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Old 06-23-2011, 07:50 PM   #1
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What is the point to the Topaz format
So, I got my first Topaz book, the 2002 edition of Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution. Since we're a two reader household (nook and kindle), I typically decrypt and convert.

Well, with the topaz book, that took some major effort. Took the decrypted HTML and loaded it into Sigil. Created chapter breaks and saved the whole thing as an ePub.

So, why are some books topaz and some books mobi? Is topaz supposed to replace mobi at some point as Amazon's new eBook standard?

Converting from ePub to mobi has shown me some of the limitations of the mobi format, mostly around tables. I would think Amazon needs to do something to make sure that eBooks on other readers don't look nicer than they do on the kindle.
Last edited by apastuszak; 06-23-2011 at 11:24 PM. Reason: change B&N to Amazon
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Old 06-23-2011, 08:04 PM   #2
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So, why are some books topaz and some books mobi? Is topaz supposed to replace mobi at some point as B&Ns new eBook standard?
B&N doesn't sell mobi's or Topaz books. If you mean Amazon, then no... Topaz is not intended to replace mobi. I think Topaz is a quick and dirty solution to get scanned books into an ebook format. It also has its uses for books that contain lots of mathematical formulae, tables, inline images and such. Topaz lends itself well to any highly formatted layout such as poetry that can be a nightmare for mobi to successfully recreate, as well.

But unfortunately, Topaz usually sucks to convert to any other format. You will lose italics and bold formatting in the process. And since the conversion process can only use the (usually uncorrected) OCR of the scanned book to recreate the text, results can be anything from "Not too terrible" to "really, really sucks." ...Without a lot of TLC, that is.
Last edited by DiapDealer; 06-23-2011 at 08:08 PM.
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Old 06-23-2011, 08:33 PM   #3
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Not all books exist in an electronic format. Sometimes they need to be scanned in. Topaz is basically just a collection of images. Publishers are too lazy to OCR them.

And when they do OCR books, they often don't bother to spellcheck 'em.

The quality of commercial old books is really terrible.
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Old 06-23-2011, 11:44 PM   #4
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Now can you convert the OCR into a pdf? That would make it readable in (most) other ebook readers...
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