Reply To: What can .epub do that .pdf can't?

PDF began as a proprietary standard, but in 2008 it became an ISO standard. According to Wikipedia, at that time “Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell and distribute PDF compliant implementations.” Every day I see PDFs whose Document Properties show they were produced by all kinds of software, not just Adobe's — utility bills, journal articles, you name it. Meanwhile, major e-book readers such as Kindle, Nook, and iPad are not exactly open systems.

As for “better,” that's still in the eye of the beholder, even for novels. I use an e-book reader every day, but when I want to curl up with a good book I usually go for paper — though occasionally I'll use an electronic version for searching. And chances are any book printed this century passed through PDF.

David