06-23-2011, 03:28 AM | #1 |
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capabilities of epub compared to mobi
Hallo,
I am interested to know, whether there are large differences in the capabilities of epub and mobi. Is is possible to do "more" using epub? Or doesn't matter, which format is used? |
06-23-2011, 03:47 AM | #2 |
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I would say you can do more in ePub that will NOT translate to .mobi
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06-23-2011, 04:20 AM | #3 |
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Do you have any examples?
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06-23-2011, 04:25 AM | #4 |
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Floats... from Memory
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06-23-2011, 04:29 AM | #5 |
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Possible in ePUB, not in Mobi: Embedded fonts, CSS, right margins, SVG, PNG.
Possible in Mobi, not in ePUB: Dictionaries. |
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06-23-2011, 04:45 AM | #6 |
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Of course, the following question may be nonsense, but why not asking it: Is epub or mobi the "better" format? Or on which facts does that depend on?
I read at the moment a mathematical book with al lot of formulas I bought at Amazon. Of course it is a topaz. Other sellers only offer such books as pdf that is awfull for small e-reader-screens. So I wonder whether epub can do the same job as topaz. Last edited by comet; 06-23-2011 at 06:01 AM. |
06-23-2011, 06:18 AM | #7 |
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Isn't topaz roughly equivalent to PDF formatted for a small screen?
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06-23-2011, 06:56 AM | #8 |
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I believe that's not true. The topaz-book I read at the moment has sometimes a very poor quality: Sometimes mathematical symbols or whole parts of formuals are absent (I compared it to the extract of the print edition on Amazon). The reason is that in topaz they probably use scanned parts of the book, and it seems that there are some problems concerning quality control for topaz-books, I believe. PDF is an exact copy of the layout of the original book with high quality - but poor for small e-reader screen. If I use pdf-reflow (e.g. on my sony) the mathematical formulas are completely destroyed. So I have to use topaz, if I want to use the ebooks.
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06-23-2011, 07:17 AM | #9 | |
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Quote:
Topaz has a dictionary of glyphs (SVG fonts) that represent characters, groups of characters, or sometimes whole words that are used in the book. XML is then used to assemble those SVG glyphs and any images the book may contain into "pages" that are reflowable. The original OCR scan is included but only used for text search purposes—which due to uncorrected scan errors, often produces interesting results. I've always felt that Topaz had the ability to produce some beautifully rendered books, but many times were hastily thrown together and oftentimes the glyphs were "fuzzy." But when a topaz book was good... it was damn good. Most of the hate for topaz comes from it's bloat—they're huge files (which probably contributed to sluggish page turns), the user's inability to be able to change the font (the SVG glyphs are hard-coded), and of course the largely unsatisfying results when trying to convert them to another format. |
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06-23-2011, 09:46 AM | #10 |
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So unreadable mathematical symbols are due to bad scans? The topaz-book, I read, was written in the eighties. If I look on the other side into a topaz-book that is published 2010 it looks really well!
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06-23-2011, 09:59 AM | #11 | |
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Quote:
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06-24-2011, 04:15 AM | #12 |
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06-24-2011, 04:23 AM | #13 | |
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Quote:
With Mobi, dictionaries are a part of the format specification. If you want a Russian dictionary for your Kindle, you can buy one in the Kindle bookstore and install it on your Kindle. |
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06-24-2011, 04:29 AM | #14 |
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The current ePub standard can't replace PDF or Topaz for complex layouts, but the new ePub 3 standard should be able to do so. However, it's going to be some years before ePub 3 devices are widespread.
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06-24-2011, 04:53 AM | #15 |
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Where can I find detailed specifications of mobi and topaz?
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