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

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Syniurge

(Sorry, I'm answering to the original post )

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.

Unfortunately Amazon isn't getting much pressure from the Kindle masses to support ePub.. However if they want to look serious when pushing Kindle into universities and schools they better remedy to it.

Well, the font embedding looks like a real useful features, and vector graphics too, if you want to wide the range of available books.

[ahammer]

Originally Posted by Sonist

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.

I think alot of us dont think that large screen will win out like you and ahi seem to.
I do think we will see more of them then today as the cost goes down but there is something to be said about protablty.

people will still buy small devices even when the price goes down,

two cases in point.
protable tv people still buy them even now that big screens are cheep.
apple air. apple seem to think there is a market for high cost protable computers.

out of what we have now I think epub is better for ebooks.

what we need thou is a format that can do both types of formats in the same file.
with non fixed with file being reltive ez to set up and the fixed with taking about as much work as pdf does today.

that way you can buy a book and have the best of both worlds. cost to make would go up a bit(no to much I think).

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by ahammer

... apple air. apple seem to think there is a market for high cost protable computers....

The rumored Apple device will likely be 10", which is sufficient for most PDFs. If the Apple tablet turns out to be a good ereader, depending on screen quality, it may be a game-changer, and usher in a broader range of e-publications.

[K-Thom]

Sonist, imagine a book store full of 10" size paperbacks. Unlikely this will happen, won't you agree? Now imagine a book store full of 5" size paperbacks. Won't happen, too.

There's a market for 10" reading devices as there is one for 5". There's one for high end expensive devices as there is one for basic, affordable ones. Different approach, different audience, different preferences. Price is rather one of the least aspects. A 6" device from Amazon will be much more expensive than a 10" from Sony. Still it will find its customers.

To reduce the possibilities of eBooks to '10" screen and PDF or death!' is too weak as a point of view for an ongoing argument.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

... A 6" device from Amazon will be much more expensive than a 10" from Sony. Still it will find its customers....

Huh? Not sure I follow you here.

But, anyway, I am not arguing that there is no market for 5" devices. There is also a market for 3", and probably even 2" devices, but that's irrelevant to a discussion of standards.

Most people tend to gravitate toward an optimum range of sizes, based on field of view and comfort. And 5", or even 6", are not common reading formats, for a reason.

The smallest common mass market paperback format is approximately 8.25" in diagonal, while a regular trade paperback is just over 10" in diagonal.

Of course there are smaller, pocket editions, some smaller than an iPhone, but they are generally regarded as novelties, and have a limited audience, because most people (not all,) do not find them enjoyable to read.

I personally do not care which format wins. I do believe it will be either PDF or something like PDF, which is capable of presenting a broad range of publication formats, including magazines.

My main objection to the introduction of new formats with relatively limited capability (compared to PDF), is that they will only further confuse the market, and slow the adoption of ebooks. On the other hand, it is not unlikely, that Adobe will integrate EPUB into the next version of its Acrobat Reader, and over time, it will merge the capabilities of the two formats.

[Panurge]

[Do you think an author ever thinks about the typesetting when he/she is typing a book? Never place form over content, or you'll fall for the shell!]

Actually, some do. There have been authors, such as Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy) and Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There) in whose work not only the fonts but the layout of the book was very carefully controlled by the author. In fact, one problem with most modern reprints of the Alice books is that they fail to respect the relationship among typefont, illustrations, and pagination that Carroll so meticulously worked out. (He was so demanding that his illustrator for the two Alices, Tenniel, refused to collaborate on any of his subsequent books.) There is a very nicely done PDF facsimile of Wonderland done by a typographer/designer a few years ago that uses a typefont as close to the original as possible and with the disposition of the text on the page matching that of the original layouts.
Having pointed this out, I agree that most authors pay very little attention to the ultimate questions of detail in the final design of their books. Some, however, like my late friend Marshall McLuhan, certainly did.
What we really need is a format that can both "freeze" a design, where appropriate, and flow text when that is called for. Text flow is helpful for people with impaired vision, for example, regardless of the size of the screen.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Sonist

But, anyway, I am not arguing that there is no market for 5" devices. There is also a market for 3", and probably even 2" devices, but that's irrelevant to a discussion of standards.

No, because a lot of people do the majority of their digital reading on ~3" screens, which happen to double as phones. A "universal ebook standard" that won't display on an iPhone or Blackberry is a bust.

Most people tend to gravitate toward an optimum range of sizes, based on field of view and comfort. And 5", or even 6", are not common reading formats, for a reason.

