ePub? PDF? Any advantage one has over the other?

[Meever]

I've been trying to do research to see if one has any other advantage over the other..... but I can't seem to find any. I plan on using the ibook app for viewing these files and I was wondering if one format has any advantage over the other?

Thanks for your help guys.

 

[tekchic]

iBooks currently cannot highlight or annotate PDF files. So if you think you might want to highlight a passage in iBooks, make sure it's in ePub format. If you have the need to highlight a PDF, you have to use iAnnotate. (Or at least that's what I use).

Most of my tech / programming books seem to be PDF when I download them. Those, I need to highlight and annotate, so I launch it in iAnnotate. If you are just wanting to read a normal novel, ePub is pretty much the standard for that.

I use Stanza for books I download and convert to ePub that are just good old novel reading. Then I have iAnnotate for technical books/journals that need study time with highlighting and annotating.

Here's a article on why ePub is a better format than PDF (one guy's opinion): http://beranger.org/post/381999462/epub-vs-pdf-mystery-solved-i-love-epub

 

[Paleomac]

When Pages added ePub exporting capability, I made ePub and pdf versions of a scientific paper with images that had been written in Pages, and compared them on my iPad using iBooks. Some of the Pages formatting had been lost in the ePub format, but more significantly the embedded photographs in the paper were awful in ePub format. They were very grainy even before zooming in.

The pdf was much better. The images looked fine in the pdf, and all the formatting was preserved.

I don't know if this is intrinsic to ePub, or if it's the way Pages exports the files, but the ePub files I produced were useless because of the poor figure quality. For what it's worth, I downloaded some papers from a scientific journal (not one that I had made), and the figures in that paper were just as bad as mine.

 

[tekchic]

The general rule goes like this:

ePub == NOVELS.

PDF == Tech books. Yes, this means code snippets, embedded photos, diagrams you don't want changed, etc.

 

[BBC B 32k]

I have just finished converting one of my 18 month old baby boys books to be used on the iPad. A project that keeps being put on the back burner.
I scanned each page in then used pages to create the book. Mostly pictures with around 4 lines of large text per page.
PDF came out nice and accurate as just one graphic for each page. Easy to do and a surprisingly small file size. Can not select or zoom text though. Only one page at a time in landscape view.
ePub took much longer with lots of formatting. Lots of cropping and masking graphics then typing the short text. Did not look as good on the iPad but you could select and zoom the text.
Personally with childrens books I reckon PDF as the way to go. Much quicker and hopefully an update will allow for two pages in landscape view. I am thinking of over typing the text so you can zoom and maybe highlight later with an update.
Sorry for the long reply.

 

[chameleon81]

The general rule goes like this:

ePub == NOVELS.

PDF == Tech books. Yes, this means code snippets, embedded photos, diagrams you don't want changed, etc.

I think this the general rule when people download books from torrent sites. There are plenty of epub , mobi tech books which work fine and have the additional benefit of epub, mobi files.

Resize font, bookmark , annotate

 

[tekchic]

I don't use torrent sites for my books (novels), but the ones I do get over the net in other formats, I generally use Stanza to convert to epub.

Sony Reader store uses ePub. My local library (Overdrive supported) uses ePub. I believe the books bought from BN for Nook also use ePub.

The big difference between ePub and PDF is reflow capability. An ePub reflows much nicer -- providing for different fonts, different sizes, etc. PDF's don't reflow so well, but they're better for tech books, flight manuals, programming books, etc because of the image/diagram support.

I'm still stuck w/PDF if I want to study, highlight, annotate, etc. But I use ePub for anything that's good-old "pleasure reading" -- like novels.

 

[vw195]

ePub should always be used as its a reflowable format. The only reason not to use epub is because there are no apps that support it 100% iBooks is pretty good, but its missing some items (like embeddable fonts I believe).

Id recommend an ebook database program called Calibre to convert to epub. It gives good results

 

[Mitchrapp]

Personally I like reading PDFs with Goodreader. It still seems faster than with iBooks when going from one page to another, and it starts out blurry / fuzzy and takes a moment to look right.

 

[tekchic]

Personally I like reading PDFs with Goodreader. It still seems faster than with iBooks when going from one page to another, and it starts out blurry / fuzzy and takes a moment to look right.

I agree -- I love the speed of GoodReader. If it's a PDF magazine or a book with lots of photos/formatting, I read it in GoodReader. If it's something I have to take notes and annotate, then I launch GoodReader (it acts as my filesystem) and tell it to open the textbook in iAnnotate.

In my experience, GoodReader has been the fastest PDF reader and I've thrown 150mb PDF's at it with no problem. iBooks does seem to have that blurry thing when you flip pages.