Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
I'm just not convinced the best that can be achieved via this methodology is going to make me any less regretful that I am not reading a PDF customized for my device and font-size preference.
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I you've hit on the core issue: "best that can be achieved" vs. "what's likely to be available."
I prefer to read PDFs customized for my device & font preferences. No publisher makes those, and I don't expect any publisher to do so in the future. I like humanist fonts, which are rare in the publishing world. When I make ebooks for myself, I use
Fontin, 9 or 10 points (haven't settled yet), condensed by .1 point, with .25" indents on new paragraphs, 12 or 13 point bold chapter titles. 7 pt small text (footnotes and other small elements) where relevant. I place the margins at .1"; my Reader already has a margin--that's the part where the buttons are.
If I can't get PDFs in that, I'm much happier with ePub than someone else's idea of font sizing for PDFs. (Especially as most people seem to want larger starting fonts.)
I haven't seen any indication that publishers are going to start producing PDFs in customer-preferred layouts & fonts. For that matter, I haven't seen any indication that publishers are going to produce tagged PDFs with bookmarks, options that take moments per book (for most book; tags for textbooks are more complex if the source app didn't create them) and require no design consideration.
The issue isn't, "would you rather have a perfect PDF or a perfect ePub?" It's, "in the real world, which is more likely to get you results you want to read?"
Saying that PDFs would be as good or better than ePub, because of potential superior typographic design (which I'll freely grant) IF publishers designed them to ebook reader sizes, IF they had proper metadata, IF they had bookmarks/linked TOCs, IF they came in a range of font sizes, IF they were designed with the right fonts (basic serif, basic sans, humanist, calligraphic, etc.) to suit the reader's preferences...
That's an awful lot of ifs.
Granted, most people are oblivious to the impact of typography on their reading experience. And you're right, it still has an impact. But after years of reading HTML files on LCD screens, most people who'll buy ebook readers are fairly inured to poor typography. They'll tolerate Verdana with auto-kerning and no hyphenation.
You've yet to mention why it's more likely we'll have market-wide well-designed PDFs in the future, than reading devices that let the owner choose a font & point size for all the ePubs read on it. That function only has to be designed once; "good PDFs" have to be done individually, by hundreds of different publishers.