Why the fascination with PDF?

[drogo]

I was wondering why there's such a preoccupation with trying to get everything into PDF as opposed to TXT or HTML?

It's my understanding that PDF won't reflow the text, at least, I've never seen a document that would, while most of the other ebook formats will. It's also difficult to extract anything from it. I know that every time I get a technical doc/book in PDF, I immediately begin trying to convert it to something else, usually HTML, but sometimes plain old TXT. PDFs just seem to be so much trouble.

I'm not trying to start a war or anything, just genuinely curious as to why so many people are heading to PDF, rather than from it. Maybe I'm missing some advantage of PDF?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by drogo

I know that every time I get a technical doc/book in PDF, I immediately begin trying to convert it to something else, usually HTML, but sometimes plain old TXT. PDFs just seem to be so much trouble.

I always assumed that what you just said was the issue: that a lot of stuff comes in PDF already.

Well, that, and the fact that it is easy to pass a PDF to someone else and know that they'll be able to read it.

Personally, I'm in the preferrin' RTF camp myself.

But a lot of things can't be gotten in that format.

[Bob Russell]

I think PDF also gives you more control of the way the book looks on the screen in terms of layout. If you want to go the extra mile (and know what you are doing), you can probably really make the ebook look amazing if it's customized for that device.

I have less sophisticated taste, so I like RTF also.

[astfgl]

PDF is the only working format on the Iliad, and even it's not working too well yet.

99% of my documents and ebooks are HTML, but I can't use them as the HTML renderer in the Iliad is broken.

The two main issues are in-document navigation and rendering. The rendering fault is the worst, and means that the top and bottom lines are unreadable much of the time, with no method of scrolling the page to make them fully visible.

The renderer should test if the page's start and end line are fully visible, and if the top one isn't, then move the page down slightly until it is, and if the last line is not visible, don't render it at all and make that line the top line of the next page.

[drogo]

Ahh, ok. I wasn't aware that PDF was all that worked. That's a good reason for everyone converting to it.

I do find it surprising that even simple TXT doesn't work yet, though. Odd. Ah well.

[CommanderROR]

astfgl got it right...I would love to use HTML, but since it doesn't work properly yet, I have to convert everything to PDF...^^

[flumbo]

I agree with the original poster. PDF is made for, and should mostly be used only for documents to be printed or where it is crucial to maintain the original layout. It just wasn't meant for convenient on-screen reading.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by astfgl

PDF is the only working format on the Iliad, and even it's not working too well yet.

99% of my documents and ebooks are HTML, but I can't use them as the HTML renderer in the Iliad is broken.

The two main issues are in-document navigation and rendering. The rendering fault is the worst, and means that the top and bottom lines are unreadable much of the time, with no method of scrolling the page to make them fully visible.

The renderer should test if the page's start and end line are fully visible, and if the top one isn't, then move the page down slightly until it is, and if the last line is not visible, don't render it at all and make that line the top line of the next page.

Do you have a html page that demonstrates this...? I've converted a number of chm files to html for the Illiad, and so far I haven't noticed this problem... Yes, there are known issues with it but I wouldn't say its "broken"... And if there are known issues then let Irex know about them so they can be fixed...

I'm also surprised with everyones fascination with pdf. Yep, its handy as many documents come on pdfs, but as an on-screen format its very static, and its a very dumb format. (Or am I missing somekind of PDF scripting language...?)

[ath]

Originally Posted by drogo

I was wondering why there's such a preoccupation with trying to get everything into PDF as opposed to TXT or HTML?

TXT is clearly impossible as soon as you have characters that can't be represented in that format. Unicode seems to be the only reasonable format, but even that fails in certain cases. (One of which is chess: I can't represent a chess diagram well in a Unicode-encoded text. Math, music and labanotation are others.)

HTML has similar problems -- once the markup doesn't cover what you want to do. Again, if you rely on typefaces, HTML doesn't promise anything -- it's the reader that makes those decisions. And if you allow add-on markup, you have to ensure that the reader has the same add-on, or at least one that uses the same semantic as yours.

Both formats are far more flexible when it comes to selecting alternative typefaces, page sizes, etc, but they are completely useless when it comes to create a well-set page. PDF, on the other hand, allows that at the expense of flexibility. Take headings in all caps: they have to spaced more than usual text in order to be well readable. HTML doesn't do that -- although it (or any similar format that decided to allow that particular rendition to be specified) could do it.

PDF makes it far more likely that 'what-you-see-is-what-I-want-you-to-see' -- as any page-description languages should do.

It's my understanding that PDF won't reflow the text, at least, I've never seen a document that would, while most of the other ebook formats will.

Again, PDF is a page description format, and therefore final -- you don't reflow those. Adobe's attempt to allow reflowing to make it possible to read PDF on handhelds was, I think, somewhat brain-damaged. They probably caved in to market pressure -- so see it as an attempt to educate the market that You Do Not Reflow PDF. As far as Adobe is concerned, I suspect you might as well steal sheep.

