which format will win?

[DawnFalcon]

PDF, ePub, RTF. What other formats are you looking for on a reader, precisely? Oh, there are other DRM'ed formats, but you can't combine them with ADE so... (Yes, I don't use DRM'ed ebooks, but I can understand that some people do)

[tompe]

Originally Posted by charleski

I think it's important to understand the distinction between source and delivery formats. While PDF is rubbish for anyone who needs to edit or modify the document, it's great for delivery since it's so easy to install a reader for it on virtually any platform. PDF's intractability to modification is a distinct advantage for a delivery vehicle - there's no chance of someone accidentally changing an equation and then passing the paper on to someone else.

But if you are going to put everything together in a proceeding you do not want to have them as PDF. You want to have the papers as LaTeX-file using the same style file. You can put together PDF but you have to do tricks to fix the page number and you will probably not get a consistent look.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I questioned it, and listed several ways in which it looked worse. You haven't responded to those points. On the other hand, you've given no reasons why it looks better. The example is also completely irrelevant, since the vast majority of ePub devices cannot handle both MathML and SVG. (Actually, all of them on portable devices are in this boat as far as I know.)



I have never advocated distributing or selling only PDFs. My point was that it currently makes sense to convert documents to PDF so you can use your own font and screen size but STILL have good typography, at least until such a time as the quality of ePub rendering improves.



Agreed. I've never said otherwise. But you could give them the source file form which you made the PDF, and they could make their own.



How much hassle do you think it is? Once you decide on your own favorite font size and screen size, it could be done with a single button click.

As noted, I'm using the same source to generate 6 different PDFs, so you don't have to create many many versions. I could use it for indefinitely many others. The claim is just false.

My Sony Reader PRS-595 can handle that ePub made with MathML and SVG just fine. Where did you get the idea that none of the portable devices can handle it?

The reason the ePub looks better is because it is ONE document that works on myriads of devices whereas PDF doesn't work and an unknown screen size if it's way off from the screen size.

Let's say you made that PDF to be printed on letter paper. It'll look not nice on a 6" screen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

IMO, it was downgraded to an EPUB. I paid for an LRX. If I wanted an EPub, I would have bought an EPub in the first place.

But maybe it wasn't available in ePub at the time so you may not have had that choice.

Anyway, here's what you do.... strip the DRM from the ePub and convert the ePub to LRF and then you have LRF. Problem solved.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

PDF, ePub, RTF. What other formats are you looking for on a reader, precisely? Oh, there are other DRM'ed formats, but you can't combine them with ADE so... (Yes, I don't use DRM'ed ebooks, but I can understand that some people do)

HTML. Because although it's convertable to ePub, it'd be nice to be able to take the basic code & read it without shoving it through the conversion. (Same logic as RTF... why would anyone *need* RTF, when free conversion to PDF is possible?)

TXT. Same reason. And it's possible to build a txt renderer that looks great; txt is simple enough that arranging typography for it should be easy. I have friend who swears by Eucalyptus on his iPhone, and wishes he could read non-Gutenberg ebooks on it, because the typography is much better than Stanza.

And I like PDB, and have dozens of ebooks I made for my Clie that I currently can't read portably.

While I don't care for mobi, a lot of people have a lot of books in it. There's no reason for a device to not support a dozen non-DRMd formats.

[nerys]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then you'll be missing out on a lot of eBooks as most do come with the added bonus of DRM.

ahh no he won't and once you own one lawful copy your moral compass is clear :-)

for me two formats are king.

large screen or complex ? PDF

small screen and simple? TXT/RTF

simple. I love the covers and stuff in the lrf and other formats but its JUST eye candy and not really important till color screens come out.

whats most important to me is control (MY control) and universal compatibility.

I can live without the second since I can "convert" to something more compatible. I can not live without the 1st.

Sure I can "crack" any encryption out their but I won't I refuse to "violate a law" (even if its a stupid immoral illegal law) to get what is rightfully mine to access.

so the only logical course of action is to NOT SUPPORT such programs with my money.

When I can not buy content on "my terms" and ONLY my terms I will cease buying content.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

CSS is not XHTML. Please don't conflate them...it's not even using XML markup, which is puzzling as heck given it's used to modify XML-based...

I havent conflated them, but how else do you style XHTML (currently)?

Well, as you can evidently see by browser non-compliance, the lack of usable WYSIWIG web-building tools and so on, surely your contention falls flat...

Which contention is that? I'm completely lost.

Oh sure, tell the people out there using Word and Excel they're doing it wrong. Please record it so I can laugh at their reactions to you, for that matter.

If I found out that a professional publisher were using MS Word to typeset a book or article that I had spent years writing (and I am a published author, with two books and dozens of articles in print), I would be very upset, and justifiably so. I would then proceed to explain to them why that is not the right tool for the job. Thankfully I have never had this happen.

Frankly it's you who would be laughed at if you went to Taylor and Francis and suggested they use Word!

