Beautiful eBooks

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

I don't want my files to be that large.

Yes, which is why we'll be better served with a superior rendering engine in the eReaders.

Aaah, a man can dream

(I wonder of OpenInkpot would bring something like that to the table)

[J. Strnad]

Lets face it, what most of us want from the NEXT generation of eReaders is FULL pdf support, regardless of screen size,

I'm not sure how practical that is on 5 & 6 inch screens, but it is what we want, Right ?

Not me. I want well-formatted epubs. PDF on ereaders is like a dog on its hind legs, IMO.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

But... 4.29 MB for one book? I gasp a little bit when one of my books in calibre is 1 MB! That's the beauty of e-books to me -- the fact that they take up so little space when you compare them to music or photos. I don't want my files to be that large.

How about 15 MB for one book? That's the average size of my scanned p-books. Still, I can jam a few thousand into a single HDD with room to spare. That is one heckuva large space savings over the amount of room required for the P-books. I don't have the time or patience to edit OCR errors so I'm more than content to compromise to be able to read my image only PDF books on a reader small enough to fit in my purse. And I don't have to have every book I own on my reader at one time.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by bjones6416

But... 4.29 MB for one book? I gasp a little bit when one of my books in calibre is 1 MB!

But that is for 2040 pages, a cover photo, and imbedded fonts. Export it to a plain .txt file, and it is 1.91 MB. (Which is still big enough to make you feel a little light headed, apparently.)

For a book that I recently converted from a plain text file to PDF, the size changed from 3.1 MB to 3.5 MB. No big deal. (That one ended up being around 2350 pages in the PDF.)

[bjones6416]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

(Which is still big enough to make you feel a little light headed, apparently.)

What can I say? Just bring me a mint julep and I'll be fine...

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Kevin2960

Lets face it, what most of us want from the NEXT generation of eReaders is FULL pdf support, regardless of screen size,

I'm not sure how practical that is on 5 & 6 inch screens, but it is what we want, Right ?

That's not what I want. I want PDF to die die die! as an ebook format. Because it's not a valid ebook format, and the sooner people realize that the better off they will be.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by toddos

That's not what I want. I want PDF to die die die! as an ebook format. Because it's not a valid ebook format, and the sooner people realize that the better off they will be.

That's a mighty narrow minded attitude. Granted, generally speaking, PDFs are a poor format for e-books but there are times when they are better suited than other formats. If you don't like them and they do not meet your needs, fine. Don't use them. But to advocate the elimination of something that just doesn't meet your needs is wrong, especially when there are those who do benefit from it.

[Ravensknight]

Originally Posted by toddos

That's not what I want. I want PDF to die die die! as an ebook format. Because it's not a valid ebook format, and the sooner people realize that the better off they will be.

I concur. PDF is too static. My wife and I share a 505 when "somebody" else is using our other 505. And we like our fonts very differently sized. PDF is a one size doesn't fit all. So lets move on to something that gives us what we want, when we want it, how we want it. [of course, we're still getting there]

[yakuzaboss]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

Not me. I want well-formatted epubs. PDF on ereaders is like a dog on its hind legs, IMO.

I couldn't agree more.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Kevin2960

Lets face it, what most of us want from the NEXT generation of eReaders is FULL pdf support, regardless of screen size,

I'm not sure how practical that is on 5 & 6 inch screens, but it is what we want, Right ?

Uhm... I don't know about others, but I don't want better PDF support on my 6" Sony. I need a 9" or bigger device that can handle A4/letter sized PDF's. Tech specs, to be precise. And that device will then be used for work, not for pleasure reading.

[WillAdams]

An example of a book prepared in a number of formats and screen sizes is Bertrand Russell's _Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy_

http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html

It's interesting to see the formatting which one gives up when using the ePub or other re-flowable versions in comparison to the .pdfs prepared by LaTeX.

Unfortunately, improved ebook rendering would require a fair bit of processing power and memory space, as well as a mark-up scheme far more detailed than even TEI w/ the ability to add information like:

- set the following paragraph one line shorter if possible if Fig. 2 doesn't appear on this page so as to bring it back

When doing STM page composition using LaTeX I add a package line in which I store macros for doing such things and another for the special formatting --- I then provide to the author special files for them where all such macros are defined as \relax (or as their arguments if they take any) and the book paginates to the LaTeX default.

William

[Angst]

Is there any way I can apply this template to existing pdf books in my collection? or can I only apply it to new pdfs I am creating?

[Richey79]

Even though I have the same instinctive dislike of PDFs as others in this thread (exacerbated when my ancient laptop is brought to its knees by Acrobat), OP's formatting of 'Our Mutual Friend' is highly readable on my phone, and looks great, too.

Yes, Epub would be the more convenient and flexible solution.