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Old 01-15-2018, 03:42 PM   #31
drjd
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Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
An eBook format is one that allows for styling.
So does the Jon do.
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Old 01-15-2018, 03:59 PM   #32
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Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
An eBook format is one that allows for styling.
Where the heck does it say that? As with barryem, my first introduction to ebooks were plain text format (except for the ones that had some embedded formatting commands such as _word_ and *word* for italics and bold).

Can you supply the any information on any current model ereaders not made by B&N that do not support .txt files as an ebook format?
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Old 01-15-2018, 04:20 PM   #33
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Speaking non-technically, .txt format was probably the first of its kinds as an ebook to introduce digital reading, I surmise. A lot many short stories and novels were circulating freely over the net in the late 20th and early 21st century which enabled people to read books on their computers. However, no one probably cared much about the copyright thingy in that era of Napster. OCRs were not that common then, and enthusiasts used to type away the whole damn story/novel and circulate among the user-group. I must confess I have read many books using Notepad on my 286/386 machines that time.
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Old 01-15-2018, 04:56 PM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
An eBook format is one that allows for styling.
Says you. Others disagree.
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Old 01-15-2018, 05:00 PM   #35
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Says you. Others disagree.
You must be new to the board. If Wolf says it, it is law
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Old 01-15-2018, 10:34 PM   #36
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
An eBook format is one that allows for styling.
I thought an ebook format was on that allowed for reading!

Actually, though, plain text does allow paragraphs and indentation and I would call that styling. Just not as much as came later.

I remember a discussion in a Palm forum lo those many years ago about formatting. This was at the point where a few ebooks were coming available in formats that allowed for bold and italicizing. At that point I'd been reading only text files and I was surprised that there was a concern for these features. Not that they can't add something but they add very little to most novels and the price for them, in terms of efficiency on those very low powered devices, wasn't small.

A few people jumped in and let me know that it wasn't possible to take reading seriously without those features. A few others sided with me. It soon became obvious there wasn't a middle ground or room for discussion so the topic died quickly.

Today I'm glad I have those features. I don't see them as necessary but they are nice and the devices can better handle them now as well as more sophisticated features such as kerning.

Barry
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:56 AM   #37
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I still have a bunch of .lit and .pdb files from my PC days. I had a Casseopia E500 gadget and a lit reader on it and Microsoft was doing a weekly .lit giveaway. I guess I was showing early signs of being an ebook hoarder, even back then. I should break out those old files and see if there's anything worth keeping and converting.
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Old 01-16-2018, 01:17 AM   #38
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I still have a working hp PCC with ereader, mobipocket and Microsoft reader on. Now and then I read one of the books. Petty much like reading on a phone. You need to recharge a lot. Don't do it often as I doubt I could buy a new battery these days.
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Old 01-16-2018, 06:30 AM   #39
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB View Post
Where the heck does it say that? As with barryem, my first introduction to ebooks were plain text format (except for the ones that had some embedded formatting commands such as _word_ and *word* for italics and bold).

Can you supply the any information on any current model ereaders not made by B&N that do not support .txt files as an ebook format?
Text is not an eBook format. It's a document format. PDF is supported, but it's not at eBook format. Same with text.
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:01 PM   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
Text is not an eBook format. It's a document format. PDF is supported, but it's not at eBook format. Same with text.
I totally disagree.

Text is not in any way a "document" format because it doesn't not include a "page" specification. It is merely a stream of relowable text with the only "formatting" being carriage returns.

The original "ebook" format, as "invented" by Michael Hart on July 4, 1971, was plain ASCII text with forced line wraps (carriage returns) every 79 characters to format the display on the then standard 80 column pure text CRT displays, along with double CRs for paragraph breaks. I remember creating a WordPerfect macro, back in my early days with ebooks (very early 1990s), to process these files to remove the line breaks and paragraph breaks and to indents, with spaces, the first line of each paragraph. This gave me TXT files that reflowed better on narrower screens and served as a basis for format conversions (to RTF and later MSWordCE DOC, PalmDOC, early Mobi PRC, ...).
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:42 PM   #41
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
Text is not an eBook format. It's a document format. PDF is supported, but it's not at eBook format. Same with text.
You keep saying that! Tell us why! Give some reason or reference or something.

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Old 01-16-2018, 01:02 PM   #42
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Originally Posted by DNSB View Post
Where the heck does it say that? As with barryem, my first introduction to ebooks were plain text format (except for the ones that had some embedded formatting commands such as _word_ and *word* for italics and bold).

Can you supply the any information on any current model ereaders not made by B&N that do not support .txt files as an ebook format?
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf View Post
Text is not an eBook format. It's a document format. PDF is supported, but it's not at eBook format. Same with text.
Jon, please supply some supporting evidence for your statement.

Every source I checked said that text is an ebook format as is PDF. Would you also state that RTF is not an ebook format? Baen would disagree with you as it is one of their supported formats. Hmmmm... there is also a WOLF format for ebooks (proprietary but when has that stopped anyone). File extension is .wol.

Summing up what the sites I went through stated, if you can read it on a device with a microprocessor, input/control capability and display, it is an ebook.
Last edited by DNSB; 01-16-2018 at 01:07 PM.
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Old 01-16-2018, 01:11 PM   #43
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Summing up what the sites I went through stated, if you can read it on a device with a microprocessor, input/control capability and display, it is an ebook.

This, I agree with.
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Old 01-16-2018, 04:31 PM   #44
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Hmmmm... there is also a WOLF format for ebooks (proprietary but when has that stopped anyone). File extension is .wol..
Honestly, never heard before.
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Old 01-16-2018, 05:52 PM   #45
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PDF is not an eBook.

https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2016...isnt-an-ebook/
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