<story><title>Portable Web Documents – An Alternative to PDF Based on HTML5 (2019)</title><url>https://getpolarized.io/2019/05/11/portable-web-documents.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lxgr</author><text>ePub can do most of these things I believe; there are just not many “PDF-like” viewers for it, given that most existing ePubs are books.&lt;p&gt;Features I need are being able to quickly open multiple documents side-by-side; a feature I actively don’t want is maintaining some sort of “library” for me.</text></item><item><author>wolverine876</author><text>EPUB is already XHTML and supporting files zipped (iirc the packaging) into one file. It&amp;#x27;s very widely supported. I wonder why they don&amp;#x27;t start with it or even mention it?&lt;p&gt;EPUB lacks annotation, which is not at all trivial; I don&amp;#x27;t know how well it handles precise layout and pagination, and long-term preservation (will I be able to read it in 20 or 50 or 100 years?). But, again, I wonder why they don&amp;#x27;t improve on EPUB or at least use it as a starting point, and not seem to reinvent the wheel? (Sometimes, there&amp;#x27;s a good reason.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iscream26</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s just the UX of most ebook reader application, it&amp;#x27;s not a limitation of the format itself. The conceptual model of the most popular epub readers are built upon the concept of a personal library, but that&amp;#x27;s just because, as you said: &amp;quot;most existing epubs are books&amp;quot;. There&amp;#x27;s nothing stopping anyone from creating an epub file that&amp;#x27;s not a transcription of a book.&lt;p&gt;Calibre&amp;#x27;s e-book viewer should cover your use-case just fine, and in KDE is quite easy to set that viewer as the default application for epub files.</text></comment>
<story><title>Portable Web Documents – An Alternative to PDF Based on HTML5 (2019)</title><url>https://getpolarized.io/2019/05/11/portable-web-documents.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lxgr</author><text>ePub can do most of these things I believe; there are just not many “PDF-like” viewers for it, given that most existing ePubs are books.&lt;p&gt;Features I need are being able to quickly open multiple documents side-by-side; a feature I actively don’t want is maintaining some sort of “library” for me.</text></item><item><author>wolverine876</author><text>EPUB is already XHTML and supporting files zipped (iirc the packaging) into one file. It&amp;#x27;s very widely supported. I wonder why they don&amp;#x27;t start with it or even mention it?&lt;p&gt;EPUB lacks annotation, which is not at all trivial; I don&amp;#x27;t know how well it handles precise layout and pagination, and long-term preservation (will I be able to read it in 20 or 50 or 100 years?). But, again, I wonder why they don&amp;#x27;t improve on EPUB or at least use it as a starting point, and not seem to reinvent the wheel? (Sometimes, there&amp;#x27;s a good reason.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrec</author><text>SumatraPDF opens ePub, supports multiple document tabs and doesn&amp;#x27;t maintain any kind of library.</text></comment>