Another eNewspaper edition

[Darqref]

I was just reminded of an electronic edition of the Christian Science Monitor, a daily world newspaper. For half the cost of their print edition (delivered by mail) they have a treeless edition in PDF. I checked out a sample edition, and it's formatted to the same physical size as the print newspaper. Subscribers log in to read and download the day's edition, but at least the sample had no drm.

As a current Rocket reader and hopeful eInk reader soon, I have a few questions for anyone who'd care to check out a sample of the format:

1. How difficult is it to navigate such a PDF document on the various devices available? Like the print edition, stories are broken up between pages, pictures are interleaved, several stories on each page, etc.

2. How difficult is it to convert to a better format or size, LRF, Mobipocket, etc.? Does the conversion make a good readable copy for minimum work (given that you'd want to convert a new doc every day or so.) Would you end up putting each story on one page (or two sequential pages if long enough) or would you just chop it up so each chunk is visible on the screen?

3. If the content interested you, would you find the format too much to bother with on a daily basis?

The Christian Science Monitor's Treeless edition can be found at
http://www.csmonitortreeless.com/ and there's a link at top left to download a demo copy.

Roger

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Darqref

1. How difficult is it to navigate such a PDF document on the various devices available? Like the print edition, stories are broken up between pages, pictures are interleaved, several stories on each page, etc.

2. How difficult is it to convert to a better format or size, LRF, Mobipocket, etc.? Does the conversion make a good readable copy for minimum work (given that you'd want to convert a new doc every day or so.) Would you end up putting each story on one page (or two sequential pages if long enough) or would you just chop it up so each chunk is visible on the screen?

3. If the content interested you, would you find the format too much to bother with on a daily basis?

1. The treeless editon idea doesn't work in this case. There are many places you can take the paper copy that you can't take the treeless without a laptop. I tried the sample on my Nokia 770, which has a 4" screen. It was difficult to read.

I personally don't think much of the idea of a treeless edition. This is indeed treeless (as opposed to electronic) in that it is a one to one replacement for the print. If they ever release an electronic edition (in say HTML), then I might be interested.

2. It's too much effort to manually convert this everyday to LRF. I also don't think it will be possible to write a script to automate it.

3. If I already read this paper, I would go for the treeless edition because I almost always have my laptop with me. But since I don't read it, the defects of the format would discourage me from trying it.


P.S. Thanks for posting it, though. It's nice to see them trying, at least.