PDF is not an eBook format

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

What exactly are you blaming them for? The fact that vendors don't make use of the features that are provided?

What's the difference between a feature that doesn't exist and a feature that exists but no one knows it exists? Answer: Nothing.

You are correct that much of the blame does go on the authors of the PDFs for not making them tagged. But the facts remain:

1. Nearly every PDF-format eBook available out there is not tagged.
2. PDF is horribly bloated compared to competing formats, making it a less desirable format for resource-constrained devices. Which makes more sense to read on my Palm: the 250K or 2.5MB? That's a no brainer.
3. PDF offers absolutely no benefit over the competing formats.
4. PDF is a "dead end" format. Once a document is in PDF, it's extremely time consuming converting it to anything else.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

The PDF format has been around for a very long time.

So has punch cards and paper tape. That doesn't mean it's a useful format today.

[JSWolf]

Just to keep on the file size theme, I have an eBook from Tor in multiple formats....

  993,789  Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin.html
1,370,476  Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin.pdf
  736,560  Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin.prc

As we see here, PDF is the largest, HTML a close second, and Mobipocket third. I have not generated an LRF for this one yet so I cannot say how large that might be.

[cmbs]

Not that I much care, but pdf does offer one benefit that is apparently scarce - the ability to time limit a book, so that they can be borrowed from ebook libraries. I believe the only other format which does this is mobipocket. To me, that's a pretty big plus. At the same time, since I can't read them on my cybook, it's useless to me. That doesn't mean it's useless to everyone though.

Oh, and to Jon: Mobipocket creator gives an option for high compression, which creates even smaller file sizes. Of course this only matters when you're making your own books.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

What exactly are you blaming them for? The fact that vendors don't make use of the features that are provided? The fact that people who generate PDF files don't understand the importance of tagging the file to make it accessible on different devices? I don't follow that logic.

I compare it to SGML and XML. There was not and is not so many SGML applications available and the ones that exists are usually expensive. When XML became popular it became much more easier to write programs that did the same thing that programs handling SGML did plus XML developed further so now you can do a lot of things you could not do before and most XML handling libraries are free or open source.

Adobe has not incentive to the same thing with pdf. They are happy because they have the programs handling pdf that they can sell and they have a kind of monpoly. I do not believe that pdf is the best solution to the actual technical problem.

[ProfJulie]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

What's the difference between a feature that doesn't exist and a feature that exists but no one knows it exists? Answer: Nothing.

Answer: Ignorance or Laziness (you decide).

When I set out to create a PDF ebook 5 years ago that would be sold, I researched Adobe Acrobat, bought some books about Adobe Acrobat, purchased and scrutinized other PDF books. Without much research, I learned about Adobe's accessibility feature that allowed me to tag my book so it would be more compatible with small screens. It really didn't take much effort for me to discover that...I'd expect more from a company whose business is creating electronic books.

Originally Posted by rlauzon

You are correct that much of the blame does go on the authors of the PDFs for not making them tagged. But the facts remain:

1. Nearly every PDF-format eBook available out there is not tagged.
2. PDF is horribly bloated compared to competing formats, making it a less desirable format for resource-constrained devices. Which makes more sense to read on my Palm: the 250K or 2.5MB? That's a no brainer.
3. PDF offers absolutely no benefit over the competing formats.
4. PDF is a "dead end" format. Once a document is in PDF, it's extremely time consuming converting it to anything else.

As far as I can tell, most of these are not facts at all...they are simply your opinion of this file format. For me to consider them to be facts would require more research than what you've presented here.

How do you know that nearly every PDF book out there is untagged? Every PDF book I've purchased and every PDF book I've checked out of the library IS tagged. Now, my findings are hardly a statistically valid study, but I've had a very successful experience reading PDF books on my Pocket PC and I do not share you experience or your opinion on this point.

Now I have not used every piece of eBook Reader software that's out there, but I have used Microsoft Reader (probably the least functional reader software in my opinion), Mobipocket Reader and Adobe Reader. Some of the features that Adobe Reader offers include:

I can annotate passages of text in PDF books with my own notes
I can highlight text
I can search the files for specific words or phrases.

As far as I can tell Microsoft Reader is quite limited and you can't do any of these things with that reader. Mobipocket (believe it or not, my reader of choice) can do all those thing except search for words or phrases.

You state that PDF is a dead end format.....why? Because no one has been able to strip the DRM encryption out of the file so hackers can have their way with it? (well, I know someone was able to do this, but they got into trouble for it). That makes it a dead end format? While I truly hate the DRM in PDF books and find it overly onerous, I see nothing wrong with Adobe protecting their intellectual property.

Originally Posted by rlauzon

So has punch cards and paper tape. That doesn't mean it's a useful format today.

You honestly believe that the PDF format is obsolete? I read an article that was linked here last week that showed that PDF clearly leads every other format. I think PDF is here to stay and will be around for a very long time. My hope is that one day I'll be able to read the PDF books I've checked out of the library on an electronic reader like the Cybook.

