natch said:
> But it mounts to the same sum, doesn't it?
> PDF's popularity for books has little to do with
> the format's being a good choice for e-books.
the _current_ popularity of .pdf put aside for a moment,
its effectiveness as a vehicle for e-books is two-pronged.
in a resizable-window world, .pdf _stinks_, unredeemably.
while it's only fair to note it wasn't made for that purpose,
it's also important to recognize that's the world we live in.
however, as we've seen, even the methodologies that are
_specifically_geared_ for a reflowable world often fail us,
and certainly don't work nearly as well as we would _like_.
so we have to look at the other prong too.
in a fixed-size-window world, .pdf is relatively worthwhile.
it offers a decent array of the functionalities that we need,
and missing ones (e.g., remixability) are not a priority yet.
its performance, though not snappy, isn't unbearably slow.
it doesn't add _too_ much bloat to a document. you _can_
rely on an assumption that readers will be familiar with it,
and already have on their machines a program to view it...
maybe the best part of all? .pdf is _very_ easy to generate.
(and _this_, i would posit, is a big reason for its popularity.)
i believe it was pioneered by another company, not adobe,
but whoever did it, the printer-driver approach is _genius_.
it is also a very terrible _curse_, as it allows a person to
create an "e-book" designed for paper, not for the screen.
but some blame needs to be put squarely on that person.
i have long advocated that .pdf creation software do this:
Quote:
you're attempting to create an 8.5*11-inch .pdf.
because this size won't fit at 100% on their monitor,
almost everyone will have to shrink it, meaning that
your already-too-small 10-point type will be 7-point,
and be totally unreadable. because such documents
reflect poorly on the reputation of adobe .pdf format,
we simply cannot let you create this .pdf until you've
changed the parameters to make it work on-screen.
we're sure you understand, because you are familiar
from your _own_ experience at how _frustrating_ it is
when you attempt to read such a poorly-designed .pdf.
so we thank you for your cooperation in this matter...
here are some possible fixes. check all you'd like to apply:
o -- make the page-size smaller.
o -- make all of the type bigger.
o -- change from portrait orientation to landscape.
o -- run a wizard to make it work; i'll review the changes.
again, thanks for your understanding and cooperation.
|
there's another thing to consider too.
the simplicity of creating .pdf _could_ be a valuable tool
as a solution to .pdf's biggest flaw of nonreflowability.
i'm concentrating here on the fact that, though we live
in a reflowable world, based on our many screensizes,
there are lots of machines that have fixed-size screens,
range from the pda's to the sonyreader to the iliad, etc.
and even on those machines, like our computers, which
have screens big enough to support resizeable windows,
people often settle on one specific size for their reading.
and as long as a .pdf is sized appropriately, it works fine.
that's what enables mobileread to have a library, right?
the fact that there's some agreement about the variables
that need to be set to make a .pdf work on a sonyreader,
or an iliad, or a cybook, or whatever...
so, suppose we distributed an e-book in a "raw" form,
along with a conversion utility that allowed end-users
to create a .pdf to their own specifications simply by
dropping the raw e-book on the converter-utility.
so if they wanted the e-book formatted for sonyreader,
they'd just drop it on the converter, click a button, and
*boom*, there was a .pdf, at the right size, and using
their favorite fonts, typesize, header-style, and so on...
and if, tomorrow, they wanted it formatted for an iliad,
just drop it on the converter, and *boom*, there it was,
again customized to all of their personal settings...
to my mind, that might well be a _viable_ environment...
not as good as complete and instant reflow in the viewer.
but not nearly as cripped as a fixed-format unable to reflow.
-bowerbird