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EPUB, the current standard, is a zip containing UTF-8 HTML files. Zip, UTF-8 and HTML are all ~30 year old standards. They're not going anywhere. It's just tha

EPUB, the current standard, is a zip containing UTF-8 HTML files. Zip, UTF-8 and HTML are all ~30 year old standards. They're not going anywhere. It's just that we haven't had the chance to see how long they'll last. As for the processing and reprocessing... We can't really do anything with printed books at scale without lots of manual labor. E-books open up that possibility. That's supposed to be a bad thing? Printed books only keep if nobody opens them. Books that have been read often start crumbling. You have to reprint them, or keep a pristine, untouched copy, to ensure they last. This is nostalgia, not science.

marcus_holmes 4y ago
I have digital books from 12 years ago on my hard drive (I switched to digital 12 years ago and got rid of all my dead trees about 10 years ago). I don't see any reason why they won't still be available and readable in another 20 years, or 50 for that matter. I used to have about 500 physical books, which took up a dozen or more book boxes and were back-breaking to move (I move a lot - every year on average). Every time they got moved they got damaged, and in one place the only storage area for them was damp, so they started getting moldy. I have probably 2000 books stored on a couple of backup drives (duplicated). I can move them (and my e-reader) in my pocket. I did lose a few in the early days because I stupidly went with Kindle and Amazon's DRM crap. But I managed to convert most of them to EPUB and now I only buy DRM-free books.
- jjice 4y ago
  What ereader do you use that lets you read PDFs and EPUBs (presumably those formats) easily? I've heard Kindles aren't very accepting of that and would love to have a good alternative.
  - r3trohack3r 4y ago
    I use the ReMarkable 2 for reading. It supports PDFs and EPUBs and the experience is pretty great. I can download a PDF to my phone and push it to the tablet via their cloud sync service. From my understanding, under the hood, the EPUB is converted to a PDF before getting displayed.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
    You could try a Kobo e-reader, they do EPUB well and will open PDFs. I haven't tried PDFs lately because it's generally a poor experience trying to use a 6 or 8 inch screen to peer at a page designed for 13 inches ... Check out some talk here, for instance: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=350162 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=350162
    - marcus_holmes 4y ago
      yeah, I have a Kobo for EPUB and use my Remarkable for PDFs

marcus_holmes 4y ago

I have digital books from 12 years ago on my hard drive (I switched to digital 12 years ago and got rid of all my dead trees about 10 years ago). I don't see any reason why they won't still be available and readable in another 20 years, or 50 for that matter. I used to have about 500 physical books, which took up a dozen or more book boxes and were back-breaking to move (I move a lot - every year on average). Every time they got moved they got damaged, and in one place the only storage area for them was damp, so they started getting moldy. I have probably 2000 books stored on a couple of backup drives (duplicated). I can move them (and my e-reader) in my pocket. I did lose a few in the early days because I stupidly went with Kindle and Amazon's DRM crap. But I managed to convert most of them to EPUB and now I only buy DRM-free books.

jjice 4y ago
What ereader do you use that lets you read PDFs and EPUBs (presumably those formats) easily? I've heard Kindles aren't very accepting of that and would love to have a good alternative.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  I use the ReMarkable 2 for reading. It supports PDFs and EPUBs and the experience is pretty great. I can download a PDF to my phone and push it to the tablet via their cloud sync service. From my understanding, under the hood, the EPUB is converted to a PDF before getting displayed.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  You could try a Kobo e-reader, they do EPUB well and will open PDFs. I haven't tried PDFs lately because it's generally a poor experience trying to use a 6 or 8 inch screen to peer at a page designed for 13 inches ... Check out some talk here, for instance: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=350162 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=350162
  - marcus_holmes 4y ago
    yeah, I have a Kobo for EPUB and use my Remarkable for PDFs