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

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Syniurge

ePub has everything that the previous de-facto standard Mobipocket lacks: vector graphics (scalable without loss), font embedding (e.g Kindle are atm restricted to Western languages, and even with the various font hacks, problem is that there can be only one font at the same time, and no single font is able to handle all languages; font embedding would make everything simpler and not restrict to a particular range of charsets), much more formatting features, and is a mix of existing and widely used open standards.

How is ePub for Chinese, Arabic, and Indian languages? The problematic scripts between the three surely are relevant to at least 2 billion people... perhaps closer to 3.

Being better than something else and being shitty are not mutually exclusive.

- Ahi

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ahi

How is ePub for Chinese, Arabic, and Indian languages?

Provided that the appropriate fonts are included in the ePub, it's absolutely fine.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Provided that the appropriate fonts are included in the ePub, it's absolutely fine.

ePub handles right-to-left and OpenType font-based gliph-morphing/replacement (I forget the technical term)?

ePub handles surrogate fonts that allow Chinese characters to be displayed from Extension Plane B? With one exception, that is not licensed for distribution, Extension Plane B support exclusively comes from the use of additional fonts. In other words, characters would have to be explicitly indicated to use one of two fonts, in order to display at all. Oh, and what about vertical writing?

Indian languages, as Arabic, have morphing/changing characters whose logic can be embedded right into the OTF font.

All of these things work?

- Ahi

[HarryT]

Right to left languages, eg Arabic, certainly work. The other things I suggest you try and see, or look at the ePub spec.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by ahi

ePub handles right-to-left and OpenType font-based gliph-morphing/replacement (I forget the technical term)?

ePub handles surrogate fonts that allow Chinese characters to be displayed from Extension Plane B? With one exception, that is not licensed for distribution, Extension Plane B support exclusively comes from the use of additional fonts. In other words, characters would have to be explicitly indicated to use one of two fonts, in order to display at all. Oh, and what about vertical writing?

Indian languages, as Arabic, have morphing/changing characters whose logic can be embedded right into the OTF font.

All of these things work?

- Ahi

I know the first is supported, but I'm not so sure about the second. Here is the relevant part of the spec:
http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops/OPS_2.0...tml#Section3.4

[Jellby]

Those are features the reading system should support, not the ePUB format specifically (which, nonetheless, encourages the use of OpenType fonts).

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Dunno. I suggest you try them and see.

Do you then see, Harry, why--with all due respect--I am semi-regularly irked to the edge (and I hope not beyond, or too far beyond) of civility on account of people offering expert statements on topics where their knowledge does not even extend to knowing the issues, never mind knowing the solutions to them.

I recall the suggestion that right-to-left writing is not supported. Therefore Arabic, and all other languages that use the Arabic script are out.

Vertical writing is pretty much certain not to be supported. And I think it is unlikely that ePub viewers have the ability to intelligently select the one font (from two or more specified) that actually has a glyph for each given character... I'm not even sure it is reasonable to expect such work from so thoroughly underpowered machines as eBook readers.

The only other way then is to programmatically surround characters that require it, in an additional <span> with the css class specifying the alternate font. A workaround that underlines ePub's (well, really HTML's) unsuitability for the task.

And then, there is, of course Chinese Typography whose rules differ considerably from that of any Western language. (The same is true for many other scripts that "technically" could be supported by ePub, but practically [for reasons of typography] basically cannot reasonably be.) Does any ePub implementation even try to use those?

Indic languages for the most part would depend on the ability to handle OTF character/glyph morphing and possibly special typographic rules.

In other words... if nobody on this board has the slightest idea whether ePub would work for a certain 2 - 3 billion portion of humanity, and there are in fact good reasons to assume it does not... can we collectively stop sagely pretending that it's perfect (or even usable) for eBooks, regardless of language/script considerations.

