Quote:
Originally Posted by All4Fun
Thank you Jellby for taking the time to explain the benefits of each format and the other advantages of using epub. I did understand most of this but you explain it a lot more eloquently and without some of the disdain that I typically see when pdf is brought up.
As a reasonably new user to this forum, when I joined, most of my ebooks were in pdf format only because that's what I knew. To me, as I was able to read them, they were ebooks. I quickly got versed in the different ebook formats and will avoid pdfs where it makes sense or when I have no other choice.
Sometimes I see authors offer their books on this forum for free only in pdf format and I think "Thank you" but then I see some responses "slamming" the author/publisher for only offering it in pdf format. As a new user to this forum and perhaps as feedback, I think there's a better approach and, Jellby, I think the approach you've taken for explaining the differences is the right one for perhaps explaining this to budding authors.
If I've been intimidated about talking about pdfs on MR, there's definitely been a reason for it.
Now that I got that off my chest, we can get back to our regularly scheduled program.  |
all4fun, you are right that people tend to get very cranky about pdf-format books ! this is because often publishers make free pdfs available which are formatted for a much larger page than a 6" screen can comfortably display. although some devices can "reflow" pdfs to enlarge the text and give a more comfortable reading experience, when you do this, the original formatting is lost, and the result usually looks pretty terrible (ironic, i know). pdfs are also more difficult to convert to other formats. this tends to frustrate a lot of people when they see a free ebook made available only in pdf format ; but you are absolutely right that it's much more constructive to talk about the different strengths of each format (pdf does have many strengths, and for some specific purposes it's the best format) and encourage publishers to make several formats available (including epub) whenever possible rather than to get angry, which i'm sure you're not the only one to find intimidating. thanks for bringing up the subject for discussion.