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koavf OP t1_iwjgec0 wrote

Reply to comment by HanaBothWays in Digital Books wear out faster than Physical Books - Internet Archive Blogs by koavf

Plain text is the ultimate format. All books need to be in plain text.

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13xlily t1_iwjl40h wrote

I 100% agree, it's just that I read too much that I'd be hundreds of bucks a month, so digital is just the cheapest and most convenient version for me. Also, there are some books I read that its a lot easier to just read it digitally (you know... thooooose books)

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Violet2393 t1_iwkcmtn wrote

For me, paper is for books I want to read again (and again) and digital is for books I am not sure, or are fluffy books that I will likely only read once. If a digital book is a surprise favorite, I'll buy a physical copy.

Not every book I read needs to be a forever book.

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GingerIsTheBestSpice t1_iwjlct7 wrote

And libraries! Being able to check out the next one in a series immediately is a pleasure I'll never get over!

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yawaworhtg t1_iwk0kfn wrote

Used books stores can be pretty cheap.

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MickeyM191 t1_iwk39l3 wrote

Or eBay, thrift stores, etc.

USPS has media mail rates meaning I can frequently find very specific books for like $5 total online if they are older.

Also for finding something random I love just taking the time to go through that hige wall of books at a thrift store to dig out something that looks interesting. $1 or $2 per book usually.

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AtraMikaDelia t1_iwjjy87 wrote

Why would you want plain text? .pdf can be converted to pretty much every format you would like and is incredibly easy to read. A plain text format is inferior to a .pdf in literally every way. The various versions of .epub documents can also be converted to/from pdf with ease.

I mean, if you really like to do your reading in notepad++ then more power to you, but there's a reason that the popular formats get used.

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Disastrous-Bite4258 t1_iwjof6o wrote

Plain text is the most superior format, because it's plain text. No need to convert it to different formats, no special readers required, nothing.

With the magic of modern technology, you can of course have the same text in multiple formats! Wow!

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AtraMikaDelia t1_iwjrjnc wrote

>Plain text is the most superior format, because it's plain text. No need to convert it to different formats, no special readers required, nothing.

What does that even mean? You still need some form of word processor to read it, unless you can read binary. And I wouldn't really say that a basic pdf reader is any more of a specialized tool than a basic text editor is.

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NumberlessUsername2 t1_iwjtty2 wrote

I would say there are no situations where a program can't read plain text, but there are some, albeit few, situations where PDF can't be read. I have definitely opened PDFs that didn't work, or been on a device that didn't have an installed PDF reader (although that latter part was years ago). It's rare, but it happens. Just saying, plain text has always worked because it's basically universal.

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AtraMikaDelia t1_iwjvxql wrote

There can be issues with pdfs saving improperly and being corrupted, but the same thing can happen to a text file, or to literally any other file type.

Additionally, every modern web browser is capable of opening a pdf natively, so you don't even need a dedicated pdf reader. And if you have a computer without a web browser, then I'm curious how you're getting the books on it in the first place.

Lastly, even if you absolutely cannot open a PDF because a bandit has appeared behind you and threatened to shoot you if you open a pdf, there are still free ways to convert a pdf file to a .txt, so you could simply convert it into a text file and then read that if you absolutely needed to.

The only reason you'd run into problems with not being able to read a pdf is if you were technologically illiterate, but it would be much simpler for you to simply learn how to open a pdf than it would be for you to try to read an entire book in .txt format.

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NumberlessUsername2 t1_iwl4ngh wrote

The fact that the backup if it doesn't work is to convert to text kinda proves the point.

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rfdavid t1_iwjyi6y wrote

In 10 years .txt files will be readable by literally anything with a power cord. Toasters, thermostats, etc.

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AtraMikaDelia t1_iwjyohz wrote

And in 15 those things will probably be capable of reading a PDF. What's your point?

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nemothorx t1_iwkj9gw wrote

You clearly have no concept of embedded operating systems in general. Most can read txt trivially (often in the form of config files and the like) but have no need to understand pdf.

Fact is, PDF is orders of magnitude more complex than txt and needs similarly more complex specialised tools to understand it. That complexity is the problem that makes it inferior.

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Disastrous-Bite4258 t1_iwjvv0r wrote

I mean you can read plain text files with a command line interface if you really want to, on pretty much every computer ever made.

You can put that file on an IBM PC from 1981, write "type filename.txt | more". You can use the cat command on a 50 year old Unix system to read the file. If you somehow put the file on a Commodore 64, you can read it too.

It's a format that is extremely unlikely to become unreadable in the foreseeable future, regardless of where technology progresses.

