[u-u] O'Reilly book deal, cheap

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>

| I know and can read .pdf files.
| But, how do you read .epub and .mobi files?

They are meant for ebooks.  They have the advantage over PDF of
allowing the presentation device to reflow the text to fit the
available screen realestate.  This is very very useful.

DRM is alway a monkey-wrench in these discussions.  Except this time:
O'Reilly doesn't use DRM.

mobi is (now) Amazon's format for Kindle.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobipocket>

epub is a format used by almost everyone other than Amazon:  a lot of
ebook devices and publishers.  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB>

To answer your question: I read epub books on Kobo devices (I have a
few) and on the Kobo Android app on my phone.

To expand on this:

- most O'Reilly books are available in most formats and you can
  download a copy in each format

- project Gutenberg seems to offer books in all these formats.
  I read some of these but have a hard time finding the most
  interesting ones.

- for reading on desktop and notebook computers, I use HTML or PDF

- there is software to display epub and mobi documents on KDE, Gnome,
  and Windows (at least).  I've never found that useful so I don't
  know much about them.

- for reading on a phone or Kobo device, I use epub

- the Kobo devices and phones can show PDF but the experience panning
  is very unpleasant.

- tablets that are like iPads (as opposed to ones with e-ink) are
  usually pretty good with PDF but have downsides: weight, battery
  life, expense.