Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Use azw3, it's closer to open and industry standard epub. The reader advantages of KFX are marginal. Main advantages are being able to start reading during slow WiFi/Mobile download and for Amazon, more adaptive encryption. Uploaders to Amazon don't create KFX, that uses docx or epub.
We stopped using Whispernet on bought books years ago (which was KFX) and instead used "Download and Transfer" which gives azw3 (except some old content is mobi/prc). Then later many of us switched from reading on Kindle to reading on Kobo (including ebooks bought on Amazon).
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Oh no, I'm sorry but I totally disagree... Not arguing to what is "closer to industry standard", I will just say that "close" is "close", from the ethical point of view. If I had any interest in that, I would just use epub and that's it... but it's fair, not arguing on what is best on that part.
It's just that, at the end of the day, these are all instruments to let me do what I like the most, that is: reading. And KFX advantages are not at all marginal to me.
For starters, KFX has ligatures, which azw3 doesn't have: kfx just look better on paperwhite, closer to a printed page.
Second, kfx formatting is just better: maybe you english readers don't notice it that much because you don't use it (but I might be very wrong on that), but absurdly enough, azw3 has no automatic hypenation!
It has to be like "hardcoded" into the file - which in turn might be hard when you do searches I think - or you must resort to do without hypenation.
This, in turn, makes the pages look ugly on the kindle, because either you resort to have (very) uneven/inconsistent spacing between a word and another, or maybe even worse, you accept having "left-alignment" on PW instead of justified text as you have in a printed page. And even in the first case, sometimes you have odd line ending.
So at the end of the day you end up with a very different (and inferior) reading experience with azw3.
Yes, I am aware of the hypenate_this! plugin, very neat work and I used it when kfx wasn't available, but even in that case: azw3 with hypenation take more space on disk (not important as I keep my books on epub format in my library), I have to manually run the plugin on each book unlike KFX conversion which can be set to automatically run upon copying to kindle, and some times the hypenation won't be correct.
So in the end, it's a workaround, good to be used when KFX conversion occasionally fails on those undocumented feature or for bugs, but still not on par with KFX. And it requires more work to obtain a typographically inferior output.
Lastly - even though I don't use it that often - KFX has some superior "accessory things" on Kindle, like the 9 by 9 page navigation and some little things like this if I'm not wrong.
Everyone can do as he pleases and I'm not criticizing
your choices if they work for you, of course, but they don't for me, as I am focused on the final output quality.
I like Linux, I work with it and I have a couple of old machines set with that, but if I have to settle with an inferior setup in order to use calibre over there, I pass thank you.
I'm not considering the last bit because if I had to buy a different device to make it work, then it would not be a solution...
Also, if I'm not wrong, even for KOBO, they display their proprietary format (KEPUB) better and with more feature than EPUB.