With the introduction of Adobe's Digital Editions software, it appears that Adobe is committed to the PDF format. I am hopeful that Adobe will make this format easier to work with, although I don't anticipate much relief from the DRM encryption any time in the near future.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Just to keep on the file size theme, I have an eBook from Tor in multiple formats....

  993,789  Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin.html
1,370,476  Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin.pdf
  736,560  Wilson, Robert Charles - Spin.prc

As we see here, PDF is the largest, HTML a close second, and Mobipocket third. I have not generated an LRF for this one yet so I cannot say how large that might be.

How did you create the PDF? There are lots of creation methods that are very inefficient.

Dale

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

When I set out to create a PDF ebook 5 years ago that would be sold,

Ahhh... now we come to the real reason why you like PDF: to lock down your work and prevent readers from actually "buying" it electronically.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

As far as I can tell, most of these are not facts at all...they are simply your opinion of this file format. For me to consider them to be facts would require more research than what you've presented here.

Let's see. I just did a reproducible test which demonstrates that PDF produces extremely large files compared to alternatives.

Yes, my assertion about the number of tagged PDFs out there is my opinion: based on the number of PDFs that I have acquired. I have a directory full of PDFs. None of them are tagged. All of them have come from commercial sources.

Based upon the fact that I have been working with eBooks for the last 5 years using various formats, I can say from experience that PDF offers no benefit over the alternatives.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

I can annotate passages of text in PDF books with my own notes
I can highlight text
I can search the files for specific words or phrases.

Our discussion is about PDF. Not about Adobe Acrobat.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

You state that PDF is a dead end format.....why?

Because our experience is that once an eBook is in PDF, it's extremely time consuming to change it to something else.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

You honestly believe that the PDF format is obsolete?

Yup. It is an electronic version of a paper book. As an eBook format it fails in every way.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

I read an article that was linked here last week that showed that PDF clearly leads every other format.

And I actually created PDFs to be used on my eBook readers and compared how well they worked compared to other formats.

Experience trumps reading articles.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

I think PDF is here to stay and will be around for a very long time. My hope is that one day I'll be able to read the PDF books I've checked out of the library on an electronic reader like the Cybook.

That won't ever happen. You can go read the articles about DRM to figure that out.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

How did you create the PDF? There are lots of creation methods that are very inefficient.

Dale

I didn't.. Those are files as downloaded from Tor from their free eBook give-away.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Ahhh... now we come to the real reason why you like PDF: to lock down your work and prevent readers from actually "buying" it electronically.

I think you're "assuming facts not in evidence" there, my friend.

(As a side note, I know you probably don't mean it that way, but that comment reads a bit like an accusation, and I figure you probably don't want to come across that way, so I thought I'd point it out to you. )

ProfJulie didn't say anything about her book having DRM on it. In fact her only DRM related comment in that post (that I see) were these two:

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

You state that PDF is a dead end format.....why? Because no one has been able to strip the DRM encryption out of the file so hackers can have their way with it? (well, I know someone was able to do this, but they got into trouble for it). That makes it a dead end format? While I truly hate the DRM in PDF books and find it overly onerous, I see nothing wrong with Adobe protecting their intellectual property.

(emphasis added)

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

I am hopeful that Adobe will make this format easier to work with, although I don't anticipate much relief from the DRM encryption any time in the near future.

If anything, those comments would tend to suggest that ProfJulie wouldn't have put DRM on her own book.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I think you're "assuming facts not in evidence" there, my friend.

(As a side note, I know you probably don't mean it that way, but that comment reads a bit like an accusation, and I figure you probably don't want to come across that way, so I thought I'd point it out to you. )

It was semi-facetious. ProfJulie's comment made it clear that she is an author and that her like of PDF is based on an author's point of view. This bias wasn't apparent in her previous messages.

[NatCh]

That is a point. But I don't see that it really had any bearing on DRM in that specific case. She was pointing out that she found the features of PDF to be good for what she wanted to do, which was accommodating several screen sizes, not locking it down.

Then too, it may have been at a point in time where there were no stand-out e-book formats, but instead just an undifferentiated mass of "new" ones. From that perspective, I'd probably have given PDF a solid look too. I'd guess that that was what drove so many publishers to it: the fact that PDF was the only format in the list they'd ever even heard of. Also, they probably already had the set up to make PDFs and would have figured they were ahead of the game. Path of least resistance and that.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Ahhh... now we come to the real reason why you like PDF: to lock down your work and prevent readers from actually "buying" it electronically.

Ahhh... now we come to the real reason why you're attacking PDFs... because people trying to make money like them! Those filthy heartless capitalists!...

