Should ePub be the ONLY Ebook Format?

[ahi]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Yes. I had to convert all my ebook from mobi to ePub, that was annoying enough.

And no, pdf is NOT an e-book format. It's means to fix formating for printing or rendering, never as an e-book format.

You are wrong for too many reasons for me to mention... particularly since they've been repeated ad nauseum in a variety of other threads before.

- Ahi

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

And no, pdf is NOT an e-book format. It's means to fix formating for printing or rendering, never as an e-book format.

For fiction maybe, but what about textbooks, tech books, etc. What works better than PDF?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ahi

Agreed. HTML is a perfectly suitable source format for output that will never have any expectation of professional quality placed upon it.

eBooks will, however, have such expectations once the market starts to be taken seriously.

- Ahi

We already have expectations of professional quality. We don't want errors in our eBooks. We want the publisher to spend the effort proofing. So I don't see why we get eBooks with so many errors sometimes.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

For fiction maybe, but what about textbooks, tech books, etc. What works better than PDF?

It seems to me that a large portion of the mobileread membership considers ebooks to be free-flowing and reflowable text, and anything that doesn't fit that description to be a "document"...

... which of course is utterly ass-backwards.

eBook reading devices can only handle barely formatted documents unless they are in PDF format. Books, "e" or "p", are content molded into a specific form... a form that is best suited to the interface to be used for their viewing... whether that interface is a paper sheet of a specific size or an eInk screen of a specific size.

And as fond as some people are of selecting their own fonts, a cleverly (or even half-way competently) LaTeX generated PDF can laughingly achieve far better aesthetics and readability (making the book "disappear" and letting the reader focus the content) than any LRF, ePub, Mobi, or whatever else I have ever seen.

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

We already have expectations of professional quality. We don't want errors in our eBooks. We want the publisher to spend the effort proofing. So I don't see why we get eBooks with so many errors sometimes.

No, you don't.

You have an expectation of error-free content, and like to mix things up (very likely lowering the eBook's typographic quality even lower than it was to begin with) by changing its various settings and fonts, even if that means the file would display with what is an indisputable error (e.g.: page numbers overlapping text) on a number of current generation eBook reading devices.

That's not professional. That might as well be the very definition of not-even-amateurish-yet.

- Ahi

Ps.: I don't mean you are not-even-amateurish-yet, I mean the objective quality of eBooks in general, and seemingly also the eBooks specifically of the form you prefer.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by ahi

It seems to me that a large portion of the mobileread membership considers ebooks to be free-flowing and reflowable text, and anything that doesn't fit that description to be a "document"...

... which of course is utterly ass-backwards.

eBook reading devices can only handle barely formatted documents unless they are in PDF format. Books, "e" or "p", are content molded into a specific form... a form that is best suited to the interface to be used for their viewing... whether that interface is a paper sheet of a specific size or an eInk screen of a specific size.

And as fond as some people are of selecting their own fonts, a cleverly (or even half-way competently) LaTeX generated PDF can laughingly achieve far better aesthetics and readability (making the book "disappear" and letting the reader focus the content) than any LRF, ePub, Mobi, or whatever else I have ever seen.

- Ahi

You on the other hand seem to think there is some sort of Platonic ideal in "professional" typography that everybody must subscribe to. "Professional" typography is really just a synonym for "obsolete and irrelevant" typography, clung to by people that are afraid to make the leap off of paper.

[JSWolf]

What can be improved is proper kerning support as well as hyphenation. Then we'd have more "professional" looking eBooks on our readers. I am surprised we don't have such yet.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What can be improved is proper kerning support as well as hyphenation. Then we'd have more "professional" looking eBooks on our readers. I am surprised we don't have such yet.

I agree. Good typography is not necessarily a feature of the ebook format, but a feature of the rendering software. At least the part of it that can be automated (which would already be a big improvement).

By the way, ePUB supports SVG, and PDF can (mostly) be converted to SVG, so ePUB could support the same typographic quality as PDF

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by ahi

eBook reading devices can only handle barely formatted documents unless they are in PDF format. Books, "e" or "p", are content molded into a specific form... a form that is best suited to the interface to be used for their viewing... whether that interface is a paper sheet of a specific size or an eInk screen of a specific size.

So you suggest that ebooks only be supplied formatted for specific devices? What about people using different devices, or visually impaired people who need to use text-to-speech?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You on the other hand seem to think there is some sort of Platonic ideal in "professional" typography that everybody must subscribe to. "Professional" typography is really just a synonym for "obsolete and irrelevant" typography, clung to by people that are afraid to make the leap off of paper.

Can I quote, you sir?
Repeatedly?


Concise and to the point: ebooks are *NOT* pbooks minus paper.

[kovidgoyal]

Feel free

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

For fiction maybe, but what about textbooks, tech books, etc. What works better than PDF?

ePub would work fine enough. What can't ePub do that would be needed for that ?
And then, ePub is open, so if things are missing, they can be added.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

And then, ePub is open, so if things are missing, they can be added.

I don't think that's the meaning of "open" in this case. ePUB being open means the specification is public and everyone can know what is supported and how. But if every starts introducing new things and changes, it's not ePUB anymore, at least not until the new version of the specification includes them.

[Syniurge]

Originally Posted by ahi

It seems to me that a large portion of the mobileread membership considers ebooks to be free-flowing and reflowable text, and anything that doesn't fit that description to be a "document"...

... which of course is utterly ass-backwards.

eBook reading devices can only handle barely formatted documents unless they are in PDF format. Books, "e" or "p", are content molded into a specific form... a form that is best suited to the interface to be used for their viewing... whether that interface is a paper sheet of a specific size or an eInk screen of a specific size.

And as fond as some people are of selecting their own fonts, a cleverly (or even half-way competently) LaTeX generated PDF can laughingly achieve far better aesthetics and readability (making the book "disappear" and letting the reader focus the content) than any LRF, ePub, Mobi, or whatever else I have ever seen.

- Ahi

Utterly ass-backwards ?

An ePub file is easily formatted to PDF the exact way you want it to look, it only requires some extra info about the page header, footer, things like that. While the other way around, PDF not keeping any information about the role of its elements (e.g where does that paragraph end? is this a table? is that a footnote?), is a pain when need to be converted to a reflowable format arises.

So it should be: ePub first, PDF later.