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Old 03-14-2008, 12:04 PM   #1
mrdini
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Mac OS X and PPDs/PDFs

Hello all,

Apologies if I sound a bit peevish & terse - I just had my post wiped out (page reloaded unexpectedly - NFI why)

Since Mac OS X is capable of creating PDFs automatically very easily using the "print" dialog, I thought I would have a go at creating a PPD and seeing how well it turned out. It's a bit quirky and not quite perfect, so suggestion/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ive attached the PPD as hanlin.txt (as I can't upload files with a .ppd extension), as well as a sample of the only ebook I had handy - the first 30 pages of Brust's Serenity novel (HTML printed from Safari).

In my opinion, PDFs are greatly maligned - they do offer a very good reading experience, if formatted correctly for an 6" eink screen. A good example are the Alice PDFs uploaded by Jellby in the "Other books" forum, which looks quite decent. In case you're too lazy to look there, I've also enclosed a PDF of the LaTeX Intro guide to this post, which, I have to admit, looks much better in terms of text & formatting than the Serenity HTML-> PDF version.

I look forward to hearing your input, folks!
Attached Files
File Type: txt hanlin.txt (3.5 KB, 342 views)
File Type: pdf My Own Kind of Freedom.pdf (108.4 KB, 437 views)
File Type: pdf Intro.pdf (266.6 KB, 409 views)
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Old 03-24-2008, 06:33 AM   #2
JSWolf
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The margins used on the sample from My Own Kind of Freedom are way too large and there is no reason not to use full justification with hyphenation. What I saw was something that can be quite readable if reformatted to fix the issues I've mentioned.
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Old 03-27-2008, 03:00 PM   #3
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Personally, I like some margin and I prefer only left justification rather than full justification. So the only issue with a PDF file is that the reader doesn't get to chose which he/she prefers.

Since I have a Kindle, I had to send your PDF file to amazon to format it for me. I think it pulls the text out and makes it a mobipocket file. Which means, of course, that it's no longer a fixed format, but is now free flowable text and I can choose my own font size or justification. In other words, I can't really view your PDF as you created it! (Except on my mac, of course.)

As long as your PPD file creates text big enough to be seen on a 6" screen, it is probably fine. PDF's are still not *ideal* in that the user cannot have her own choice of how to display. But if it's the only format available (and if it is sized for a 6" screen) it is probably fine. IMHO
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