Actually, when I first started selling my e-books, I also sold tagged PDFs, but without any encryption. I'd known about tagged PDFs for years before that (which makes it about 5 years ago), and as I am able to easily read tagged PDFs on my PPC, as I have for most of the past 5 years, I saw no reason not to include PDFs in my list of available formats. (I would still make them available, in fact I still make them for every e-book, but there has always been a noticeable lack of interest in the format among e-book customers, compared to other formats, and I try to limit my available formats to the most popular.)

The fact that tagged PDFs can also be read, at any size, on larger and smaller devices, is one of its best traits. Not everyone reads on the same device, you know. (One of the reasons I'm always surprised the format doesn't do better.) And the fact that it is hard to convert to something else (or de-DRM) is not a fault of the format... that's just a personal preference that doesn't happen to be supported by Adobe. I hardly consider that a reason to snub the format.

So I'm firmly on the side of PDF. Maybe it's not the smallest file... and maybe too many people give it a bad rap by not tagging their documents, and making 3rd party software that doesn't support one of the best features in PDFs... but it's still a viable, healthy format perfectly suitable for e-books, maybe even better than some other formats out there now.

[ProfJulie]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Ahhh... now we come to the real reason why you like PDF: to lock down your work and prevent readers from actually "buying" it electronically.

What an assumption you make! I have no personal agenda here. These were not books I authored....it was for a job I had at the time. Locking down the format was not the emphasis and in fact I was not even looking at the DRM capabilities of Adobe. Most of my focus was on making the books accessible to smaller screens. Since PDF is so pervasive, that was one of the formats we used.

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Let's see. I just did a reproducible test which demonstrates that PDF produces extremely large files compared to alternatives.

Yes, my assertion about the number of tagged PDFs out there is my opinion: based on the number of PDFs that I have acquired. I have a directory full of PDFs. None of them are tagged. All of them have come from commercial sources.

Based upon the fact that I have been working with eBooks for the last 5 years using various formats, I can say from experience that PDF offers no benefit over the alternatives.

To state something as fact, as you have attempted to do here, needs more testing, and more information about the variables tested.

I think we must agree to disagree. You seem to have quite a bias against the PDF format. I have listed out some of the additional functionality one gets with PDF books, but you have not even acknowledged that. Your tests, honestly, seem to be slanted toward the negatives here. I, personally, do not care for the PDF format and have not purchased many books in this format. In fact I avoid purchasing books in PDF format as much as possible. But it is not because the format can not be used as a legitimate eBook. My aversion to PDF is a reaction to its onerous DRM encryption and a lack of support by Adobe to address DRM problems.

But the fact remains that PDF is a everywhere and many times, it is the only electronic format that one can get books in.

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Our discussion is about PDF. Not about Adobe Acrobat.

Our discussion may be about PDF but how can one talk about PDF files without talking about software? Adobe set the standard for the PDF format and Adobe really holds the cards to the additional features that PDF offers. I have not used many alternative PDF viewers, but the ones that I have used are no where near as rich in functionality as Adobe Acrobat. If you want to use the full functionality that PDF offers, you are going to wind up with Adobe Acrobat.

Just because other software vendors and companies that have produced electronic reading devices do not capitalize on this functionality does not mean it does not exist or that the file format is inferior.

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Because our experience is that once an eBook is in PDF, it's extremely time consuming to change it to something else.

Oh, now you are talking about hacking the files! Something the average reader probably isn't even concerned with doing. Again, I state, "if Adobe wants to lock down the file to protect their intellectual property, that's certainly up to them."

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Yup. It is an electronic version of a paper book. As an eBook format it fails in every way.

Failed in what ways? Have you even read a tagged PDF file on a handheld? How can you make such a global statement as this?

Originally Posted by rlauzon

And I actually created PDFs to be used on my eBook readers and compared how well they worked compared to other formats.

I have formatted PDF files to make them work on the limited PDF reader that is on on my Cybook. That is not the same thing as creating a tagged PDF file that will work on this reader. The Cybook reader is deficient in regards to reading PDF files, not the file.

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Experience trumps reading articles.

That won't ever happen. You can go read the articles about DRM to figure that out.

I have no idea what you are referring to here, but I think you are attempting to condescend to me, and so I terminate the conversation here.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by NatCh

That is a point. But I don't see that it really had any bearing on DRM in that specific case. She was pointing out that she found the features of PDF to be good for what she wanted to do, which was accommodating several screen sizes, not locking it down.

To me, "selling" an eBook in a non-transformable format is almost as bad a putting DRM on it. Almost all the same restrictions are there.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

So I'm firmly on the side of PDF. Maybe it's not the smallest file... and maybe too many people give it a bad rap by not tagging their documents, and making 3rd party software that doesn't support one of the best features in PDFs... but it's still a viable, healthy format perfectly suitable for e-books, maybe even better than some other formats out there now.

No, not the smallest - the largest - especially for tagged PDFs.

But I just tried out the tagged PDF I created and, voila!, it does resize and reflow nicely in xpdf. Wow! It works exactly the same as the Mobipocket version - at 6 times the size.