Newbie format question?

[SeaBookGuy]

If I have a choice between the two, is the Sony format of a book "better" than EPub?

[pepak]

Depends on what you mean by "better":

- More compatible and future-proof? No.
- Easier to modify? No.
- Faster? Seems to vary a lot, but in case of my books, a definite Yes.
- More stable? Again, seems to vary. In my case, Yes.
- Nicer output? Depends on which features of each format you use. EPUB rules with e.g. underlining or tables, LRF is far better with plain text.

It all boils down to:

- Better as a format? Definite No.
- Better as an implementation on current Sony's? Yes.

[SeaBookGuy]

Thanks

I was thinking of a standard fiction book, no tables, etc. I was wondering if LRF "flows" better is my concern I guess?

[dickon25]

For what it's worth, I always use lrf. I've never managed to get an epub to the right font size and keep the correct flow - they always come out way too small on my 505. Maybe it's me, but I find the lrf much simpler and much quicker.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by pepak

- More stable? Again, seems to vary. In my case, Yes.

Interesting, one of my main reasons for switching to ePub was the fact that LRF rebooted my 505 more times then I liked. Mainly due to pagination of files because I didn't use the Sony software to load my books. On the other hand, I have only run across one ePub file that caused my 505 to reboot and I was able to open the file up in Sigil, remove the offending code, save the file and continue reading.

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

If I have a choice between the two, is the Sony format of a book "better" than EPub?

I do think that LRF files, for recreational novels can look great and if you prefer full justification of your books LRF is currently your best option.

Personally I use larger fonts and full justification doesn't look good at all so I go with ePub. I can easily edit ePubs with Sigil and all my books will be easy to migrate to my next device.

The good news though is with calibre it is easy to create and manage both formats.

[ShellShock]

LRFs display text fully justified (straight right margin); through a firmware hack you can turn off the full justification if you prefer, which will affect all LRFs books.

Although the epub format supports left and full justification, the version of Adobe ADE that the Sony PRS 505 uses will only display epubs with left justification. There is no way round this, unless Sony releases a firmware update (very unlikely in my opinion).

You may or may not want full justification, it is very much personal choice. I was very much a full justification kind of guy, but now I have gone to the dark side and have let the evil left into my life.

Adobe ADE also displays epubs with the page number in a small font in the right hand margin; if you like small margins like me, then often the page number will obscure some text. Grrrrrr. Whoever thought of this feature needs a good spanking! Again this would require a firmware update from Sony.

I believe the 900 does not have these two failings for epubs; hopefully the new Sony models (if they truly exist) will also support full justification and no dumb page numbers.

Despite these drawbacks of epubs on the PRS 505, I would still recommend the format because of its future proofing. New devices always support epub (unless you are Amazon), whereas LRF is dead.

I'm not sure what you mean by flow? I have not noticed any difference between reflow for LRF or epub.

With a little hacking you can change the default font for either format. If you are into editing the ebooks themselves (to adjust margins, font sizes etc), then epub is definitely easier than LRF, however an LRF ebook does have the advantage of being a single xml file, whereas an epub is a zip container of many files. You can use the excellent Sigil to edit epubs (if they have no DRM); the editing tools for LRF are much more basic.

Yes the 900 does have full justification of ePub and no page numbers in the margin. Surely Sony will have enough sense to make any new readers with the updated ADE of the 900.

I like ePub better than LRF because they tend to be smaller files and run faster and smoother in the Sony readers. LRF can get pretty big especially if they have embedded fonts.

You can very easily strip the DRM from Sony ePubs and use calibre to set the font families and font sizes. It does require a bit of hacking but it is reasonably easy.

You can rename an ePub if it is not DRMed to a *.zip, unzip it, use your favorite HTML and CSS editor to make changes, then rezip it. Calibre can then convert it back to an ePub (renaming *.zip to *.epub doesn't always work with Sony readers).

Epubs are also going to be much more portable to other devices than LRFs.