PDF is not an eBook format

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

1) It's horribly bloated compared to other formats.
2) It requires proprietary tools (that only run on proprietary operating systems) to create properly.
3) It's immutable.
4) It offers no benefits over lighter competing formats.

None of which means PDF is not a viable e-book format. Just not the best for your personal use.

[sanders]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

We need to seperate types of eBooks then we can say where PDF works and where PDF fails...

PDF fails for books that are mostly text based. Like say the latest Star Trek book for example.

Now where PDF is good is for things like text books or things you may want to print in a complex format.

And yes, the PDF implementation on most eink readers is awful. The iLiad has the best PDF viewer for it of any of the eink based readers.

Heh, I'm glad I read past your previous post where you called us PDF publishers "idiots".

I heartily agree with you here. If layout matters (technical stuff, maths) PDF is second to none. For plain text, I probably wouldn't go with PDF.

I will check out tagging PDFs (this thread is the first time I heard about it), and whether pdfLaTeX can generate this. Until then, I simply provide a pdf specifically laid out for small (screen) pages.

I compare it to a MIDI file versus a CD of a live performance. CDs are awful if you intend to extract the score music from them, but I'd be hesitant to call CDs a "stupid" format for music publication.

[JSWolf]

In this discussion of PDF as an eBook format, we lost sight of what PDF is good for and what it's not good for and yes, for things like text books with complex layout, it's really good. But for ordinary text eBooks, it's dreadful.

[ProfJulie]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

In this discussion of PDF as an eBook format, we lost sight of what PDF is good for and what it's not good for and yes, for things like text books with complex layout, it's really good. But for ordinary text eBooks, it's dreadful.

I don't see how PDF is dreadful for ordinary text eBooks. What are you basing this on?

[NatCh]

He meant "plain" text, I think.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

I don't see how PDF is dreadful for ordinary text eBooks. What are you basing this on?

I'm basing this ont he fact that if the formatting does not need to be complex, then we are stuck with a fixed format and a fixed font size. Part of the idea of a reader is th ability to change the font size and also letter sized PDF do not look good on a 6" screen without reformatting of the PDF. Can you honestly say that you would enjoy more reading a letter sized PDF (of non-complex formatting) on your Gen3 then you would had it been in Mobipocket format?

[ProfJulie]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm basing this ont he fact that if the formatting does not need to be complex, then we are stuck with a fixed format and a fixed font size. Part of the idea of a reader is th ability to change the font size and also letter sized PDF do not look good on a 6" screen without reformatting of the PDF. Can you honestly say that you would enjoy more reading a letter sized PDF (of non-complex formatting) on your Gen3 then you would had it been in Mobipocket format?

You are referring to the limitations of existing ebook readers that do not reflow a PDF file to fit a different sized screen and do not allow one to make the font larger or smaller. This is not the experience I have when reading on a Pocket PC.

Readers who are not interested or knowledgeable of the ins and outs of what comprises an electronic book, care about whether or not they can read a book comfortably. On my Cybook, I cannot read a PDF eBook comfortably because the Cybook does not provide the options I need to do that. On the Cybook PDF books are displayed as simple print images of the original paper books. But the same books that are tagged and reflowed on my Pocket PC are true electronic documents that display great on the smaller screen. This is a limitation with the Cybook, not with the format and does not make the PDF format dreadful as an eBook.

[hidari]

ON my Acer N311 PDF does NOT read well, despite trying to use software designed specifically for reading PDF on a PPC. Have to say PDF is a a bad format for ereaders but quite good for a desktop or notebook.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

You are referring to the limitations of existing ebook readers that do not reflow a PDF file to fit a different sized screen and do not allow one to make the font larger or smaller. This is not the experience I have when reading on a Pocket PC.

Readers who are not interested or knowledgeable of the ins and outs of what comprises an electronic book, care about whether or not they can read a book comfortably. On my Cybook, I cannot read a PDF eBook comfortably because the Cybook does not provide the options I need to do that. On the Cybook PDF books are displayed as simple print images of the original paper books. But the same books that are tagged and reflowed on my Pocket PC are true electronic documents that display great on the smaller screen. This is a limitation with the Cybook, not with the format and does not make the PDF format dreadful as an eBook.

[ProfJulie]

Originally Posted by hidari

ON my Acer N311 PDF does NOT read well, despite trying to use software designed specifically for reading PDF on a PPC. Have to say PDF is a a bad format for ereaders but quite good for a desktop or notebook.

