MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Do you consider PDF to be a legitimate "e-book" format? Why or why not?

ath · 01-16-2008, 09:07 AM

It is probably the only e-book format that allows us to implement what the past 400 years of typesetting have taught us about what makes a page legible as well as readable: proper line length, proper selection of typeface, proper presentation of material on the page, and so forth. Reading should be unconscious to be considered good. And that takes a lot of work and knowhow to achieve and maintain.

Complaints that PDF is locked to a fixed page format can safely be ignored: p-books are also locked to a fixed format, but there are no serious complaints about those. I choose to regard this particular objection more as an indication that current e-readers (regardless of publishing format) are the wrong size, or bad in some other important way, such as poor resolution or contrast (more probably both), that need to be mitigated. It does not make sense to find a best format for bad e-readers: the only thing that makes sense is to evaluate the badness.

And complaints that someone only wants to have a particular typeface to read can also be safely ignored. Typically it's another manifestation of poor page size/resolution/contrast, and I've already covered that. It sometimes happens that it's taken as a sine-qua-non of user configuration. User preferences are fine to support, but they should not be allowed to take over the shop. It's better to develop some reading musculature instead.

When we have a reader device that does the page size of a King Penguin volume, and with at least the same contrast and resolution of one, I'd say this field has ... not matured, but reached an acceptable lowest common denominator. Until then, all we're doing is stop-gapping. And there are a lot of possible ways to do that -- as long as we don't begin to think that that particular activity is especially important, it doesn't matter.

Note: I'm talking about reading books here, and the functionality of an *e-book* format (i.e. I take the term very literally indeed). Not newspapers, not the latest weekly/monthly/yearly report, or the last report printouts to proofread for the next version. Just books.

01-16-2008, 09:07 AM	#26
ath Addict Posts: 222 Karma: 110 Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Malmo, Sweden Device: iLiad, Sony PRS-505, Kindle Paperwhite & Oasis	It is probably the only e-book format that allows us to implement what the past 400 years of typesetting have taught us about what makes a page legible as well as readable: proper line length, proper selection of typeface, proper presentation of material on the page, and so forth. Reading should be unconscious to be considered good. And that takes a lot of work and knowhow to achieve and maintain. Complaints that PDF is locked to a fixed page format can safely be ignored: p-books are also locked to a fixed format, but there are no serious complaints about those. I choose to regard this particular objection more as an indication that current e-readers (regardless of publishing format) are the wrong size, or bad in some other important way, such as poor resolution or contrast (more probably both), that need to be mitigated. It does not make sense to find a best format for bad e-readers: the only thing that makes sense is to evaluate the badness. And complaints that someone only wants to have a particular typeface to read can also be safely ignored. Typically it's another manifestation of poor page size/resolution/contrast, and I've already covered that. It sometimes happens that it's taken as a sine-qua-non of user configuration. User preferences are fine to support, but they should not be allowed to take over the shop. It's better to develop some reading musculature instead. When we have a reader device that does the page size of a King Penguin volume, and with at least the same contrast and resolution of one, I'd say this field has ... not matured, but reached an acceptable lowest common denominator. Until then, all we're doing is stop-gapping. And there are a lot of possible ways to do that -- as long as we don't begin to think that that particular activity is especially important, it doesn't matter. Note: I'm talking about reading books here, and the functionality of an e-book format (i.e. I take the term very literally indeed). Not newspapers, not the latest weekly/monthly/yearly report, or the last report printouts to proofread for the next version. Just books.