Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Instead of working to preserve formatting for an old paradigm, bookmakers ought to be redesigning for a malleable screen size and more manipulation options.
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Sorry, but this smacks of magical thinking.
Documents with complex layouts that are designed to work at a particular size need a full redesign to work properly at a smaller size. It's possible to specify some basic rules for reflowing content, but that's what you have with PDF right now. If you want a complex document to look right across 10", 6" and 3" readers then you need to include separate layout code for each of those instances. And tripling the amount of labour involved in designing a document costs money, money which it's clear the customers are not prepared to pay.
The one benefit of print is that the form (page size, aspect and orientation, reproduction quality, etc) can be altered to suit the needs of the content. I don't see how attempts to jam everything into the same form-factor counts as progress.