EPUB vs PDF: E-Publishing File Formats
The more and more daily usage of smart devices has led to the replacement of printed copies of documents by digital files, making it easy to quickly access the documents on your smartphone or tablet, and giving you the freedom to carry content anywhere. PDF and EPub are the two most popular eBook file formats that are routinely used for reading digital content. Let’s have a look at what are these two file formats and their comparison in terms of commonality and differences.
PDF is the widely used reading format for digital document representation. Introduced by Adobe in 1993, the base PDF format was followed by a series of standardization including PDF/A, PDF/E, PDF/UA, PDF/VT, and PDF/X. PDF files have a fixed layout and they look similar to a printed copy of the document on screen.
EPub
EPubs are digital documents that are mostly used on handheld devices such as mobiles, tablets, and laptops as well. These are considered the primary choice of file format for the creation of ebooks. The format adjusts document layout according to the device screen, making it more convenient for reading.
PDF vs EPub
The Commons
- Multiplatform Support: Both PDF and EPub are supported over multiple platforms and can be opened for racing by a variety of Readers.
- Security: PDF files can be secured by applying a password while EPub files provide content security using digital rights management (DRM) to avoid the reproduction of content.
The Differences
Rich Media: Though widely in use, PDF doesn’t support rich interactive media such as video and audio. In contrast, EPub supports embedding video and audio links that make the content rich with these media types.
Editability: PDFs can be edited using publicly available applications as well as APIs. EPub files are generally read-only and can’t be edited.
Reading Experience: EPubs are reflowable as compared to PDF which makes them the obvious choice of readability on mobile devices and tablets. The auto-adjustment of contents to fit the screen and around the images makes it the choice of reading on smart devices. In contrast, a PDF file is a fixed-layout file format that constantly requires you to zoom, pinch and scroll for readability. However, if the relationship of text to image is essential (like in a children’s storybook), PDF dominates.
Developer Perspective: From the application developer’s perspective, EPub is more flexible than PDF. Based on standard XML and XHTML languages, EPub is easy to use with most types of software. In contrast, PDF is based on strict conforming rules and developers find it hard to write applications for writing PDF files.