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I'd say PDF is all about presentation, while ePub/Mobi is closer to real books that focus on content and legibility. EPubs are perfect for long-lengthy documents, where you can bookmark position to given line of text (not page, so I'd say it's more precise to get back in which paragraph you've finished reading), everything is searchable/copyable/highlightable, formatted into single-column, usually justified, wrapped using hyphenation, easy to change font size, colors (i.e. day/night mode) and there isn't strict paper (canvas) size. Basically, it increases accessibility and focus. While the PDF is just like a ZIP (I think those formats share the same popularity), that consist collection of numbered crisp, anti-aliased PNGs and SVGs, sometimes with an attached metadata. I often hear, there isn't any chance to PDF document look different on other device. However, PDF is just a subset of PostScript (hence the name) and has many versions (standardized as a public document, by ISO, by other parties or just paywalled)[1]. Fortunately, quite old PDF1.5 version has majority of features used by typical document creator, also fact that there aren't many competing implementations and they seem to be up-to-date with PDF2.0 convinced users and developers to use it. That's worth noting, PDF supports reflow [0], but it is far from perfect and I guess many bookworms will refrain from using it at all. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Portable_Docume... [1]: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/reading-pdfs-reflow-ac... |