Do you consider PDF to be a legitimate "e-book" format? Why or why not?

[DaleDe]

By the way, I want to commend everybody in this thread for a great discussion. It has been interesting and educational. No name calling and nobody getting seriously pissed off. It has been a good exchange of ideas and perhaps we are all learning something.

Not to interfere but just to interject. Let the comments continue !! By the way, we are now on our 8th page of comments.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

A few formats simply won't do all the things you can do on paper can will certainly not reflow it. Some eBook formats don't even support graphics but they still seem to be useful for some purposes.

Dale

Completely agreed with the above; my point though was that right now for a large (actually very large) subset of e-books there are no good or even mediocre alternatives to pdf/djvu. This is why in talking about e-books I distinguish between 3 categories:

- text based - may contain images, simple graphics, footnotes, pictures and special characters and fonts, but they reflow nicely and any e-book format including Mobipocket, MsLit, Html (opf), Imp, Lrf will do for them and even txt and rtf at some marginal cost

- e-books for which the 2 dimensional structure is essential, like math books, art books, some fiction books as mentioned - for these I just do not see right now an alternative for pdf/djvu, unless you are content to make them image books and lose searching and other goodies - then anything like in point 3 will do, but you still lose reflowing

- image e-books (for example non-ocr'ed scans) - whatever the opinion regarding their legitimacy, the fact is that they exist and for them pdf/djvu while not essential is still the best solution since the question of reflowing does not arise; you can definitely use anything that admits embedded images (even simple html will do), but here pdf is convenient rather than necessary

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

By the way, I want to commend everybody in this thread for a great discussion. It has been interesting and educational. No name calling and nobody getting seriously pissed off. It has been a good exchange of ideas and perhaps we are all learning something.

I second that! Even though this is exactly what I was hoping for, actually.

I know I've been pretty quite for a while, but we passed the level at which I felt like I had anything to contribute some time ago. I'm really enjoying seeing points I never considered coming out though!

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

The question that remains unanswered is how are you going to do an e-version of say a math book or anything where the 2 dimensional structure of the book is important.

Actually reflowing math is not impossible, it's just much harder than text and that's because math has a dynamic vocabulary. MathML goes a long way toward solving this problem. Indeed, one of my pipe dreams is to have math ebook reading software that can understand formulae and perform simple symbolic manipulations on them, like a Mathematic worksheet.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

Completely agreed with the above; my point though was that right now for a large (actually very large) subset of e-books there are no good or even mediocre alternatives to pdf/djvu. This is why in talking about e-books I distinguish between 3 categories:

- text based - may contain images, simple graphics, footnotes, pictures and special characters and fonts, but they reflow nicely and any e-book format including Mobipocket, MsLit, Html (opf), Imp, Lrf will do for them and even txt and rtf at some marginal cost

- e-books for which the 2 dimensional structure is essential, like math books, art books, some fiction books as mentioned - for these I just do not see right now an alternative for pdf/djvu, unless you are content to make them image books and lose searching and other goodies - then anything like in point 3 will do, but you still lose reflowing

- image e-books (for example non-ocr'ed scans) - whatever the opinion regarding their legitimacy, the fact is that they exist and for them pdf/djvu while not essential is still the best solution since the question of reflowing does not arise; you can definitely use anything that admits embedded images (even simple html will do), but here pdf is convenient rather than necessary

I believe the second form has the ability to be displayed and reflowed depending on the way the content has to be presented. Math formulas seldom need the full width of a page and are usually set off from the main forms. These are easy to create as images and they can be displayed as such without loss of information. the surrounding text can be reflowed as needed. Thus most of such documents can be searched and read while the images should be viewed inline. This won't work for everything but will for quite a few things. It depends on the original author to some degree to design the original document with an idea of how to display it when reflowed. I write technical manuals which can often require some 2D kind of display but can still be coerced into a reflowed document with advanced planning.