What software are you using? Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0? Could you describe what you mean by "NOT read well?" [I have Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0 running on 4 different pocket pcs and it works great].

[hidari]

I used a progamme called LittleFox. Others have said it is quite good. I can read with it but the zoom feature is not very adaptable. Anyways I format all of my PDF files with Mobipocket Creator. Hence, I do not need a PDF reader. However, I will try to install Adobe 2.0 and see how well it works. Thanx for the info.

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

What software are you using? Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0? Could you describe what you mean by "NOT read well?" [I have Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0 running on 4 different pocket pcs and it works great].

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by cmbs

How does css remove your control of presentation?

today there are all sorts of ways to remove control from the reader. CSS is one of those. Such things as making the screen wider than my current window so I have to scroll to see things. Picking hardcoded fonts, sizes, and hundreds of other very specific things. Even forcing colors to be something I can't even see due to contrast issues. Java and Javascript things can dominate a screen display. And don't get me started on some of the dynamic realplayer junk. Then there is forcing music on me that I don't care to hear. In 3.2 you have control over everything very easily. Now you have to be a hacker to just get control over your own screen display.

don't get me wrong, some of the screens are really slick and really well done but a lot of them are crap and take 10 times as long to load. Active X, et. al. CSS is the tip but the whole philosophy of web browsing has changed from information display to fancy display but who cares about the information so long as it looks pretty.

Dale

[cmbs]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

today there are all sorts of ways to remove control from the reader. CSS is one of those. Such things as making the screen wider than my current window so I have to scroll to see things. Picking hardcoded fonts, sizes, and hundreds of other very specific things. Even forcing colors to be something I can't even see due to contrast issues. Java and Javascript things can dominate a screen display. And don't get me started on some of the dynamic realplayer junk. Then there is forcing music on me that I don't care to hear. In 3.2 you have control over everything very easily. Now you have to be a hacker to just get control over your own screen display.

don't get me wrong, some of the screens are really slick and really well done but a lot of them are crap and take 10 times as long to load. Active X, et. al. CSS is the tip but the whole philosophy of web browsing has changed from information display to fancy display but who cares about the information so long as it looks pretty.

Dale

I agree almost completely with everything you said. It is incredible the terrible page and site design that is happening, even on big name sites which I'm sure they paid a fortune for. It's a pet peeve of mine (yea you can add it to the list).

But I must defend css. I like css. The problem is in the design decisions being made, the way people are using the tools available, it's not the fault of the css.

Thanks for the answer.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by cmbs

I agree almost completely with everything you said. It is incredible the terrible page and site design that is happening, even on big name sites which I'm sure they paid a fortune for. It's a pet peeve of mine (yea you can add it to the list).

But I must defend css. I like css. The problem is in the design decisions being made, the way people are using the tools available, it's not the fault of the css.

Thanks for the answer.

I use CSS myself when formatting books but not for web pages. I do not like the W3C committee deprecating all my nice formatting solutions in preference to having to do everything with a style statements or CSS files since it encourages taking over the display of what I see.

I don't have anything against CSS itself except it is very difficult to troubleshoot a formatting problem if you have multiple CSS files or tags that might be applied in a particular situation. I really wish I could tap on an error and have it tell me which CSS statement caused it to look like it does. I encounter these kinds of problems when I try and reformat other peoples eBooks for my own use.

Dale

[cmbs]

I generally find it easier to completely rewrite a webpage from scratch than to try and figure out what someone else did to mess their page up. Seriously. Any little thing might cause great big problems. But I find it pretty easy when I am writing a page from scratch and I know what I have done to it.

I don't use css when formatting books. I want to leave the most possible up to the individual reader so I purposely do not format anything. I just make headers larger than regular text (but still with the ability for the reader to change the size), and a few other things in some situations. But mainly I'm trying to leave it to the end user to have the most control possible.

[WillAdams]

If it's plain text and the source is readily available, it's quite easy for a person to make a .pdf which will display quite nicely on a reader (or some other sort of ebook format) --- the problem only arises when someone for some reason has taken text, flowed it into a .pdf and failed to size / format it for the current, small-size, e-ink screens.

Given how new they are, and their limited numbers, this isn't that surprising. Give it time, it'll change.

For my part, I find the control a .pdf affords important for preventing typographic errors such as stacks which can't be controlled algorithmically.

William