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Old 08-26-2012, 05:39 AM   #27
janek
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Posts: 175
Karma: 23456
Join Date: Feb 2012
Device: Boox m92
Quote:
Originally Posted by mSSM View Post
That is big bullshit. There are tons and tons of PDFs out there, which are not standard as defined by the respective ISO norm. And yet, Acrobat and other software is able to open those PDFs.

The fact that a certain piece of (proprietary) software is able to do something you want, does not make it by default a standard norm.

Apart from that, you at least tried to fix the PDF by, e.g., running it through Ghostscript and fixing it thereby?

EDIT: Oh, also: Adobe != PDF standard. Get your facts straight.
That's developer's point of view. You may even be right when it comes to defining industry standards of pdfs. Maybe it is Ghostscript that defines it, maybe Adobe, maybe some ISO standard, I don't want to argue this point. You are also certainly correct when you say that pdfs can be very complex and probably are not entirely portable and that there are many examples of non-standard files. I do not deny all this.

YET the only thing I care about (and the only thing that counts in terms of warranties and all that) is user's perspective. Which is this: if a pdf just works with every possible reader out there, it is supposed to work with Boox's software. If it does not, it means that unsufficient care was put in developing that software, because otherwise doable task is not achieved. If I'm speaking about this being a warranty case, it is exactly for this reason - if I'm told the device does PDFs (and particularly if I'm told it is specifically designed to do PDFs), I can reasonably expect it is no worse than most standalone readers because the maker put sufficient effort in making sure that it does.

Sure, there are design limitations - nobody should expect the reader to open gigabyte-size pdfs or display color images correctly. And sure, it is possible to find a file on which this or that reader will choke, and some other will not. Still, what the maker/vendor promises by saying their product is a PDF reader is that it offers a functionality not below par established by standalone readers, and that they have checked that. It is not their promise that the device complies with some abstract standard which is rather hard to define (BTW Onyx clearly does not make such a promise - guess why?), but that their product is usable in standard cases. Thus a user who purchased the device to read a particular file may reasonably expect that he can do that, and that because he can check if the file opens in standalone readers. Failure to meet this expectation is a genuine reason to return the device as a warranty case.

BTW, we know rather well that Onyx otherwise fails to properly test their readers, so it looks like their falure to test m92 for compatibility is not exceptional, but just the way they operate. We also know that they fail to provide continuous support for their older models - like the m90 or A60, even if the firmware proved to be buggy, so there is reason to fear that the bugs in m92 will not be fixed.

Ah, wrt to fixing the pdf, please be so kind as to read my posts more carefully, I wrote about that (and also Mono did).
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