”Virtual Airplane” is published in the three most popular e-book formats: PDF, MOBI (Amazon) and EPUB. This guide uses some of the specific modern e-book features, as the internal hypertext links, vector illustrations (SVG), and mapping of the physical page numbers. The lack of these elements would lower the quality of this book
However, not every e-book reader or application correctly displays even the most popular formats. In particular, in the case of the new, open formats, such as EPUB, there is a technical ”Wild West”. (As among the web browsers in the mid-90s, when every one displayed the same HTML code in a different way). To preserve the quality of this book, I decided to optimize at least one format for each of the most popular e-reader platforms. These are:
(I chose the only devices that have appropriate color displays).
The e-book readers that I suggest for these platforms:
Table 1 evaluates the reading experience of my book for every combination of the three formats and six platforms listed above. The results range from 10 (best) to 0 (not available). (Click these values to see evaluation details). Below their values I placed names of the suggested e-book readers:
The results presented in Table 1 apply only to the on-screen reading experience. I evaluated the usefulness of a particular device and format for the particular book (”Virtual Airplane”). This comparison should not be treated as a kind of overall evaluation, applicable to other books. For most of them, from such a test you can obtain quite different results (it depends on the number and the type of the illustrations). The presented values were calculated in the ”negative way”: Initially, I assigned to every platform/format the maximum 10 points. Then I subtracted from this number appropriate fraction of points for the every missing feature. In comments to each table cell you will find details of these calculations. The lower ratings for the PCs are based on the assumption that their screens have resolution of about 100dpi. (That's why they are higher for the Retina displays). The ”flow (scroll) mode” mentioned in these comments is the ability to disable pagination (at least inside sections of this book). This evaluation takes into account the lower quality of the PDF graphics. It is exclusively caused by the workflow, which I prepared for this publication. This has nothing to do with the capabilities of a particular reader.
If you would like to print this book - it is only possible in for the PDF format (available from Lulu or Google Play web stores), and only on the PC platforms. MOBI and EPUB formats do not allow any printing. However, in most of the major online stores you cannot buy books in the PDF format (Google Play is an exception). Therefore, I treat the MOBI and EPUB as the main formats, and focus on their quality. The PDF is a complementary format, thus there are no many "decorative" elements, as icons or rounded corners of the text boxes.
I did not tested some platforms, such as Barnes&Noble reader - Nook. Nook uses Android operating system and accepts the EPUB format. However, testing other Android tablets, I verified dozens of EPUB readers (including the popular Adobe Digital Editions). I can only conclude that none of them supports the features of the EPUB 3.0/SVG formats that are needed for this book. The most common problem on Android readers are additional margins, which appear at the top and bottom of each illustration. The EPUB file of this book is prepared for the iPad (and its default iBooks reader), so most likely the Nook will not display it correctly. In fact, for the Android systems best option is PDF format. You can read it in Adobe Reader application, setting the page flow to "continuous". The second in the rank are the Amazon MOBI files, which you can read in the Kindle for Android app.
I also advise against reading this publication on the readers with monochrome screens (the ones that use the e-ink technology). Although the whole family of Amazon Kindle readers (Classic, Touch, Paperwhite) properly displays the contents of this book, the text boxes from its illustrations are hardly readable on their 6" screens. What's more, the color images rendered in the available 16 shades of gray look like photocopies of the original book.
