Any Chance of Epubs instead of LRFs? Wider market, looks better on sony reader

[LibrarypiRat]

I Love Epub. 
It's accurate, looks nice and doesn't need to be reconverted when moving to a different brand of reader.  I think it has slightly faster page turns and definitely seems smaller.

It is similar to LRF in that it's hard to do from Pdfs, often looks a bit rough when done from them, but is fantastic when made from HTML and decent when made from proper .Lit files.
It is an open format with a great lightweight reader for the PC(Adobe DE)

Epub is to digital what PDF is to print.
I made a little intro to epubs post on another tracker I could put up in the forum if people want.

LRF is locked to one type of reader, unpleasant on the PC PDF is fine on the PC and pretty unpleasant on most ebook readers.
Epub is at least convertible to almost any other format since it is basically HTML, it is also very easy to extract the html out of it.
And it is readable on several ebook readers now, and likely more in the future.  Instead of a locked dead format like LRF(Minidisk anyone?)
It is open and easy to use(like Mp3)


The LRF and PDF libraries are incredible, but epub is the best format right now IMO.
anybody have thoughts on this?

I've been working on making author packs out of the 10000s of dups and whatnot all into epub with a list according to fantastic fiction of what is there and what isn't.  Unfortunately it seems like a good 1/3 of the big multi format packs are usually crap and have severe issues, another 5% with oddball issues(random freezes in the reader, weird line spacings with a narrow colum of text and a poor choice for returns etc)
and the other half are ok with a bunch of OCR and whatnot mistakes.  So I end up with a sweet looking pack but when I actually read each book I find that every pack tends to have an unreadable book or 3.  This stinks when I put 3-4 hrs into each author tracking every book I can of theirs through any site I can think of, and then have a good portion that have errors only discoverable when actually reading each page.

I'm seriously in awe of the huge pdf/lrf libraries, it takes me so long to do each author, I can't imagine doing all of those!

[mazzeltjes]

the 15k collection has been checked for bad files
99.8% should be ok
Calibre
http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/
converts lrf to e-pub
so dig in and convert
make a torrent
 

[LibrarypiRat]

Caliber does not do LRF to epub.  It's a feature many have been asking for on mobile read but haven't received:)
I have created Epub packs with caliber, I typically take 3-4 hrs per Author, collecting and adding correct covers, and creating a txt of all the missing titles according to fantastic fiction.  However I find that with crappy source files(.pdf, or some of the really bad .lit files from way back)
I need to manually turn each and every page in my reader to make sure the damn thing won't randomly reboot the reader, something I'm not too keen on doing, I find reading every single book a bit tiresome, I need a bit of variety:)
  I was hoping with better source files(i.e your RTFs) I could do a better job.  I can do it from the .PDFs, but I figured on avoiding duplicating work already done(PDF->RTF).
  I also don't want to step on toes, so I thought I'd ask, rather then just starting in on your .PDFs, since you could easily change a single setting in caliber and go RTF-> EPUB instead of outputting a .LRF


EDIT: I just checked and it seems that the latest version of caliber(released a few hours ago I think) may actually do PDF->epub again, it was doing a piss poor job of it for ages.  I'll have a go at that perhaps.

For example I can take a pdf and an HTML of an identical book, and the output in .Epub will be about 50-100k different in size.

[darkmonk]

Caliber does not do LRF to epub.  It's a feature many have been asking for on mobile read but haven't received:)
I have created Epub packs with caliber, I typically take 3-4 hrs per Author, collecting and adding correct covers, and creating a txt of all the missing titles according to fantastic fiction.  However I find that with crappy source files(.pdf, or some of the really bad .lit files from way back)
I need to manually turn each and every page in my reader to make sure the damn thing won't randomly reboot the reader, something I'm not too keen on doing, I find reading every single book a bit tiresome, I need a bit of variety:)
  I was hoping with better source files(i.e your RTFs) I could do a better job.  I can do it from the .PDFs, but I figured on avoiding duplicating work already done(PDF->RTF).
  I also don't want to step on toes, so I thought I'd ask, rather then just starting in on your .PDFs, since you could easily change a single setting in caliber and go RTF-> EPUB instead of outputting a .LRF


EDIT: I just checked and it seems that the latest version of caliber(released a few hours ago I think) may actually do PDF->epub again, it was doing a piss poor job of it for ages.  I'll have a go at that perhaps.

