PDF is not an eBook format

[PhishStyx]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

This whole set of pro-PDF responses seem to be neglecting a very fundamental fact. Paper based information is meant for comsumption by humans. Digital information is meant (primarily) for consumption by computers. Sure humans read ebooks, but computers read them a lot more.

I'm sorry, but your opening premise is inaccurate. Regardless of being put into digital format, e-books and other human oriented content (ie webpages) is in fact intended for consumption by humans. Computers surely transmit and organize that content for display, but they do not in any significant sense "read" it. You are conflating different meanings of the term read.

Indeed, I have confidence that e-book typography, including fonts, scalability, modular kerning, and other niceties of reading, will advance alongside the public's willingness to pay for those luxuries, and that advancement will bear semblance to (if not directly correlate with) improvements made in web browsers and web content.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

I'm sorry, but your opening premise is inaccurate. Regardless of being put into digital format, e-books and other human oriented content (ie webpages) is in fact intended for consumption by humans. Computers surely transmit and organize that content for display, but they do not in any significant sense "read" it. You are conflating different meanings of the term read.

No computers read content all the time. That's what search engines do and the computer "reading" of information (in the sense of extracting meaning from it) is a rapidly and inevitably growing process. A part of this whole process is the ability of computers to extract and recombine information from disparate sources, much more easily than humans. And display oriented formats like PDF just get in the way of that.

Improvements in the typrography options offered by semantic formats will undoubtedly happen, but non-semantic formats like PDF are obsolete, a temporary waystation on the road from clay tablets to digital information.

[rogue_ronin]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Improvements in the typography options offered by semantic formats will undoubtedly happen, but non-semantic formats like PDF are obsolete, a temporary waystation on the road from clay tablets to digital information.

Head, meet boot.



m a r

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

We don't need PDF. What we need is a well done ePub display. If we had kerning, & hyphenation, we'd be fine. That is all we need to be able to tell PDF to go take a flying leap.

And we also need good support of ePUB features (like page headers) and additional features (like real floating elements, in the TeX way).

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

This whole set of pro-PDF responses seem to be neglecting a very fundamental fact. Paper based information is meant for comsumption by humans. Digital information is meant (primarily) for consumption by computers. Sure humans read ebooks, but computers read them a lot more.

Given that, a format that maximizes ease of use for computers is the format of the future. Advanced typography (which is a way to make things more readable for humans, at the expense of readability for computers) will fall by the roadside.

Readability for computers means representing content independently of markup in a semantic fashion. PDF is absolutely (and understandably) miserable at that. So bye-bye PDF and bye-bye advanced typography.

If that is the premise you begin with, then you might as well say computers are made for computers so bye-bye human beings. If computers were not made to ultimately to aid human beings but rather to aid in digital forms then I think we're entering cuckoo land.

Yes, there are intermediary stages where it is machine aiding machine but the ultimate aim of that is to aid human beings. So I'm thinking of the UPC barcode which is not easily readable by human beings without the numbers at the bottom of the barcode. The UPC barcode was made to be machine readable. But the ultimate end process of that is to ultimately aid human beings somewhere down the line.

Digital books is an end of the line product and so ultimately its aim is for human beings.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

No computers read content all the time. That's what search engines do and the computer "reading" of information (in the sense of extracting meaning from it) is a rapidly and inevitably growing process. A part of this whole process is the ability of computers to extract and recombine information from disparate sources, much more easily than humans. And display oriented formats like PDF just get in the way of that.

Improvements in the typrography options offered by semantic formats will undoubtedly happen, but non-semantic formats like PDF are obsolete, a temporary waystation on the road from clay tablets to digital information.

I'm not sure how it is that PDF "gets in the way of that", meaning get in the way of computers being able to extract and recombine information. I think you're talking about a markup language? But you could actually tag PDFs down to the word I believe, but I do know that at least you can tag PDF down to the paragraph if not the word.

And what your argument makes me think of also is how prior to the days of GUI being popular, lots of people were saying GUI got in the way of computers handling information and even got in the way of human beings handling information. Ah well...the days of GUI is certainly not gone and were stronger than before ;-)

Ultimately I think those of us who expound the benefits of using PDF is ultimately making the argument that design (which includes typesetting, kerning, leading, layout, etc.) matters. The argument there is not actually to say PDF is the end-all-be-all, but is to explain why the other formats thus far are inadequate. Sure, another format could replace PDF, but what we're really talking about here is the importance of design that needs to be carried over in a new/forthcoming digital book format (one whose end consumption is ultimately for human beings and not for some machine).

[pking36330]

"PDF is not an eBook format"

Wishing that does not make it so. Obviously it is an eBook format, and based on Adobe's history and the sheer prevalance of PDF books available, it will continue as an eBook format until someone convinces Adobe the market is moving elsewhere (ePub) and they scheme where their product is in that new market (ADE).

And then we're left with all the legacy work's because entry into Adobe authoring products is VERY steep in order to finance their free reader products.

[JSWolf]

thibaulthalpern please have a look at the attachment I am linking. It is a sample ePub that I'd like you to try to find fault with.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...0&d=1240007547

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

If that is the premise you begin with, then you might as well say computers are made for computers so bye-bye human beings. If computers were not made to ultimately to aid human beings but rather to aid in digital forms then I think we're entering cuckoo land.

