[scribus] What about E-PUB format?

[John Jason Jordan]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:38:03 -0500
Gregory Pittman <gregp_ky at yahoo.com> dijo:

>On 12/30/2010 09:17 AM, Astrobob Group wrote:
>>
>>> Message: 8
>>> Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:12:02 -0800
>>> From: John Jason Jordan<johnxj at comcast.net>
>>> Subject: [scribus] What about E-PUB format?
>>> To: Scribus<scribus at lists.scribus.net>
>>> Message-ID:<20101229201202.32bda40a at mailhost.pdx.edu>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>>
>>> Assuming not, is there a workaround, like exporting to PDF or
>>> something else and then converting the output to E-PUB? Has anyone
>>> here published anything in E-PUB format?
>>>
>> Hello John,
>>
>> I don't own a reader or pad yet, but I use Calibre. Maybe you are not
>> yet aware that in Calibre you are capable of converting to another
>> format. just right click on the book/document you want to convert&
>> select convert>convert individually (or as bulk if u want several
>> book to be converted). Alternatively you can just highlight the
>> book&  press "c". Then you go on selecting your output format in the
>> upper right corner of the window.
>
>I have a Kindle, and it can handle PDFs, either through Amazon's 
>mechanism of putting things on your Kindle or by direct file transfer. 
>In many cases the complex layout of PDFs is not suited well to the 
>Kindle -- you either have to do a lot of scrolling or the size of the 
>page makes the print small and hard to read.
>
>If one just had text and no graphics, you might as well leave it in 
>plain text or RTF, in which case you can either use Amazon's ability
>to transform those into MOBI and then download to your Kindle or use
>Calibre.
>
>For these reasons, I don't see a value in Scribus itself needing to 
>export to EPUB. It's a very different concept. EPUB is about the text 
>content, not about the layout.

Thanks to all who responded. I have learned a lot. 

My need for e-book format is not imminent. I asked about it only
because I had been thinking about it ever since I got Cédric Gémy's
book and read it in Calibre's e-book viewer. Eventually I may need to do
an e-book, but perhaps not for a long time. 

After investigating a bit more I have come to the conclusion that the
only format that will do for my work is PDF. That is because I write
materials in linguistics and need to specify the font so the user
cannot change it. There are thousands of fonts out there, but fewer than
a dozen faces that have the glyphs that I need. I noticed that, at
least in e-pub format, the reader that came with Calibre allows the user
to change the font, which will just not do. 

Not only do I need to specify the font, but I also cannot allow text
reflow, lest it mess up formulas. I suppose I could create the formulas
as raster images to prevent reflowing them, but PDF solves the font
problem as well as issues with formulas.

I thought the E-PUB format would work, but apparently not.