MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Why do so many people use/care about PDF?

tbear · 02-22-2011, 01:22 PM

I often use PDFs to read my personal documents on my ebook reader.
Some of them are converted from technical articles and lecture notes using programs like paperCrop and briss. Some are generated using Latex.
Using pdfs, I can precisely control margins,
place equations, tables and pictures
and justfy texts as I want.

Some criticise PDF because of it's slowness. But PDF are slow only when it is designed so. (For instance, PDFs for large prints, or high-resolution scans)
These slow PDFs can always be converted to much faster ones by down-sampling images, and rasterizing vector images. PDF is a fine file format. It just has different purposes.

02-22-2011, 01:22 PM	#28
tbear Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2011 Device: Kobo wifi	PDF's good when used properly. I often use PDFs to read my personal documents on my ebook reader. Some of them are converted from technical articles and lecture notes using programs like paperCrop and briss. Some are generated using Latex. Using pdfs, I can precisely control margins, place equations, tables and pictures and justfy texts as I want. Some criticise PDF because of it's slowness. But PDF are slow only when it is designed so. (For instance, PDFs for large prints, or high-resolution scans) These slow PDFs can always be converted to much faster ones by down-sampling images, and rasterizing vector images. PDF is a fine file format. It just has different purposes.