Yes: because a 6" diagonal pbook, with margins big enough to not have to put fingers over the text, is a much smaller text field. And the costs of paper have a strong influence over the standard sizes of books; smaller pages = more paper/book. Paperbacks are as large as can be made to fit in a pocket, to balance the conflicting challenge of "small and portable" and "cheap to print." And they're all the same size, even when slightly smaller or larger would be better for a particular book, because there are advantages to uniform shapes (shipping, storage, customer familiarity) that don't matter to digital products.

The smallest common mass market paperback format is approximately 8.25" in diagonal, while a regular trade paperback is just over 10" in diagonal.

Check the diagonal on the text only, removing the page numbers and headers, which aren't necessary for ebooks.

They're also commonly set in about 10pt font size, even though that's too small for comfortable reading for many people, for reasons that are irrelevant to digital files, which don't get more expensive when they have more pages.

Ebooks are going to be very erratic for a while, as they sort out which features of paper books are needed for useful and enjoyable transfer of the information, and which aspects only existed because the limitations of print required them. And ebooks will discover new features that aren't possible in print--perhaps animated text, or randomly different endings, or video or music excerpts built into the ebook. I'm not fond of the bells-and-whistles approach to ebooks, but I'm glad some people are experimenting with them, because I want them to succeed--and they'll need to be more than "a substitute for pbooks."

The ebook format that works almost exactly like pbook layouts does not have an advantage in trying to find how ebooks work best.

[jharker]

I read through all 7 pages of comments up to this point and was surprised that no one mentioned the key advantage of epub over all other formats:

It doesn't belong to anyone.

Sony has lrf, Microsoft has lit, Amazon has mobi, etc., and although the formats have advantages and disadvantages, the biggest disadvantage is that they're all different. Want Sony to support mobi? Good luck!

The advantage of epub is that no one owns it, which means everyone can adopt it. Granted, some things (like DRM) may still be vender-specific. But just adopting epub demonstrates that a vendor is interested in interoperability. I'm sure that there will eventually be some consensus on DRM as well, for those who still cling to it.

On PDF vs. epub... As everyone has already said, PDF is unmatched for documents in which layout is supremely important. For any other kind of document, a reflowable format is needed; and right now, epub is the best open standard for this.

Despite epub's shortcomings, the nice thing about open standards is that they can be revised to include more features. I'm sure we'll see epub 5.0 at some point.

Finally, I want to mention one niche issue which no one has discussed: equations.

The concept of e-textbooks is becoming quite popular, and there's no way to do that without equations. Mobipocket support for equations is basically nonexistent, except as inline graphics, and it doesn't support fonts, which makes any but the simplest math equations impossible anyway. If you have ever bought a math-based book from Amazon, you'll see how horrible it can be. I can't speak for other formats on this subject, however.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jharker

I read through all 7 pages of comments up to this point and was surprised that no one mentioned the key advantage of epub over all other formats:

It doesn't belong to anyone.

You've slightly lost me there. PDF is an open standard, too (ISO 32000-1).

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by jharker

Finally, I want to mention one niche issue which no one has discussed: equations.

The concept of e-textbooks is becoming quite popular, and there's no way to do that without equations. Mobipocket support for equations is basically nonexistent, except as inline graphics, and it doesn't support fonts, which makes any but the simplest math equations impossible anyway. If you have ever bought a math-based book from Amazon, you'll see how horrible it can be. I can't speak for other formats on this subject, however.

Check out this sample.

[HarryT]

That's an ePub, is it? That's pretty impressive! Presumably the equations are SVGs?

[igorsk]

Yes, they're SVG.

[numtini]

people will still buy small devices even when the price goes down

I agree with this. I suspect ebooks are the new mass market paper, not the new hardbound.

It doesn't belong to anyone

I agree this is the strength.

But I think the kindle is going to be the ipod of books and will be dominant until the market is saturated enough for publishers to lighten up on drm and the whole nine yards. Not the way I'd prefer it to be, but I think that's what's going to happen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by griffonwing

A lot of PDFs are made today that are specific to MONITOR dimensions, instead of A4 or Letter. In this manner, you have one page per Laptop screen, without the need to scroll down to see the bottom 1/3 of the paper. I have a couple RPG files like that.

What I don't get is why are PDFs made to be eBooks made with such huge margins?

[Abecedary]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I don't get is why are PDFs made to be eBooks made with such huge margins?

It's really not hard to figure out at all. Most PDF ebooks are exported from the same layout files used for the print edition. Take a PDF ebook and compare it to the print version--the page size, type size, layout, pagination, margins, etc will all be the same. Publishers put out PDF ebooks because it takes only moments to export them.