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Old 07-31-2008, 04:51 PM   #1
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PDF / ePub Differences?
I'm curious as to what exactly the differences are between PDF and ePub..and forgive me if I can't quite understand why everyone seems so excited for ePub? What's so great about that format as opposed to all the others
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Old 07-31-2008, 05:47 PM   #2
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I'm curious as to what exactly the differences are between PDF and ePub..and forgive me if I can't quite understand why everyone seems so excited for ePub? What's so great about that format as opposed to all the others
PDF is a print-oriented, fixed-layout format. This makes it hard to change the layout of PDF documents when -- for example -- changing the page size but keeping the font size the same.

EPUB is a display-oriented, reflowable format. This makes it easy to produce an EPUB document which will display well on many different display sizes and with many different font sizes.

People are excited about EPUB in particular over other reflowable e-book formats because it's the first (a) open e-book standard (b) based on existing specifications (XHTML, etc.) (c) with actual industry support. Well, that's why I'm excited about it anyway .

-Marshall
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Old 07-31-2008, 05:48 PM   #3
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Well, not being an expert, but it seems to me that ePub is a reflowable format, so works well with different display sizes, unlike PDF, but unlike other reflowable formats, is not tied to a particular manufacturer/device.
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Old 08-01-2008, 03:58 AM   #4
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Think of ePub as the enhanced version of MobiPocket, except an open standard with industry support.

Basically the general concept differences between ePub and PDF are much like the key differences between PDF and MobiPocket or BBeB.
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Old 08-01-2008, 10:51 AM   #5
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Okay...so ePub is awesome, and PDF well kind of sucks...right?

Is there any way to convert my PDFs to ePub? My Locke Lamora is really really really really tiny

I suppose I should have headed the warning of "This document is meant to be read with a screen resolution of 1024x768"
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Old 08-09-2008, 05:19 AM   #6
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Is there way to convert epub to PDF?
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Old 08-09-2008, 02:26 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jaxx6166 View Post
Okay...so ePub is awesome, and PDF well kind of sucks...right?
I wouldn't say that, PDF is the best solution if you know what your target audience (i.e A4/Letter or CPU monitors). If a PDF is made just for the Sony PRS-505 it will look very nice. Look at sony's manual that is installed on the reader that is PDF and it looks fantastic. The reason for this is when a PDF file is created it is optimized for one size. Typically putting a bigger size PDF to a smaller screen makes the PDF fonts too small to read.

However in the eBook industry has many different targets and the screen size tend to be smaller than the defeacto A4/letter that PDF usally is created for. With ePub and other eBook formats the text is reflowable. The fonts do not shrink they word reflow to maximize the usage of the screen you are reading from.


Quote:
Originally Posted by jaxx6166 View Post
Is there any way to convert my PDFs to ePub? My Locke Lamora is really really really really tiny

I suppose I should have headed the warning of "This document is meant to be read with a screen resolution of 1024x768"
There is not tool YET that creates ePub. There is a website that turns HTML to ePub.

So you can use MobiCreate or Calibres' PDF2HTML. Both programs create HTML. From the HTML you can create and ePub tool. In the future both programs plan on creating ePub directly from PDF.

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Old 08-12-2008, 05:24 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by =X= View Post
I wouldn't say that, PDF is the best solution if you know what your target audience (i.e A4/Letter or CPU monitors). If a PDF is made just for the Sony PRS-505 it will look very nice. Look at sony's manual that is installed on the reader that is PDF and it looks fantastic. The reason for this is when a PDF file is created it is optimized for one size. Typically putting a bigger size PDF to a smaller screen makes the PDF fonts too small to read.

However in the eBook industry has many different targets and the screen size tend to be smaller than the defeacto A4/letter that PDF usally is created for. With ePub and other eBook formats the text is reflowable. The fonts do not shrink they word reflow to maximize the usage of the screen you are reading from.



There is not tool YET that creates ePub. There is a website that turns HTML to ePub.

So you can use MobiCreate or Calibres' PDF2HTML. Both programs create HTML. From the HTML you can create and ePub tool. In the future both programs plan on creating ePub directly from PDF.

=X=
We can expect Calibre to output to epub as early as September, but work is still in progress and not to a beta-testing stage yet.
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