Adobe Reader does reflow ... but it doesn't do it without reason. If the page already fits your screen, it doesn't even try (though I'm not certain about exact conditions for reflowing). I'm more successful in forcing a reflow when I use Adobe Reader for a small-screen handheld. But as it removes carefully selected line spacing, and packs lines tight, the result is not acceptable.

It's also difficult to extract anything from it. I know that every time I get a technical doc/book in PDF, I immediately begin trying to convert it to something else, usually HTML, but sometimes plain old TXT. PDFs just seem to be so much trouble.

This is more a question of what version of PDF you are using, and how competent the creator was. Modern PDF versions allow tagging, and if the creator enables it, you may be able to save text (at least) straight off. Without such tagging, there's not information enough to do it well -- and particularly not if special typefaces with unknown code tables have been used. Tagging is partly useful for reflowing, partly for increasing accessibility (it allows screen reading -- but even that has to be designed by the creator as soon as there's any degree of complexity in the document.) Don't blame this on the format -- it's the creator who hasn't done his work. (Well, you may be using a PDF reader that just cannot do it, of course.)

I'm not trying to start a war or anything, just genuinely curious as to why so many people are heading to PDF, rather than from it. Maybe I'm missing some advantage of PDF?

My own decision was made when I discovered that there were no chess problem books on-line. Problem nr 1, of course, was how to ensure that the chess diagrams included would be readable. TXT doesn't do it, HTML doesn't do (unless I require the reader to buy the same typeface I used, or use some free and sub-standard face, which I won't). DejaVu would do it, but (at that time at least) it required a rather expensive license. TeX (i.e. DVI) again requires the reader have a suitable chess fonts. PDF was my answer.
(MS Word also allows for font embedding, but it has a nasty habit of breaking pages according to what printer you have -- which means that my page 345 may not be your page 345. Not acceptable -- so Word was not an option to me.)

Another factor that influenced the choice was that I am able to decide page layout: I can ensure high-quality hyphenation and other typographical tweakings -- such as ensuring that footnotes are on the same page as the text that refers to it. No non-page-description-format reader I know does that -- which to my mind is an indication that they don't really care about the reader, or shy away from technically difficult issues. (There are some signs that this may improve, though.)

[jæd]

Originally Posted by ath

PDF makes it far more likely that 'what-you-see-is-what-I-want-you-to-see' -- as any page-description languages should do.

So... Is the Illiad a printed page, or is it a screen...? At the moment I see the Illiad a device capable of displaying a page, which is why I favour screen based solutions, ie HTML... HTML is going to be much more flexible mainly because it is display agnostic, so it may not be as good as a custom document but will be better for more devices...

[scotty1024]

On the iLiad HTML is essentially broken. But even if it were working I find most HTML files to be overly fascinated with linking to be comfortable for reading as a "book". I prefer the Baen LIT files over the Baen HTML files for that reason.

For purchased content my favorite format is still Microsoft Reader.

For personal use I have no use for re-flow. I pick my font, I pick my size and I layout the content. Right now the only iLiad format that lets me pick my font my size is PDF.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by scotty1024

On the iLiad HTML is essentially broken.

How so...? Do you have any specific examples...? So far I seem to be doing quite well with the html browser included...

[tribble]

Originally Posted by jæd

How so...? Do you have any specific examples...? So far I seem to be doing quite well with the html browser included...

Have you tried reading a novel in HTML?
- Last line gets cut off, no overlap on page flip, so you basically have to guess a line every pageturn.
- depending on how long your file is, you cant stop reading in between, unless you keep the iLiad running and leave the html application open.

that already disqualifies totally as a book reading programm.

For reference files and short html pages you can easily read in one session, the html viewer does fine.

[kusmi]

I bought the iLiad exclusively to read PDFs, you can make pdfs much more good looking (layout, pictures, etc) than HTML (ok, you could do: by just putting a full-page image on it :-) )

If I would go for HTML/TXT, then I would have bought an Sony, because for those formats, the screen-size does not really matter, you just have to flip pages more frequently.

Furthermore, I started to read those free daily newspapers on my iLiad, and they are only available as PDFs...

Also on my Mac, I can "print" to pdfs from any application and have full control over the layout and even the font type-face (as pdfs embed fonts, which are non-standard)

[yokos]

The real problems start in an academic natural science environment. Your documents are full of mathematical equations.
# txt isn't usefull in any form [Please have a look at usenet then you will see how compicated it is to make clear for the reader how the equation looks like. ]
# In html you can embed equations only as images [mostly gif] or with additional plugins.
# so pdf is the best format for these documents. [LaTeX->pdf]

Edit: Can somebody verify that iLiad doesn't open html files which are large in size [let me say 3 MB or so]?