You can give up to 4 answers, but please stick to formats that you absolutely need to have for the devices you own.
Rest assured we will not eliminate any format that has a vote. But 13 formats is a big workload when we run a conversion, so if there are any that are absolutely useless, we’d be happy to skip that one. It also would make the FULL download shorter!
I think Epub,, Pdf and Rtf or Txt are the core formats necessary. Normally a txt reader can read also rtf and vice versa; For prc/mobi, I had all my Baen webscription in this format, now I read them in pub ad this is satisfying, notably when you have a tablet as the iPad.
formats that don’t interest me : lit, I have a Macintosh ; rb isnt a dead format? tcr plmz I never see these; and I can’t remember for lrf (Sony?)
I hope these remarks are helping you.
The most informative (in the sense of maximum information content) formats are html and ePub, followed closely by .mobi/.prc (pretty much identical), because those, particularly html and ePub, have an internal structure that contains art, and text, neatly organized in ways other programs can parse easily. There’s a program called Sigil that lets you access the internal structure of ePub. RTF contains a lot of info, too, but it’s info of more interest to a word processing or printing program. And txt is quite stripped of a lot of information, including some potentially significant content, so it’s my least favorite format: I hate sending out anything bare-bones: but that’s just because I love decorating a product.
@Ready4more: You can carry Calibre and your E-book library around on a USB-stick, and read it through your work-laptop without putting anything on that.
I’ve copied my Calibre-program-folder (including the quick-start link to the unpacked program) and it’s associated folder of E-books from my home computer onto a 2G USB-drive, to take to work for reading during lunch break. The first time you start Calibre from the stick, you have to tell it where the books are. Then, if you make sure it gets the same drive letter next time when you stick the USB in, it’ll work fine without having to re-load the books. I just make sure I put that USB-drive in first, so it’ll always have drive letter E, and that does the trick.
After you shut down Calibre (remembering the bit that remains active in the right bottom corner) you take out the USB-stick and nothing not-work-related remains on the laptop.