What you basically say right here is to not include formatting that includes... oh, pictures.
Having pictures isn't the problem. Having uneditable, unsearchable image-style tables and sidebars all over your pages and pictures preventing dynamic formatting is the problem. This is why I advocated pictures on seperate pages.
Hell, by this point you don't seem to be arguing for an e-book at all. You're arguing for a wiki. Because you seem to be saying 'don't include pictures with the text, everything should be neatly separated, have more and more and more pages'.
I'm arguing for my book about rules for playing a game to prioritize said rules, actually HAVING the content they intended, up to date and accurate, instead of being static and cut down due to printing restrictions.
Also for some bizarre reason, you're attached to PDFs. Really.
Using it as shorthand for digitally distributed e-book format. I would prefer a better format.
You know, I think I'd much rather have a static, non-errata'd hardback where the book looks good than have an e-book I must keep updating, that's basically walls of text broken up occasionally by a page that's a single picture. Because you seem to be arguing for something that's ugly and has a bit of convenience (errata is inserted into it rather than separate) instead. Since Ctrl+F is only much good if you know exactly what you're looking for, spell it right, and the first result or first few results happen to match what you're looking for. Otherwise you have no speed improvement over just looking in the index.
You make it sound like text is an eyesore on its own. There is an entire system devoted to making text clear and readable. It's called formatting.
I've never said it has to be ugly. I said I want it to do provide the FUNCTION a rulebook provides: giving me the rules to the game I'm trying to play. CTRL+F is good for searching for just about anything. Basic keyword searches take all of 5 seconds to do, and can be done equally fast on a book you are opening for the first time as a book you know by heart. If SPELLING is seriously an issue with searches, then learn to SPELL. That's not the designer's problem, that's a problem with the consumer failing to meet the bare minimum criteria to find information in the digital age. As for the speed of a search vs index, I still stand by my statement that I can much more efficiently use a computer to find any given section of the rules, ESPECIALLY across dozens of books, than I can with physical books.
There's no reason there couldn't be a stripped down, bare bones reference version alongside the "pretty" one. The current SRD fills this role, and there are game guides that you can buy. I can readily see the utility of this sort of thing. In the digital world, there's no space consideration.
The problem here is that the very existence of static formats causes a divide between those who have up to date rules and those who don't. See every MMO patch ever, also see below.
Sorry for the tangent, but really is the only motivation for the OP errata? B/c really there should never be that great a need for errata. I don't find myself referencing errata all that often, but maybe there's a lot more of it out there than I think there is.
You are unwittingly hitting the nail on the head here. There isn't errata that often in tabletop gaming, because errata is a dirty word for tabletop designers. It's blatantly admitting they published a physical product that they fucked up on, and have to give you a sheet of paper LISTING ALL THEIR FUCKUPS and expect you to follow them. That's not mature behavior. Video games have patches, not errata. Patches are continual improvement of the existing product, something that everyone MUST have or they can't play with the rest of the people playing, because they would be playing with an older, inherently less balanced ruleset.
Just imagine for a moment if a game company not only didn't use patches, but itemized and released a list of their failures in design. • Marines do 20 more damage than intended, please go to your config.ini and change the "MarineGaussRifleDamage" field from 50 to 30.
• Tooltips are incorrect for more units than we care to count. Use your best judgement about what the unit really does.
90% of the players proceed to ignore said errata, since it's too much of a bother to implement, and they prefer having better marines anyway, balance be damned.
10% of the players take the time to implement the errata, but don't agree on what the tooltips mean. This leads to countless threads and flamewars about RAW vs RAI.
None of this would happen if rulebooks were living documents that were updated regularly and supported by the companies that make them. If I buy a book promising me rules to play a game, I want it to contain ACCURATE RULES TO PLAY THE GAME, not a bunch of poorly formatted & compromised rules they tried to shove into their pagecount during the editor's crunch.
Remember the 4E tool that was supposed to contain all the rulebooks as long as you payed their subscription service? Make a program that has purchasable E-Books that are continually updated through the service.