Of course, for everyday use PDF and EPUB are much better. But for compatibility and archival? Can't beat plain text.

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Gyr-falcon t1_iwo0d2j wrote

Curious. You are advocating for text but use BOLD for emphases. Do you remember that plain text has no bold? Nor italics, or chapter headings, plain text doesn't have much in the way of formatting.

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AtraMikaDelia t1_iwjwhs8 wrote

Yes, with how technology works you will be able to open older formats on both new and old computers, while old computers without updates will only work with old formats.

But if you rely on this trend to assume that all future computers will always be able to read a text file because computers have always been able to do that, then why wouldn't I be able to extrapolate from that trend and say that it is equally unlikely for future computers to ever lose the ability to read a pdf? Realistically they are always going to be able to read both.

And if you need to archive them, archiving something in a format that loses data seems questionable. If you save it as a .txt you lose italics, bold, etc. You lose chapter titles being in large font, you lose any pictures that may be in the book, you lose a lot. On the other hand, if you save it as a .pdf, all of that is retained. And if you ever need to convert it from a pdf to a txt for whatever reason, that is possible to do. I don't see why you would ever feel the need to do that, but if you want to there are numerous ways to convert a .pdf file into a .txt.

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Disastrous-Bite4258 t1_iwk0glb wrote

> it is equally unlikely for future computers to ever lose the ability to read a pdf

Well, we'll just have to wait and see. I wouldn't count on PDF files being easily readable in, say, 40 years (if humanity even exists at that point :D).

Anyway, this has been an interesting discussion, random person on the internet. I need to head out to a Covid test, wish me luck.

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despitegirls t1_iwjt8m8 wrote

Every OS easily natively reads plaintext. It's a pain to read a lot of it, but it can be done, and manually marked up for better readability and functionality. I'm sure in the future there'll be an AI-based tool that could look at a text document and suggest possible formatting, if there isn't already.

PDF is an open format but isn't supported natively by every OS (specifically smaller versions of Linux). There's also more CPU and RAM necessary to display fonts and formatting than a plain text file. Not something we really have to worry about these days but worth considering when resources are more precious.

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AtraMikaDelia t1_iwjvd0q wrote

>Every OS easily natively reads plaintext. It's a pain to read a lot of it, but it can be done, and manually marked up for better readability and functionality.

The Operating System is not what you're going to use to read a text file. The operating system will run an application that can read text files, but the operating system itself doesn't do that. And if there are any operating systems which are incapable of opening a pdf, then really that's on them for being poorly designed. Every Linux distro I've seen has been more than capable of launching programs that can read pdfs, and I'm struggling to think of how an OS that couldn't even launch a modern web browser would be useful for literally anything outside of incredibly specialized uses.

CPU/Ram aren't even a concern, you might experience slightly longer loading times when trying to pull up the document, but ultimately that's a non-issue that is more than offset by how much easier a pdf is to read.

Additionally, if you tried to use an AI to reformat your .txt file into something more legible, you would have to save it as something other than a .txt, because a .txt by itself cannot store anything but plaintext. And if you do that you're right back at square 1 with plaintext no longer being the ideal format. Also it would require a significant amount of processing power to run the AI.

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koavf OP t1_iwjz4ag wrote

> And if there are any operating systems which are incapable of opening a pdf, then really that's on them for being poorly designed.

The goal of an operating system is not to read PDFs. As several others have pointed out to you, you could have a plain text file (with the proper encoding) that could be read on a computer that is decades old and it will be readable on one that is made decades from now. You don't know that is true of PDF.

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despitegirls t1_iwk4410 wrote

You mention that the OS isn't reading a text file (correct), but not that Linux isn't an OS as I inferred. Missed opportunity for further pedantry there. /s

Realistically, if we were archiving documents we'd do so in multiple formats. PDF or some other format would likely be the most used but plain text would be there for compatibility, or for those who are accessing files on more limited clients.

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koavf OP t1_iwjyqf3 wrote

Because plain text will always survive any change in formats, media, input device, etc. It will always be the most indexable, searchable, accessible, and transportable format.

>A plain text format is inferior to a .pdf in literally every way.

Obviously untrue.

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nemothorx t1_iwk3ab1 wrote

Plain text is not inferior in literally every way. It's superior in not needing additional tools to understand. Not no tools, but a bare minimum which cannot be said for pdf.

True that formatting and images and other niceties are not in txt. But when the core question is "how to preserve the text" (not "how to preserve this specific prettified version of it"), then txt is superior.

Personally, I currently would advocate for markdown. All the advantages of .txt as it appears on disk, and some basic formatting understandable by parsers without requiring such formatting to be understood

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