Throughout the world it has spread with the exit to the eReaders and digital books market better known as eBooks a authentic reading fever in people of all ages.
If you are a fan of reading on your electronic devices, surely you would like to know some details of how it works and that is why today we are going to tell you and explain in this interesting article, some of the most popular eBook formats.
The most popular eBook formats are without a doubt the following: mobi, epub, txt, pdf and html.
PDF- A PDF or Portable Document Format is a storage format of digital documents independent of software or hardware platforms. This format is of the composite type (vector image, bitmap and text) and has the disadvantage that not all devices support reading. For example, Amazon Kindle does not support this type of text format.
MOBI: this is the format of all the Kindle, the famous Amazon devices. It is a format that is not compatible with other devices on the market but that we can convert to a valid format using many free applications, some of which we have already reviewed in this corner.
EPUB: without a doubt we are facing the most used digital book format on the market and that has been improving a lot in characteristics over time. The main eReaders in this market support this format.
TXT: the txt format is, perhaps, the simplest and simplest format of all that exist, so it is advisable to convert it to other more complete formats. Given its simplicity from, for example, the Windows notepad, it is possible to quickly create a file with this type of format without any difficulty.
HTML: HyperText Markup Language or what is the same, the hypertext markup language and that refers to the predominant markup language for the elaboration of web pages and that is also used as an eBook format and is supported by many of the devices that are currently available. available in the market.
Now that we know the formats used for eBooks we already have one more point of wisdom and experience in the world of eReaders. In a few days we will continue with a new article similar to this to continue learning and knowing some of the more basic features or functions related to the world of digital books.
More information - PaperTab, a flexible e-ink tablet
The Kindle 4 opens PDF files without problems, although reading them is uncomfortable. I prefer to pass them to MOBI or AZW3 with the Caliber.
I was referring to that, that they are uncomfortable and sometimes they look very bad to read. Perhaps the expression should be changed.
A greeting!
The downside of PDFs is not that they are not supported, but rather that a PDF is laid out for a specific paper size that rarely matches that of the eBook screen. Therefore, you have to do rescaling and other stories that make reading very difficult. And that is not to mention that certain elements, such as margins, page numbers, headings and others, that do not make much sense in an electronic book, are immovable and must be swallowed.
On the contrary, other formats such as ePub or MOBI are independent of the device, and therefore allow to adapt the reading to the characteristics of each screen. Actually, what happens is that PDF is simply not a read format, it is more of a print format.
On the other hand, MOBI is not the native format of the Kindle, but one of those it supports. The native format is AZW.
It is always interesting to know how the format issue is going. But I wanted to add a couple of things
* 1.-FB2 format: less widespread than the others but still important. This format was very important in the past for two reasons
-be the native format of the first Papyre (more specifically the Jinke Hanlin clones of which the Papyre was a clone)
-be the most common on many free ebook websites, including "debatable legality" websites
* 2-Amazon AZW format: there are several AZW variants on Amazon, one of them is a MOBI variant and therefore it can be read (as long as it does not have DRM) by any MOBI-compatible software such as Coolreader or FBreader on Android or Linux. But other AZWs have nothing to do with AZW3 / KF8s that are not supported by other programs and must be converted via Caliber or another method.