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Originally Posted by rlauzon
What's the difference between a feature that doesn't exist and a feature that exists but no one knows it exists? Answer: Nothing.
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Answer: Ignorance or Laziness (you decide).
When I set out to create a PDF ebook 5 years ago that would be sold, I researched Adobe Acrobat, bought some books about Adobe Acrobat, purchased and scrutinized other PDF books. Without much research, I learned about Adobe's accessibility feature that allowed me to tag my book so it would be more compatible with small screens. It really didn't take much effort for me to discover that...I'd expect more from a company whose business is creating electronic books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rlauzon
You are correct that much of the blame does go on the authors of the PDFs for not making them tagged. But the facts remain:
- Nearly every PDF-format eBook available out there is not tagged.
- PDF is horribly bloated compared to competing formats, making it a less desirable format for resource-constrained devices. Which makes more sense to read on my Palm: the 250K or 2.5MB? That's a no brainer.
- PDF offers absolutely no benefit over the competing formats.
- PDF is a "dead end" format. Once a document is in PDF, it's extremely time consuming converting it to anything else.
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As far as I can tell, most of these are not facts at all...they are simply your opinion of this file format. For me to consider them to be facts would require more research than what you've presented here.
How do you know that nearly every PDF book out there is untagged? Every PDF book I've purchased and every PDF book I've checked out of the library IS tagged. Now, my findings are hardly a statistically valid study, but I've had a very successful experience reading PDF books on my Pocket PC and I do not share you experience or your opinion on this point.
Now I have not used every piece of eBook Reader software that's out there, but I have used Microsoft Reader (probably the least functional reader software in my opinion), Mobipocket Reader and Adobe Reader. Some of the features that Adobe Reader offers include:
I can annotate passages of text in PDF books with my own notes
I can highlight text
I can search the files for specific words or phrases.
As far as I can tell Microsoft Reader is quite limited and you can't do any of these things with that reader. Mobipocket (believe it or not, my reader of choice) can do all those thing except search for words or phrases.
You state that PDF is a dead end format.....why? Because no one has been able to strip the DRM encryption out of the file so hackers can have their way with it? (well, I know someone was able to do this, but they got into trouble for it). That makes it a dead end format? While I truly hate the DRM in PDF books and find it overly onerous, I see nothing wrong with Adobe protecting their intellectual property.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rlauzon
So has punch cards and paper tape. That doesn't mean it's a useful format today.
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You honestly believe that the PDF format is obsolete? I read an article that was linked here last week that showed that PDF clearly leads every other format. I think PDF is here to stay and will be around for a very long time. My hope is that one day I'll be able to read the PDF books I've checked out of the library on an electronic reader like the Cybook.
With the introduction of Adobe's Digital Editions software, it appears that Adobe is committed to the PDF format. I am hopeful that Adobe will make this format easier to work with, although I don't anticipate much relief from the DRM encryption any time in the near future.