Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
My wife prefers to read with a larger size font then I do. That's fine. That means if I format an eBook, I only have to do it ONCE. She can increase the size easily. But if I had chosen PDF, I would have to make two copies. One for her and one for me. I'd rather one nice looking reflowable copy that I can make and that we can both use.
Now lets say I make PDF for my 505. They would look fine. Now Sony comes out with a reader that uses a larger screen and I get that. My PDF then are no good for it. But had I made it in ePub, it would be fine for a larger screen.
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This all seems to be about the immaturity of the technology and the inadequacy of the available products (i.e.: eBooks).
It takes me 3-5 minutes for a 60 page book to create a second (or a third, or a sixth) PDF that uses a different font size, once the book is typeset for a given font size. It would be trivial to let people download PDFs for as many as 10 different font-sizes upon purchase and let them decide which one(s) to load onto their viewers. (i.e.: regular vs. large print -- would work like it does with dead-tree books, but better)
Given a bit of intelligent development work, font size choice could be easily made possible with PDFs--just have them include the content's typesetting information for a number specific sizes (without duplicating data like images and such), and let the reader choose which one to view.
Reflow-capable formats might be better than poorly formatted PDFs--in much the same way that a good hamburger is better than a burnt filet mignon--but they'll *never* be able to maintain typographic correctness unless they have rigid instructions embedded on how exactly to do so for every given viewable font size... at which point it is no longer reflow, but a series of preset flows.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
PDF is fixed. ePub is not. The sample that I posted looks very nice on my 505 and on my computer screen. A PDF for a 6" screen is not going to look nice on a 9.7" screen.
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But a reflow-capable format is not going to look like a professionally produced document on any screen---even if it does look better than a PDF file produced for one display size and viewed on another.
I think the fact that publisher's today are incompetent to create high quality eBooks does not mean we should settle for a "good enough" solution, even if we are forced to use them to compensate for now.