- Ahi

Ps.: I just read your comment about arabic. If it really works fine, then Indic languages should work ok as well... assuming differing typographic rules are taken into consideration... which I personally doubt.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I know the first is supported, but I'm not so sure about the second. Here is the relevant part of the spec:
http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops/OPS_2.0...tml#Section3.4

This, does not fill me with great confidence:

It is advisable for a Reading System to support the OpenType font format, but this is not a conformance requirement; a reading system may support no embedded font formats at all.

[K-Thom]

Txt files are not very good for book which contain bold or Italic or both. quite a lot of authors are using bold and italics to stress points in their story, this is lost in a txt file.

Definitely. The better solution would be rtf or html. txt files simple can be read on about anything with a screen.

Too many of you seem to take a ridiculous black and white worldview where things simply can't coexist with each other and work well in their own niches for which they're best suited.

For pure text eBooks like most novels epub is the better choice, as is pdf for any graphic-oriented layout like magazines, modern textbooks, comic books. So, yes, there is indeed a market for both of them and more than a big niche.
But the current screens of mobile reading devices (and I'm not talking about laptops or netbooks) technically favor the utilization of epub files.

I'm waiting für the Crunchpad as a second device. Novels on my 5" epub reader, magazines on sometheing like the Cruncpad. For me an ideal combination.

[amjbrown]

Here's the shocking truth. No format is perfect for all media on all platforms!

I like reading novels, and I am still not sure how a previous poster managed to use the phrase "chapter books" as an insult! For me, my 505 carries all the novels / chapter books that I can feasibly read at any one time. I tend to buy ePubs, because IMHO Sony do a nice job of formatting them, and thanks to the efforts of people on this forum (the I love Cabbages chap, Kovid and some very helpful 1-2-1 coaching from JSWolf) I reckon I can ship them to another device sans DRM in an emergency. I have a novel in PDF format on my 505 - it looks awful. I don't know whether I should blame Sony, Adobe or me for buying it, but lesson learnt - ePubs work for novels on a 505, I have a 505, I read novels...you get the drift.

I like maps. Detailed maps. Maps that take up more than a screen. I can download a map of all the cycle lanes in London as a PDF, blow it up, crop a section to print, zoom right out to get an overview. Maps on my Mac are fabulous as PDFs - in either Preview or Adobe Reader. I would never dream of putting them on on my 505.

So let's all be friends. Bad news for people who hate ePubs, they are gaining in adoption. Bad news for people who hate people who read chapter books - that's a lot of hate. And really bad news for who hate PDFs - if a publisher insists on you seeing the layout that they envisaged, it's going to be PDFs for some time to come!

Great debate though

amjb

[ahi]

You are right, AMJB. But for electronic books, reflow formats are definitely and objectively the wrong choice... unless of course we restrict the definition of eBooks, as people presumably do here, to novels with uncomplicated layouts.

Books are supposed to be able to convey information with far greater complexity (not to mention elegance) than reflow formats will ever be able to handle. Why? Because typesetting/bookmaking is not a machine-solvable problem and thus necessarily requires human intervention/assistance.

The above are facts that I am yet to see credibly disputed by anyone, or for that matter by somebody that that seemed to understand and acknowledge the full range of issues.

None of this changes the fact that most PDFs available today are unusable on eBook devices. But, in turn, the fact that most PDFs available today are unusable doesn't change the fact that only PDFs and similarly static solutions can solve all the problems of bookmaking (electronic or otherwise) and dynamic formats will not foreseeably be able to do so until computers have basically human-equivalent level intelligence (seeing as how that is exactly what is required for typesetting/bookmaking).

Yes, let's all be friends. Enjoy, everyone, your reflowing ePubs, LITs, LRFs, et cetera... particularly until 99% of PDFs out there stop being sh*te on account of poor production (which has nothing to do with the merits or demerits of the format). But why pretend that PDF couldn't be used to easily make a better looking and more professional eBook than can be produced with any of those other choices? Why does the truth hurt so much? Particularly when it is years away from having relevance/impact on people existing eBook related habits?

And if large-print editions are needed, by the way... nothing stopping publishers even today from including the content twice within a single PDF, once professionally typeset with a 10pt-12pt font, and once likewise treated with a 14pt-18pt font.

