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Originally Posted by WillAdams
W/ tagged .pdf, one gets the option of having re-flowability along w/ a perfectly formatted representation.
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Only with well-tagged PDFs. Some programs don't set tags when they convert to PDF, and Acrobat's auto-tagging, like its OCR, is problematic: it works well with some originals (in the case of tagging, simple novel formats) and much less well with others. It has a tendency to tag multiple short lines of dialogue or poetry as part of a single paragraph, for example.
Setting tags properly is an exercise in masochistic nit-picky work. I've done it, and I'd do it again... for a book I dearly loved, or if someone paid me. A lot. I wouldn't do it for book conversions for the general public.
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W/ epub and other ebook formats which don't have a concept of size and position and page, one only gets reflowability, which means that one never gets a perfectly formatted representation, but always has to make do w/ how the page happens to be rendered by the viewer.
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They can get formatting & positioning, although much of the details are based on viewer capabilities, just like some web browsers won't view some page layouts.
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For me, "good enough'' isn't. I don't accept anything less than perfect, and there are a number of printed books which I've purchased which I've never been able to finish because the typesetting is so bad --- similarly, I've found a number of ebooks to set so badly that I've been unable to continue reading them.
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Do you think that an industry-wide move to PDF instead of other formats will fix this? That publishers will produce PDFs arranged to match
your reading requirements?
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PDF is the only format (w/ matching viewer technology) which offers the level of control which is necessary to prevent stacks, widows, orphans &c.
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No, it's not. Don't mistake the viewer for the format. Plenty of the PDFs I read on my PRS-505 have orphans... because I can't read them at the letter size they're made in, and have to reflow. PDF certainly has plenty of orphan words & lines after reflow. And that's for the good ones, with tags. Untagged PDFs are hideous when reflowed.
Some PDFs have orphans & widows before reflow, because the decision to prevent them has to be made by the creator of the PDF.
I have Acrobat Pro and lock-breaking software; I add tags to my PDFs before reading. And fix the metadata, so they don't show up on my reader with names like "0689865384_INT," which is one I downloaded this week. And I add bookmarks so I'll have a TOC.
Any argument that I shouldn't reflow, presumes that someone is going to provide PDFs that fit in my screen. Since publishers can't be bothered to set the metadata and add a table of contents, I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Feel free to convince the publishers to make PDFs that fit in mobile ebook devices; there'd be a lot less arguments against PDFs if they were offered in several sizes. (And, of course, if the buyer were allowed enough page sizes to fit each of her screens.)