The larger point I was making is that the great advantage of digital information is that it can be post-processed far more easily than printed information. This post processing is done by computers. Computers dont post-process PDF well. The ability to post process - recombine, manipulate, search, display in different contexts, etc. is going to be far more important the the ability to control the exact placement of text.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The larger point I was making is that the great advantage of digital information is that it can be post-processed far more easily than printed information. This post processing is done by computers. Computers dont post-process PDF well. The ability to post process - recombine, manipulate, search, display in different contexts, etc. is going to be far more important the the ability to control the exact placement of text.

I have to disagree strongly.

Look at how the UI of operating systems has evolved. Look at how page presentation on the web has evolved.

Ereaders are still primitive devices, limited by both hardware and software. On the evolutionary line, they are probably where DOS was, or where pre-Mosaic browsers were.

But to be successful, they have to become general reading devices, which can accommodate not only books, but also much more complex layouts, such as magazines and visually "rich" books (think of Rizzoli or Taschen).

And I see the EPUB file above, but that's like showing a prefab blog page and claiming it is sufficient for all web needs. I see that it is very good for reflowing text, but it is still at a "word processor" level, and can't do nearly what a PDF can (see below).

In two-three years there will likely be hardware which can do much more than display dark gray text on light gray background. With a view to this future, I'd hate to see another dead-end format being introduced, to confuse an already fragmented market.

I am not saying that the format which will win will be PDF, but at the present, PDF is already a standard for desktop and widely used on the web, and is more robust than any of the competition. Plus, Adobe is actively developing it (see the new Mobile SDK) and will likely address many of the issues it currently has.

[kovidgoyal]

The UI of operating systems hasn't evolved in over 20 years. I actually think ebook readers are transient phenomena. They will be replaced by UMPCs with reflective display technology. The suitability of semantic formats has nothing to do with the limitations of ebook readers.

And as far as the evolution of the web is concerned, it is becoming more semantic, not less. PDF is not a standard for "desktop", whatever "desktop" may be. It is a standard for fixed size layouts, but as I've already explained above, fixed size layout is a remarkably unimportant thing, once you truly give up the legacy of paper in your mind.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

... And as far as the evolution of the web is concerned, it is becoming more semantic, not less....

I am not sure I understand this statement, at least in the context of presentation, which is at the core of my argument for PDF.

I would have imagined, that the web was quintessentially semantic, at its earliest beginnings, at the time of the original WorldWideWeb browser.

But now we have Flash, and video, and embedded fonts, and non-reflowable layouts, and non-reflowable ads.... The web is certainly not there, in terms of presentation capabilities, but it is well on its way. For an example, see this.

The ultimate goal is not freely reflowable content, randomly presented - we already have this, and have had it right from the primitive beginings.

The goal is to have the capability of fixed presentation, when required by complex (and yes, meaningful, to human users) layouts, combined with computer post-processing friendliness. And I don't see anything better than PDF to accomplish this, at this time.

[kovidgoyal]

By semantic, I mean that information in the source document is marked up by type rather than by position/appearance. See for example the new tags in HTML 5 (the next iteration of HTML). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_5

Note that semanticity does not preclude fixed size layouts. My point is simply that the more important aspect of information distribution is making the distribution more semantic, rather than better laid out. The advantages to making the information moe semantic far outweigh the advantages to making it better laid out. Given that, a format that is designed primarily to facilitate layout is unlikely to be the future of digital information.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

By semantic, I mean that information in the source document is marked up by type rather than by position/appearance. See for example the new tags in HTML 5 (the next iteration of HTML). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_5

Note that semanticity does not preclude fixed size layouts. My point is simply that the more important aspect of information distribution is making the distribution more semantic, rather than better laid out. The advantages to making the information moe semantic far outweigh the advantages to making it better laid out. Given that, a format that is designed primarily to facilitate layout is unlikely to be the future of digital information.

I see. But in this case, we are not all that far apart.

I still disagree with the position, that "the advantages to making the information more semantic far outweigh the advantages to making it better laid out."

I believe they are both important. Many advertisers would likely consider presentation of utmost importance, as would certain publishers. And certain users, of course.

If someone knowledgeable here tells me, that EPUB can faithfully reproduce a searchable layout as the one below, I'll be happy to start looking for a device which supports EPUB. But if it can't, then EPUB is not the right format for the future.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

All the other formats are totally unappealing to me including the ability for the end-user to substitute one font for the other. In another thread, I said that that ability is akin to saying a seven-year old who consider her or himself an expert in finger painting to be now an expert in making paintings like Van Gogh.

Many people who substitute fonts don't do it because they consider themselves experts in typography - they do it because they can't read the original font. As the population ages, the ability to select a larger or thicker font will become more and more important for readers who don't need the finest examples of typography, but do need to be able to see the words.

You may prefer PDF, they can't use it.

[All4Fun]

Why does there need to be a determination as to whether pdf is an ebook format or not? IMO, if I can read a digital file, then it's an ebook (electronic book). It's not a jpg, tiff, or gif file that we already know is an image file. Pdf's were intended to be read so IMO, it's an ebook.

Is there some kind of official meaning of an ebook format? Even if one exists, it's arrogant at best considering my notion that if I can read a file digitally, then it's an ebook.

I've quickly understood the differences between a pdf and an epub and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of both formats. If I were to stand on a corner and ask 100 different people what electronic format they use for reading ebooks, likely the majority will say pdf.

Why must I continue to feel that it's being rammed down my skull that pdfs are not an ebook format?

Or perhaps I'm just a little sensitive.