02-20-2010, 02:45 PM | #31 | |
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Derek |
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02-20-2010, 02:55 PM | #32 | |
The Dank Side of the Moon
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Did you go off your meds again? |
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02-20-2010, 03:22 PM | #33 | |
Wizard
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02-20-2010, 03:46 PM | #34 |
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The original point of the thread was "which format is going to win,"which format is going to be the dominant format in the future.
DRM IS very significant to the disucssion since it prevents users from backing up their books and locks them in to a specific device or vendor. People who have bought DRM'd books in the past have been stranded when the DRM servers were turned off or the vendor went out of business, for example. (Microsoft "Plays for Sure" anyone.) So much as Epub may be a viable format for the future, anything with DRM is at risk. Because of the lack of DRM and the fact that almost every device now already comes equipped with a web browser, I maintain that HTML is still the most likely candidate to last in the long run, unpopular though that opinion may be. |
02-20-2010, 03:52 PM | #35 |
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it won't 'win', but i like RTF.
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02-20-2010, 03:56 PM | #36 | |
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You need a text editor/program to read text files. Notepad will do that. You need a web browser to read HTML/CSS and Internet Explorer will do that. You need special software to read just about any format other than text or HTML. By special software, I mean software that does not come with the operating system. |
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02-20-2010, 03:57 PM | #37 |
The Dank Side of the Moon
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I've already said I don't like drm and I don't expect it to survive any more than it has for MP3s. That said, the most likely format is one that is clearly identified as a book format. Epub is it. Only time will tell.
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02-20-2010, 03:58 PM | #38 |
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Sorry, but ePub already HAS become the defacto standard.
Yes there are two different (and soon to be a third) forms of DRM, but every device out there that supports ePub with DRM supports the same adept DRM. And the iPad may very well support adept if the txtr app is allowed on board. |
02-20-2010, 04:00 PM | #39 |
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02-20-2010, 04:03 PM | #40 |
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Apple's eBook store will be using Fairplay DRM and B&N use eReader DRM. But every other eBook store that sell ePub with DRM use the standard Adobe Adept. Even Overdrive uses it. So if any device wants to allow users to read library borrowed ePub, they HAVE to support Adept DRM. And so far, the iPad is the only device that will support ePub that's an unknown as to Adept DRM. But, the iPod Touch and iPhone both have the txtr app that supports Adept DRM.
So it seems to me that ePub with Adept DRM has clearly won the format wars. Mobipocket could have won had they allowed Sony to use it along side BBeB on the 505. |
02-20-2010, 04:16 PM | #41 |
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Mobi, did seem to have the lead, particularly when Amazon acquired it and morphed it into azm. Even a few months ago my local library had mostly mobi books but now mostly epub.
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02-20-2010, 04:21 PM | #42 | |
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Whether text is presented to you in print or electronic form is meaningless: your eye and brain function the same way regardless. So the ideal electronic format for a book is one that ... looks like a book, astonishingly enough. The screen should be large enough and the pixels dense and small enough such that, at least at one font point size, the electronic form of the book is crafted as closely as possible to the conventions of professional typography. If the user needs to depart from that font size and reflow the document, the algorithm controlling the reflow should at least attempt to maintain those standards as much as feasible. Right now epub doesn't even come close to doing that. Hopefully at some point in the coming years it will. |
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02-20-2010, 04:34 PM | #43 | |
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All ebook formats need "special software" to read them; a few types are readable by software that comes with most operating systems, but that doesn't mean it's not separate from the OS itself. EPub is no less accessible than mobi or PDF or RTF. (More accessible than mobi; there's no mobi plugin for Firefox.) Epub, being HTML in a wrapper, is set to become the worldwide dominant ebook format because the nonDRM'd form is easy to edit with software that almost everyone has, and it's (relatively) easy to create new software to read or edit it. PDF could be a strong contender--but only if ebook publishers start formatting PDFs for different sized screens and make sure to advertise them that way. As long as they're insisting on the PDF looking like the print version, it'll only view properly on large screens (with a lot of extra wasted space), and most people won't be able make the jump to treating it like a real book: something that lets a reader enjoy absorbing the content and ignoring the container. TXT is a lousy ebook format; it doesn't have enough formatting options to allow that to happen. HTML has the formatting options, but without a wrapper like epub, can't contain pictures or custom fonts or some aspects of CSS unless a whole set of files are transferred at once. Raw, single-file HTML suffers from lack of control: you can't know what the reader's default settings are so you can't format the book to look right on their screen. (Full-width text on a full-size monitor is hard to read. A narrower reading area is good for full screen; problem for smaller readers. EPub reading programs get around that problem in ways that standard HTML readers just don't.) Word-processing files, whether DOC or RTF or WPD, need special software to open, and while there's plenty of free, open-source software, it's all *editing* as well as viewing software; the cat walks on your keyboard and half your book vanishes. EPub looks like its winning the format wars; the DRM wars are likely to smash around for a while until customers get annoyed enough for mass bootlegging, like they did with music DRM, and publishers have to remove it. (I expect this to take longer than it did with music; people don't read as much as they listen to music. And book publishers, unlike music publishers, have never thought of two weeks as long enough to overturn a top title's popularity; they're used to having more time to think about market trends.) |
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02-20-2010, 04:55 PM | #44 |
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The way Adobe could really get a lock on the whole market would be to rewrite the PDF standard so one file could include multiple versions of the same document. Then a single PDF file could have the document crafted with three different point sizes, and magnifying the book would just leap you to the same place in the document at a larger font size. Of course, publishers would have to also craft different PDFs for the various screen sizes, but really, that's not that much work. Anyone with a good working knowledge of InDesign or TeX could do all that in a day or two and make everything look quite nice. Not that this idea is going to happen, of course, but it would be a good way of controlling typography while still leaving the user with choices in text size.
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02-20-2010, 05:07 PM | #45 | |
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They've yet to really acknowledge that their books are being read on computers, much less that screen sizes are different from print book sizes. |
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