Rules in PDF or ePub?

[Ragnar]

Perhaps an odd question.  I am about to get an Android tablet and I would like to have my rules electronically.  The way I see it, if I have rules in an electronic format, the advantages are;

1.  All rules will be easily transportable.
2.  Keyword search
3.  Printability, I can print any section if I want a hard copy.

Now to the question: am I better off buying the rules in PDF or ePub?  Will I have the same page flipping function in both?  What about printability?

[AndrewBeasley]

Publishers can set PDFs not to allow printing - never come across a set of rules like this though...

As for ePub - can these be printed as the readers I've tried do not give a print option.

For me now it's PDFs all the way as I can read on multiple devices and print if needed.

[Elbows]

I would lean toward PDFs solely because you know they'll run on essentially everything.  My only beef when I had an older tablet (new, but...a few years back) was that even with minimal screen brightness my battery would die way too fast trying to read PDFs for any length of time (unable to keep it "open" etc.).

May have just been my tablet though.  I do wish we had better Kindle-like tablets with larger screens (since their battery life is absurd due to the way they operate) which could read PDFs normally.  eReaders of any useful size seem to be insanely expensive, etc.

[Cherno]

I have to say, I'd be very disappointed if a ruleset I like and which I plan to buy a softcopy of doesn't provide me with BOTH PDF and epub formats.

[Connectamabob]

For an end user I'm not sure it matters whether it's Epub or PDF, as long as it's optimized for fast loading. Are there even any mobile devices that can't display Epubs?

The only electronic rulebook I have (Strange Aeons 2d Ed. PDF) is pretty bad in this regard. Very pretty, but something about the way it's constructed makes it load very slowly, to the point where it'd be pretty much useless for in-game reference.

By contrast I have a graphic-heavy painting app manual in Epub, and a high-res scan of the entire Voynich Manuscript in PDF, both of which load perfectly fine and fast. So it's not the file format, and it's not the image weight, but rather something about the "under the hood" layout.

[Ragnar]

Thanks all for the input.

I have to say, I'd be very disappointed if a ruleset I like and which I plan to buy a softcopy of doesn't provide me with BOTH PDF and epub formats.

Taking Dragon Rampant for instance.  You can buy it in PDF, ePub or hard copy. Not all three.

[Daniel36]

There are online programs that allow you to convert epubs to pdf easily. Probably other way around too. So...

[Cherno]

I'm no export in thoser programs and procecces, but the auto-generated epubs I have seen were sub-par, with weird page breaks and the occasional mis-interpreted character.

[Westfalia Chris]

Personally, I prefer the fixed-layout PDF variant - the dynamics of the epub format make it more tricky (or rather, you have to use other methods) to find specific content on the quick, and in some cases, I've found I have to change formatting for different files since my (old, admittedly) tablet doesn't seem to support individual settings per file.

[Conquistador]

I always buy Two Hour War Games in both PDF and Print versions.  Based on past practice I would always opt for PDF if not buying hard copy (my preference) for rules.

[Ragnar]

Thanks chaps, for all the advice.  I will go the PDF path I believe.