hate DRM. I don't like the idea of ePub tho, because I'm trying to keep it

A) available to the widest range of devices/computers as possible.

B) As basic a format that can be converted to other formats easily.

[sealbeater]

I just wanted to correct myself, it's pdftotext, not pdf2txt. If anyone would like to attach a pdf, I can run it though so you can see what I mean.

[Andurian]

Originally Posted by davers

I don't get the whole piracy thing. I mean, I've literally thousands of paperbacks and hardcover books. I've bought from book stores, used book stores, second hand shops, and I've gotten books from other people when they were done reading. Why should an electronic edition be any different from the paper edition? If I can give a paperback to a friend and they are able to read it, how is that different from giving an electronic version to a friend so they can read it? Ah well...just waxing philisophical I guess..

Dave

I think the real problem is that electronic texts have an unrestricted supply. If I loan books or borrow books from the library those are books that can't be loaned out or borrowed until they are returned again - one loan per book at a time - which doesn't hurt publishers too much. If I buy a used book the publisher doesn't make any money, but there's one less used book out there for other prospective buyers to consider against the new book.

An electronic book that I "loan out" on bittorrent or IRC can then be loaned out again and again and again without end. Which could be thousands or tens of thousands of times people read what started from me, all without payment to the author.

Its a fair question whether capitalism is a good model to strive for here. Capitalism works *great* when there is a limited supply on both the creation and consumption end (cars, for example). We don't even try capitalism when there is an unlimited supply on both the creation and consumption end (air, gravity) - there'd be no point and it wouldn't work. With stuff we can store as bits there is a limited supply on the creation end (someone has to write the game or novel, record the song, etc.) and a naturally unlimited supply on the consumption end. The capitalist, anti-piracy people point vigorously at the creation end. Those who raise the jolly roger point vigorously at the consumption end.

If I were king of the world, I'd calculate how much content creators get paid, in average and in total. I'd then institute taxes according to the total and distribute money based on download rates, making the downloads free and abolishing copyrights on electronically reproducable media. Distribute money, I should say, directly to content creators - not to leeches like the RIAA, MPAA, etc. (I don't count most book publishers in the leech category, but I'd still rather see authors paid directly. They could then pay others for marketing, editing, etc. as needed.)

Oh, and so this post is technically on topic, I think .rtf and .html are definitely the most future proof. Neither is likely to go away in the forseeable future and both are capable of marking up most books.