My point was about published works made for wide distribution and consumption, not about causal writing. Word is fine for that. I don't see why we can't expect copy editors and typesetters at presses to know mark-up languages. (Perhaps this is why the past couple articles I've published have had so many errors.)

Excel is not a WYSIWYG editor of any sort, so it's completely irrelevant.

Websites should be that simple - there were some quite usable WYSIWYG editors which were developing nicely before CSS2 came along and basically made them more trouble than they were worth because of how badly CSS was designed. In a day and age when the web is this important to the lives of so many people, that websites are so hard for the layman to create is a massive, massive outrage!

By your own contention, websites should be simple. There's nothing about CSS that prevents providing people a simple quasi-WYSIWYG interface for entering content. If you want regular people to create their own websites, I don't see what the problem would be with just offering them their choice of a number of pre-set styles, much like, e.g., Blogspot or Blogger do. Or consider the options we're giving for posting here on MobileRead. How is that not adequate for this kind of online publishing? CSS is compatible with that...

I've been using the web since before Mosaic was released, and I think it's been looking better and better. I used quasi-WYSIWYG HTML editors in the early 90s and I've used them recently and didn't notice much difference.

I say "quasi-WYSIWYG" since there is no such thing for the web, or for ebooks for that matter (at least not without PDFs as output!) What you get is going to be different on different screens, so how could what you see match it? Surely, the movement towards ePublishing makes true WYSIWYG an obsolete concept.

Originally Posted by charleski

Interesting. I remember coming across many papers in LaTeX in the early-mid 90s (mostly in papers that were heavy with equations, raw postscript was probably a little more popular in general), but those died out as PDF became accepted as a delivery format.

I think the turning point was 2000, when Hàn Thế Thành released pdfTeX, which is now the default engine -- more or less superseding Knuth's original engine, with PDF creation in mind. (Though of course the typesetting algorithms are still based on Knuth's work.) But recently pdfTeX itself has been modified, mainly with the possibility of using (X)HTML as output in mind.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

My Sony Reader PRS-595 can handle that ePub made with MathML and SVG just fine. Where did you get the idea that none of the portable devices can handle it?

Do you mean 505? Really? Could you upload the ePub in question so I could test this on mine? While I gather they do handle SVG OK, support for MathML is news to me. (It's fantastic if it's true, but is it?)

In any case, ADE doesn't support MathML or SVG, and making an ePub that won' t work on it would be a bit like making a PDF that doesn't work in Adobe reader, or making HTML document that doesn't display in IE or Firefox.

And you somehow found a way to make a 505 produce justified text from ePub?

Especially if all you're after is an equation, SVG creation is much more work than TeX code would be. SVG is supposed to be for graphics, not equations. And my own experiments with SVG have lead me to believe that the same SVGs look completely different on different software, which kind of defeats the purpose.

One of the funniest things about your "better looking example", however, is that it uses the default LaTeX font, a font specifically created by Knuth (with the help of H. Zapf) for TeX. It's a nice mathematics font, but I think there are better fonts for the text part of a book, especially on an pixel-based medium. But I've already admitted that's subjective.

The reason the ePub looks better is because it is ONE document that works on myriads of devices whereas PDF doesn't work and an unknown screen size if it's way off from the screen size.

??? You're confusing how it looks with how many devices it works on? How does how many devices it works on affect how it looks on any given one? Are you reading it on multiple devices at once?

My contention all along has been that a PDF made for my device looks better than an ePub made for my device. This alone establishes that PDF is still a useful format. If you're arguing a different point, then we're just talking past each other.

Let's say you made that PDF to be printed on letter paper. It'll look not nice on a 6" screen.

Why would I make a PDF sized for letter paper if I was going to read it on a 6 inch screen?

Please actually read my posts. I have not been arguing in favor of PDF as something to be distributed. I have been arguing in favor distribuing source documents from which PDFs can be custom made to the specifications of the user, which may well include ePub. Indeed, I've only been arguing in favor of that as a stopgap until such time as ePub rendering improves.

If you're going to have a conversation with someone, it is important to try to understand the position of your conversants. I have made my position on this crystal clear in many posts throughout this thread. If you are going to continue to make irrelevant comments about irrelvant matters, I don't know how anyone is served by continuing this conversation.

It just seems to me as if some people have a kneejerk reaction against PDF just because of bad experiences they have had with trying to make PDFs not made for their devices work on their devices. But that's not relevant to anything I'm discussing.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

HTML. Because although it's convertable to ePub, it'd be nice to be able to take the basic code & read it without shoving it through the conversion.

For most people, though, it means another conversion step. Which is why I picked those three specifically...

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I havent conflated them, but how else do you style XHTML (currently)?

The fact remains, it's not even XML...

If I found out that a professional publisher were using MS Word

Okay, they're using InDesign then, if you want to use semantics...

I don't see why we can't expect copy editors and typesetters at presses to know mark-up languages.

