[Daithi]

I want an ereader that can display a full page PDF.

It's great having an ereader that can display the text of a novel, but I would like something that can display PDFs of full sized pages. Some books just can't be appreciated on the same level without things like the illustrations. For example, a book like Alice in Wonderland is simply far better as a PDF than as reflowing text. Even when the illustrations are included in the ebook the PDF version would still be far better. In the PDF version the text flows around the images that are in the book, and in one section of Alice in Wonderland the text is written in such a way that it looks like a mouse's tail. It curves around the page and it uses a font that gets smaller and smaller. Ereaders like the Kindle can try imitating this mouse tail effect but they do a poor job of duplicating it without displaying the text as an image.

Another example is the Kelmscott Chaucer. This is arguably the greatest printed book ever produced. It is absolutely beautiful. It contains a ton of illustrations; many of the pages contain elaborate borders; the drop caps are all individually designed with some being outright exquisite. Even the font used for displaying the normal text was designed by William Morris and it is very fancy. This font is an important aspect of the book and any recreation that didn’t use this font would be pointless. A book like the Kelmscott Chaucer simply can't be duplicated on an ereader like the Kindle or Sony.

Another version of Chaucer that some people might want to have is William Caxton's version. Caxton was the first printer in England and if you want a copy of Caxton's Chaucer or his version of Aesop's Fables then you don't just want a reflowable computer text version. You want to see the minute variations in the letters on the printed page. You want to see all the woodblock images from the original Caxton's Aesop Fables. You want to see something that looks like a photo of the original page.

Likewise, historical scientific books like Newton's Principia or Boyle's Sceptical Chymist are far better as PDFs than simply reflowable computer text. If you want to know a synopsis of the ideas of historical science then a reader like the Kindle or Sony is fine. But, if you want to see the original text of what these authors wrote then there is nothing like viewing the originals. Computer generated text of books like these just loses something. Also, keep in mind that just because a book is a PDF doesn't mean that the text is unavailable for features like searching and annotating.

Illustrated works are really where PDF versions shine. It is possible to produce illustrated versions on current ereaders, but the illustrations are often not as large as the originals, and it takes a lot of work to produce illustrated versions so in many cases the task is never performed. When given the choice of an illustrated classic and a non-illustrated version which one would you choose? I much prefer to have versions of Charles Dickens works with all of the original illustrations. I want Jane Austen’s work with the illustrations by Hugh Thomson. If I’m going to have one version of Shakespeare then I want it to be The Pictorial Shakespeare by Charles Knight with over 1,000 images. If I have one version of the Bible then I want either the 1846 Harper's Illuminated Bible with over 1,600 engravings or a Bible with Gustave Dore's illustrations which are outright masterpieces. In fact, I want all the books Dore illustrated – Cervante's Don Quixote, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Pardise Lost, Poe’s The Raven, Perrault’s Fairytales – these are all masterpieces. I want Dumas' The Three Musketeers with all 250 illustrations by Maurice Leloir. I want Hugo's Les Misérables with all of Emile Bayard’s the illustrations.

Some books absolutely require the illustrations to get the full impact of the book. This is especially true of children’s books, but it also applies to some adult books as well. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is inseparable from the illustrations provided by Hammatt Billings. The original 1852 edition only contained 7 images but the next year an illustrated version was produced with well over a hundred images by Billings, and these images had as much to do with changing people’s perception of slavery as did the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The same can be said to a slightly lesser extent about the images that appeared in other books like Huckleberry Finn and the engravings found in Jules Verne’s books (he wrote a little over 50 books and these books contain over 4,000 images in total). Most of these illustrated books are already available in PDF form, and I’ve only touched on a few illustrated treasures – there are lots more that I didn’t mention.

Lastly, there are some books that aren't even illustrated and that don't contain fancy or historical fonts that are still better in a PDF form than they are in a reflowable computer text form. If you read a book like Frankenstein or Dracula then you may find the PDF version more enjoyable. In the reflowable computer text form the book’s fonts and each line of text is absolutely uniform and completely straight. In the books original printed version this is not the case. The process of printing with ink and paper causes slight variations were the ink bleeds through paper, or were the color of the paper manages to break through the ink, or where type setting causes minute shifts of height to a line of text. These subtle variations add character and help to convey the age of the material being read. They add to the atmosphere and help provide for a more enjoyable reading experience – even when the book isn’t a horror book like Dracula. For any book written prior to 1850 I’d prefer to have a PDF version.

This isn’t a knock on current ereaders. If I have trouble seeing then I want the ability to resize the text. On a PDF this may cause the page to become larger than the display area, so the current ereaders are better if you want to resize text. A small ereader that is easily carried also has its benefits in portability and comfort. An ereader capable of displaying PDFs with full sized pages would be rather large. Ultimately, I want both, but since I already have the smaller ereader I am really jonesing for the big ereader that can display PDFs.

Anyway, I just had to get this off my chest.