For example I can take a pdf and an HTML of an identical book, and the output in .Epub will be about 50-100k different in size.

The epub files should always be smaller - they use compressed HTML. Calibre does do conversions of pdf to epub. You can also get the metadata with calibre. It's really easy. I plan on writing a small guide, and possibly uploading the entire collection as epub in the future. I might establish a wikiish thing for problems with books. But later - I'm waiting for a new power cable for my laptop. I have good motivation too - I want them to take less space!

But seriously - the authors must be paid. I have bookshelves of books - you should too. I respect the authors one helluva lot. I just wish they would get a different business model. For example, there are a lot of authors I'd pay money to talk with.

[bitfastertorrent]

H33t works like a library, I too respect the authors considering I am one. The business model Authors have has been practically unchanged for a hundred years, to change it we will need high speed scanners available to people like CD drives are built in computers.
 I have over 5000 books in my house, in both foreign languages and English. Ranging from paperback trash to political theory to architecture (yet I still don't know how to spell properly). I read but not for my life because a book can only teach you so much.
  I wouldn’t pay authors to talk to them; I pay them if I like their work. I don’t care how many bestsellers he has or what other books he’s written.  I steal whatever inspires me only in that way can my work and theft truly become authentic.

 

[LibrarypiRat]

The epub files should always be smaller - they use compressed HTML. Calibre does do conversions of pdf to epub. You can also get the metadata with calibre. It's really easy. I plan on writing a small guide, and possibly uploading the entire collection as epub in the future. I might establish a wikiish thing for problems with books. But later - I'm waiting for a new power cable for my laptop. I have good motivation too - I want them to take less space!

But seriously - the authors must be paid. I have bookshelves of books - you should too. I respect the authors one helluva lot. I just wish they would get a different business model. For example, there are a lot of authors I'd pay money to talk with.

I wouldn't pay for talking to an author, I've already got their wordsin books:).  I am happy to pay for ebooks, but living the way I do I can no longer truck around the 20+boxes of books I'd collected by the time I turned 15.  They're all gone.  If the publishers won't offer ebooks for sale, without drm at decent price well then they aren't getting much from me:)

My point with the different sizes is that there is a difference in the epub output depending on the source, that is to say EPUB A vs EPUB B, not EPUB vs other format.
The same book taken .PDF-> Epub A and .HTML->EPUB B will have different sizes, the EPUB from the PDF is generally bigger, which implies that the outputted files are different depending on the source.  Experience with the end files has proven this correct, I find more failures and random reboots of a reader with epubs created from PDF vs any other source.  I find less failures going PDF->RTF->Epub.

[Kosst Amojan]

Well here’s my take on the issue.  I’m an early adapter as I suspect many of you are.  I’m also poor, again as I suspect many of you are.  Where that basically leaves us is that many of us have a PRS-500 and nothing else.  I’m pretty happy with mine and I have no intention of upgrading until Sony comes out with a color e-ink screen which isn’t anytime soon.  And of course the 500 doesn’t support epub.

Now I’ve uploaded several books in the past on other sites and will continue to do so in the future (here though).  All have been in LRF and they will continue to be in that format cause I won’t format a book into a format I won’t use and can’t test on an e-reader.

There is a program called LRFTools that can convert LRF into whatever but you do lose a lot formatting.

[elcreative]

As the owner of the PRS 505, a while back I found a firmware update that means the Sony handles Epubs perfectly... check on the Sony site to see if there is a similar update for the 500. I mainly use lrfs because most of what I have is in that format but epubs work fine and I don't bother converting them to lrfs.

Personally I will take anything in any format that I can work with, use Calibre for most conversions and am just pleased when something I want gets upped... and I certainly would not want to set a standard for all uploads because this isn't a business, it's people upping something they've got for our benefit. If they're willing to seed then I'm happy to take the format that they use because it's one step less for the uploader.

[Kosst Amojan]

The reason I mentioned I had a 500 is because Sony doesn't update it anymore and it can't read epub's.

And I agree with you on the uploads, I don't upload that much but I've bought every single book I've uploaded.