As 2013 was near its end, several publishers of technical books had blowout 
sales on their ebook editions. I bought several that had PDF, EPUB and MOBI 
formats. PDF is the standard Acrobat format. EPUB is the standard that Apple 
and most other ebook mongers prefer. MOBI is the ebook format preferred by 
Amazon.

All three formats contain pretty much identical formatted text, but the sizes 
of the files are annoyingly different. For example, here are two of the books I 
bought:


The LaTeX Companion
PDF 18.6 MB
EPUB 128 MB
MOBI 242 MB

Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing
PDF 20.4 MB
EPUB 119 MB
MOBI 254 MB


There is little visible difference between the EPUB and MOBI formats on an 
iPad. PDF looks a lot better, but doesn't flow to the screen size, as do the 
other formats, so I find myself panning and zooming to read small text like 
complicated exponents, subscripts and footnotes.

I've been thinking of getting a Kindle as a second ebook reader for the home. 
Which Kindles allow you to easily read unconverted PDF and EPUB formats? With 
PDF, how easy is the pan and zoom?


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