Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
My take on the question:
No, PDF is not an eBook format.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
To me, an eBook format, by definition, should be "aware" of the basic structural elements of a book - titles, lines, words, paragraphs. When you change the font size, it needs to be able to reflow lines and paragraphs. It should be aware of the concept of a "word", preferably allowing you to search for it, or look up its definition in a dictionary.
PDF files do none of that. PDF was designed as an electronic representation of a printed page. A PDF files doesn't know about lines, or words, or paragraphs. All it contains is instructions of the form "draw the letter 'A' in such-and-such a font at such-and-such a position on the page". The only structural "unit" in a PDF file is the letter (or other graphical element) and the page. No words, no lines, no paragraphs, no titles, no chapters; in short, none of the elements which make a book.
There are indeed a great many books which can be obtained in the form of PDF files, but to my mind, PDF files is what they are, not eBooks.
So, for these reasons, I vote "no". PDF files are not eBooks, even if they do happen to contain the pages of a book.
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A tagged pdf that was tagged at the source knows about titles, headings, paragraphs, etc. and any pdf can be searched for words using Adobe on my pc. Thus it is not a basic database, file format problem. Rather it is poor implementation of the reader software that is at fault. It might be said that any untagged PDF is not suitable but it is possible to add tags that provide some knowledge of book stuff like paragraphs and headings although not as much as the intelligence of the original. Even TOC is supported if coded correctly.
I do agree that coding for a pdf document isn't the easiest thing in the world and most readers take a short cut and provide poor capabilities. Thus I think you are blaming the data when you should be crying for better software.
Dale