Same reason it's not expected that anyone who needs to change their graphics drivers would be expected to program C++. There's a good reason people use GUI's for the vast vast majority of their work.

There's nothing about CSS that prevents providing people a simple quasi-WYSIWYG interface for entering content.

Quasi? No, WYSIWYG period. And there were such editors coming along very well before CSS, but they were more or less deliberately killed off in the CSS era because it was near-impossible to manage them.

Forcing people into a few set packages rather than letting them lay out a simple website in a WYSIWYG editor is silly.

It's the same old thing over and over - CSS has amounted to a protectionist manifesto for web designer's jobs, and I'm sick and tired of their defence of it. It's crap, let's replace it with something which can actually be implemented properly, uses XML markup and dosn't cause issues with designing WYSIWYG editors!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by frabjous

In any case, ADE doesn't support MathML or SVG, and making an ePub that won' t work on it would be a bit like making a PDF that doesn't work in Adobe reader, or making HTML document that doesn't display in IE or Firefox.

I don't know about MathML, but ADE does support SVG. I have an ePub that has a title page in SVG that works OK with ADE.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

PDF, ePub, RTF. What other formats are you looking for on a reader, precisely? Oh, there are other DRM'ed formats, but you can't combine them with ADE so...

That's not correct. It's Mobi who don't allow you to have other DRM formats on the device; Adobe have no problem with it. Thus you have the Sony Reader, which supports both ADE and BBeB DRM, and the nook, which supports both ADE and eReader DRM, for example.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Okay, they're using InDesign then, if you want to use semantics...

Semantics? Are you somehow suggesting that Word and InDesign are the same product with different names? Nothing could be further from the truth.

InDesign may provide a live preview, and allow a certain amount of editing through that interface, but it does more than that. It wouldn't be the standard if it were.

Same reason it's not expected that anyone who needs to change their graphics drivers would be expected to program C++. There's a good reason people use GUI's for the vast vast majority of their work.

GUIs can take many forms. That do not have to be WYSIWYG and nothing else. I use a GUI for LaTeX editing, which provides a split screen of the mark-up and a preview of the result.

I'm not even suggesting that for regular authors. I haven't been claiming much of anything about what authors should use, but rather about what publishers should use. I think most authors should use WYSIWYM editors.

Quasi? No, WYSIWYG period.

My goodness! Read what you respond to. I explained why the concept of true WYSIWYG makes no sense in this context. If I am mistaken somehow, you need to explain how.

And there were such editors coming along very well before CSS, but they were more or less deliberately killed off in the CSS era because it was near-impossible to manage them.

That's just what you said before, and provided no evidence for.

Please give one example of one way in which CSS interferes with the kind of "WYSIWYG" (notice the scare quotes) editor you have in mind.

Unfortunately, it doesn't, which is why most websites still ARE made with WYSIWYG, which results in a glut of messy mark-up, and greatly complicates a number of tasks.

Forcing people into a few set packages rather than letting them lay out a simple website in a WYSIWYG editor is silly.

There is no such thing as a true WYSIWYG editor for websites. (Even if there were something close, the differences in browsers would cause trouble.)

But separation of form from content is definitely not silly. It is perhaps THE most essential thing for the possibility of distributing the same content across a variety of different media. It is also very important for proper textual analysis, searchability, and lots of other tasks to which text is put.

Suppose I want to count how many times italics are used in a certain document. If the document is properly made with mark-up, this can be done in seconds. If it was made by WYSIWYG, then the clicking habits of the user will affect how the tags inside are distributed.

WYSIWYG editors encourage people to put in manual line breaks or page breaks that only work well for their display. It encourages people not to think in terms of rules or semantic categories (e.g., this is a chapter title, this is a subsection title, this is a display, this is a citation, this is a comment), but in terms of individual parts of individual documents, and thus to inconsistencies.

WYSIWYG-produced material is also inefficient in file size, and in a variety of other ways.

But certainly you could have quasi WYSIWYG editors -- and they could provide a lot more options than you seem to think. Consider, e.g., a product like LyX. While you're working on, italics looks like italics and bold looks like bold, and equations looks like they're supposed, and tables look like tables. But that's is not the final output--since LyX then takes the source generated in this way and optimizes the paragraph layout and adds fine typographical features like kerning and ligatures and hyphenation, which would be impractical in the editor display.

Tools like that could be standard for authors. Actual publishers could and should have a variety of tools.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I don't know about MathML, but ADE does support SVG. I have an ePub that has a title page in SVG that works OK with ADE.

That's what I wrote in the paragraph above the one you quote!

[JSWolf]

Well the screen shot from ADE I posted was made using MathML and one of the graphics is SVG. It's a chart that's not shown in the screen grab.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Well the screen shot from ADE I posted was made using MathML and one of the graphics is SVG. It's a chart that's not shown in the screen grab.

Again, can't you provide the ePub? I would like to examine it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frabjous

Again, can't you provide the ePub? I would like to examine it.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...590#post431590

There you go.