Reflowing the text for the sake of somebody having the benefit of a large-print edition is a bit like keeping all your plants in your garden inside ceramic pots just barely submerged in the ground so that you can move them around easily... the desired benefit is there, but the downsides are numerous and blatantly obvious to those that understand gardening (or, in our instance, typography/bookmaking).

- Ahi

[K-Thom]

ahi, 100 years ago most cars looked like horse carriages without horses. Simply because the first manufacturers of cars used carriages as a carrier for their motor. But automobile manufacturers surely have developed and created bodyworks to suit the needs of a motorized device.

Books are a stacked collection of rectangular cellulosis layers in fixed measurements. PDF indeed accomodates to this fact.

But - with all due respect - could/would/might it occur to you that books are but one way to display text and/or graphically enhanced text blocks? Books are a medium with a long tradition which resulted in some finely crafted examples (some of which I am proud to keep in my shelves). But also with a lot of limitations.

There is no need at all that any eBook format besides PDF should ever have to follow the requirements, regulations and traditions of bookmaking? Why? What for? They are not printed on paper. They are not bound. They are not - and please accept this as a major advantage of eBooks - not limited to any page layout or size.

Your position on eBooks is that of digital versions of books.
Mine is that they are a new medium with new requirements and new demands. Some which we'll have to find out in the decades to come, some of which will be steadily improved. PDF might be a part in it, ePub too.

I would rather like to call them eScrolls than eBooks, since the basic text layout (I'm concentrating on novels right now, not magazines) is that of one large file with a beginning and an end. And some chapter intermissions inbetween. Quite like a scroll, definitely not like a book.

If you ever read some of the comics of Scott Mc Cloud, you may understand that even graphically based layouts do not at all have to rely on paper size restrictions but free themselves from that concept.

You stick to books, I stick to content. Deal?

[drmathprog]

It almost sounds like we're saying ePub is everyone's third most favorite ebook format!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ahi

But why pretend that PDF couldn't be used to easily make a better looking and more professional eBook than can be produced with any of those other choices?

It perhaps could, but I personally have three readers which support PDF:

- A CyBook Opus, with a 5" screen.
- A CyBook Gen3, with a 6" screen
- An iRex DR1000S, with a 10" screen

Wouldn't someone have to produce three different PDF versions of every book (and that's ignoring other device sizes, such as the iLiad's 8.1" screen and the Kindle DX's 9.7"), each optimized for a particular size of screen?

That's the basic problem with PDF - it's too "tied" to the screen size.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

ahi, 100 years ago most cars looked like horse carriages without horses....

Actually, this is where much of your argument against PDF is grounded.

The current ereader hardware is at the horse carriage stage. Beyond 6", screens are still prohibitively expensive for mass adoption. There is no color, and the quality of the experience is still fairly marginal.

Screen sizes will increase and prices will drop, as the technology improves. Due to both manufacturing and market efficiencies, there will also be size standardization, just like there is for computer monitors, and for TV screens.

Frankly, I don't see ereaders becoming mainstream, until there is full color and larger screens, combined with affordability. More people read magazines and other periodicals, than books. When the technology supports those, then ereaders will be mainstream.

And magazines do not lend themselves well to reflowing.

What most "reflowers" are talking about, is not ebooks, it's simply documents, as others have pointed out. Yes, you can get the content, but it's like reading a manuscript. It's a different experience, and it's not new -- it's just not all that appealing to most.

And to boot, PDFs already reflow. And within a year, I would imagine Adobe will make such ability even more robust, to apease those who insist on reading on their watch.

Speaking of small screens: 3"-5" is not the market. It may appeal to more now because of price, but so did 13" TVs at one point. But people seem to gravitate to certain sizes - most don't buy printed "pocket" editions, even though these have been available since the dawn of publishing.

Yes, you read something on the iPhone for a few minutes, but most people would not enjoy reading on it for extended periods. Just like you can watch the fixed-format, widescreen LOTR on an iPhone, but most prefer to see it in the theater, or on a much larger screen.

Anyway, me thinks, larger screens will make these arguments pointless.