EBooks for Programmers Should Include a TXT

"I converted both my [pdf] book and my [pdf] copy of Objects on Rails to TXT files"

We need a terminal that can display graphics in place and still allow all the text tools to work exactly as they do today. I imagined reading a text-ized pdf, and having to bounce back and forth to the actual pdf to see the graphics, and that seems much more annoying to me than just reading the pdf.

Good point. I don't read many graphic-heavy ebooks so it didn't cross my mind. For technical books I've found it feels right at home

This is why I love authoring content in Markdown (or Pandoc). I can send the nice formatted versions out to customers, while retaining Terminal friendly documents for myself.

Great idea - although PDF supports search, having a real text version seems like it would be useful for authors to provide also. Thanks for the tip...

Emacs has a pdf viewer, a terminal, and a pretty good editor (holy wars aside)