From my inbox…
As of November 1, 2011 Secure MS Reader (LIT) formats will no longer be available for purchase on the All Romance/OmniLit websites.
I personally liked Microsoft Lit because it was so easy to kill the DRM and the format was not as awkward as ePub plus I hate on Adobe who created the junky ePub standard like some people hate on Apple and for far far more provable reasons. But time marches on…
Tags: eBook Commentary
BevQB wrote,
I said my final farewell when neither Win7 nor WP7 were released with support for it.
I remember years ago, when I first started buying ebooks and had to decide which format to go with, I chose LIT because, “Hey It’s Microsoft! They’ll always be around to support it.”
So, yeah, one of these days I’ll get around to stripping the DRM off a thousand plus LIT ebooks. Then I get to decide which format to convert them to– epub because it’s the current “universal” format? Mobi because Kindle will probably become, in effect, the next “universal” format (but will it always be Mobi compatible)? Or just convert them all to TXT for archiving and then convert them again to whatever the current “universal” format is if I want to read one?
Fuck you, Steve Ballmer. Thanks for supporting your products and thanks for embracing innovation with products like the Courier. Not.
He must have dirt on every board member because that’s the only explanation for why they’re letting him get away with helming the company towards the Straights of Irrelevance then onward to the Sea of Obsolescence.
Link | October 12th, 2011 at 8:34 am
Emilie wrote,
Oh, Pig of Wisdom (and friends), perhaps sometime you can explain more about the different formats to me. I know that epubs go with most e-readers, PDFs are best seen on a computer (or tablet, I suppose), and .MOBI is the one for Kindle. I know that BBeB books and .LRF will work with a Sony. Otherwise I am still trying to figure it out.
Link | October 12th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Ken Harrison wrote,
I would love to hear the particulars as to why you don’t like .epub.
Link | October 13th, 2011 at 7:42 pm
TeddyPig wrote,
ePub is for really small screens so the formatting is the last thing it worries about. If you wanted formatting you went with the original open format which was PDF which is still natively supported by almost every OS system being used. Most server manuals and server application manuals are even now found in PDF.
PDF was meant from the beginning to support diagrams and footnoting and book quality level of formatting found exactly the same way in any published book. ePub had no such standards it’s basically words in a pile.
Microsoft was the only one that used Lit but even Lit had better format handling because Microsoft used it for their manuals.
ePub was fine for back in the day when most people read eBooks using a Palm TX or something similar. There was simply no way to enjoy any type of formatting.
Now on my big screen iPad I want page numbers and formatting. My screen is larger than a paperback so in my opinion I should have page formatting that at least matches a paperback version of a book.
This is why I only buy eBooks in PDF when I can. I think most publishers want to go with ePub because they do not have to work so hard in formatting pages so they can fire the typesetter I guess.
ePub is an old solution to a problem that now only effects occasional readers still using cell phones or smart phones to read eBooks and I really do not know many people who read eBooks all the time who have not switched to at least a Kindle or a tablet by now.
Both those devices should at a bare minimum be able to support paperback quality formatting.
Link | October 13th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
BevQB wrote,
So, TP, what ereading software do you use to read your PDFs? I’ve always hated PDF ebooks because Adobe didn’t allow bookmarks, or annotations, or even keeping track of the page you left off on.
Link | October 14th, 2011 at 5:55 am
TeddyPig wrote,
iBooks
Now do not get me wrong.
I do not buy eBooks from Apple I just use iBooks to store, organize, and read, my ePublished PDFs.
See iTunes will organize and backup and now with the iCloud feature you can even store your ePublished PDFs up in the cloud. Which is great when I am using an iPad to read eBooks with.
To be honest Amazon has had some really good deals on eBooks so occasionally I buy Kindle format eBooks. But I definitely try hard not to because Apple may have it’s problems but Amazon is a real slimy pit of crazy.
Link | October 14th, 2011 at 11:58 am
TeddyPig wrote,
You never had to use Adobe to read PDF. Most OS systems have a native non-DRM PDF reader built into them.
Just so everyone knows iBooks supports both PDF/ePub so you can read either non-DRM formats on iBooks without buying the eBook from Apple.
Link | October 14th, 2011 at 12:14 pm