There are also situations where pages need to be turned and some images overflow on facing pages. This kinds of things require large images to work properly and the viewing software must either allow panning and zoom to study the image or break it up into multiple images (tile). The situation dictates the technique that is required. This is like resorting to a foldout page in a paper document.

If you can design a book for arbitrary dimensions as required for most text books then you can design the book for even smaller arbitrary dimensions if needed.

Dale

[yvanleterrible]

Actually while PDF is viewed as the culprit for not being reflowable, the real one is the physical size of the devices we use. For every type of publication there should be a similarly sized device. Page format is important for every work, even on paper...
Since PDFs are viewable on our readers, shouldn't the true culprit here be our own eyes?
Remember that we're paying for being early adopters and therefore should be patient and flexible for a while. The expandable reader does not exist yet...physically. That little 'size' button takes care of it virtually.
The old motto in my craft applies again. "There is a right tool for every task". In this case every book format is a tool. Just choose the right one for the right task.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

These are easy to create as images and they can be displayed as such without loss of information.

Well, yes and no: If you are able to physically see the image, you can read its information; however, if you are visually disabled, the image will do you little good. This is why MathML was created, to provide actual math markup that can be read by readers and browsers, for those who are visually disabled. Thus far, MathML is not supported by most applications, but it should be eventually.

Hopefully even PDF will read MathML and be able to tag it for reflowing (though that could look interesting, to say the least). At present, I don't know of any e-book readers that can handle MathML, which puts them in the same boat as PDF.

[yvanleterrible]

Will DE on Sony allow MathML?

Is MathML part of Flash?

Can someone answer? A lot of my questions are never answered.

[NatCh]

Probably because you keep asking questions no one knows the answers to, yvanleterrible!

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Probably because you keep asking questions no one knows the answers to, yvanleterrible!

Okay that's a legitimate answer!

Now, if someone knows how Flash works, how are graphics worked out?
With MathML?

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Well, yes and no: If you are able to physically see the image, you can read its information; however, if you are visually disabled, the image will do you little good. This is why MathML was created, to provide actual math markup that can be read by readers and browsers, for those who are visually disabled. Thus far, MathML is not supported by most applications, but it should be eventually.

Hopefully even PDF will read MathML and be able to tag it for reflowing (though that could look interesting, to say the least). At present, I don't know of any e-book readers that can handle MathML, which puts them in the same boat as PDF.

YOu are correct. I was assuming a sighted reader which is likely true for every owner of current eBook devices although partially sighted viewers may be candidates for some that have really large fonts. A good reader like MSReader can zoom the images independently from the text which aids in seeing the images. Of course if you have to zoom too much you may have to copy the information to a piece of paper to take it all in

MathML sounds interesting. Hopefully it can be incorporated into Readers in the future to provide the ability to reconstruct the math in a more meaningful way for different size screens.

Dale

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Okay that's a legitimate answer!

Now, if someone knows how Flash works, how are graphics worked out?
With MathML?

Please visit http://www.w3.org/Math/ and check the sample links. Report back.

Dale

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Will DE on Sony allow MathML?

Is MathML part of Flash?

DE does not yet support MathML. Flash can support MathML with a third-party plug-in.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Please visit http://www.w3.org/Math/ and check the sample links. Report back.

Dale

I just created a MathML in the wiki with a little bit of information on this format. It needs to be flushed out a bit more but at least it is there.

Dale

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

This was a very good discussion about the "legitimacy" of PDFs for e-book use. (I say "was," only because discussion seemed to dry up a few days ago.) I have to say, though, that after all the discussion, I'm frankly surprised that the final tally is almost 2-1 against PDFs! (Yes, you know what I voted for!)

Could it be that this is only because the poll represents voting before we got into 8 pages of debate? Has anyone out there changed their minds one way or the other?

I got the impression that the wild card in this discussion was e-textbooks, something casual readers don't often consider here, and apparently the main reason for continued support of PDFs for e-book formats. Did the consideration of e-textbooks change anyone's mind about the question after their vote, pro or con? Or do you consider textbooks separate from e-books (and if so, please elaborate)?