Quote:
Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern
And I do comfortably read regular journals in PDF format on my PRS-700 without reformatting them or even reflowing them  |
So do I. Or rather, I read letter-sized fanfic PDFs with fancy graphics & layouts, and deal with what looks like 5pt text on the screen. I'd like it a bit larger, but not enough to reflow, because reflowing often runs the dialogue together. I often read 6x9 publisher's promo PDFs without reflowing. (That is, after I remove the security lock and change the metadata so the book is named by title, and not "9780765341419.pdf," and add the author, because the publisher is oblivious to metadata.)
I love PDFs. I just don't think they're a great format for mobile devices with various screen sizes.
I've got a lot of friends who do a good portion of their web browsing on their iPhones... PDF is never going to be a great format for a 2.5" screen. I read hundreds of ebooks on my Cliés before they died--I think two of them were PDFs, before I gave up on the software.
No e-Ink reader currently offers the option that meant most to me on the Clié: font size control. A choice of six sizes,
regardless of the original file's settings. For PDFs to become standardized, they need two major feature shifts: Much better reflow (and it doesn't matter how well ADE does reflow; the e-Ink readers aren't using ADE), including reflow that works on phones, and the ability to shift font sizes
down as well as up.
10 pt font on a 3.5x4.5" page, for my 6" screen, works me; putting that same file on a 9" screen would make the text too big to be comfortable. I suppose that could be covered by allowing it to zoom out--but if I wanted to lose 20% of my screen to margins, I'd've added those in.
And if publishers want PDFs to become the standard format for mobile ebook readers, they need to start including the right metadata. Or acknowledge the legality of sending a copy to someone else, who has the software necessary to make the file work on their machine.