PDF is not an eBook format

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Hm, most people tend to buy regular size books, rather than the various mini-sized novelty editions.

That's because mini-sized novelty editions have lots of pages in a tiny space; they're hard to read because the paper curve makes the text in the middle hard to see, and hard to read because holding them open is a strain. A 3" screen doesn't have these problems. Plenty of people have no problem using 3" post-it notes all day long.

A regular size trade paperback is 7 x 9 inches (17.8 x 22.9 cm), which is the equivalent of a diagonal screen size of 11.5 inches (29.2 cm). Which is larger, than the 9.7 inches screen of the Kindle DX.

The layout difference between trade paperbacks and MMPBs is either larger text, or fewer pages. Occasinally, it's is whitespace--with the same text size, the book can have larger margins and be easier to hold open to read text on the inner-binding side of the page. These reasons don't apply to ebooks read on a flat screen.

MMPBs are (roughly) 4.25x7.25"; diagonal for the text, not counting the margins, is as large as about 7", and sometimes as small as 6", especially for young adult books. You don't need to look at the margins, because ebook readers have that part covered by hardware--there's already a place to put your fingers without overlapping the text, so you don't need to leave half an inch of whitespace around the words.

However, an 8" screen should provide plenty of reading space, and even allow a comfortable margin. A 5" screen would require adjusting to the idea of less words on a page, but not many less, especially for readers of some mainstream novels--many of the Harlequins released in ebook format have atrociously huge margins compared to what I'm used to.

However, there is no reason reading from a screen should be the same kind of experience as reading from a page, any more than seeing a movie in a theatre should be the same experience as watching a play. Early movies were basically plays-on-film; later movies expanded into activities that just can't be created on a stage. Early ebooks are still trying to re-create the printed page on a computer screen; later, people will get used to the idea that an "ebook reader" is as much a different format for reading as the differences between book/newspaper/magazine/trifold pamphlet, and adjust their expectations to match the medium.

And I expect they'll no more become standardized than cellphones or computers have... many features will be common to most, but there will always be both minimalist, cheaper versions, and exotic versions that have expensive, special-purpose features.

[cmdahler]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

There also seems to be no reason why you'd need to embed TeX itself, as I've said before - it can output PDF's, which can allready be read. And there are still issues with reflow on TeX-created PDF's, which would be no different if you ran a TeX rendering engine directly.

This is getting ridiculous. The whole point to embedding TeX is so your layout from the engine is properly typeset for your screen size. That avoids the whole PDF issue entirely.

Anyway, this argument is moving into the silly zone. You don't really know what TeX is or what it does, that's fairly obvious at this point. I will give you this, however: the licensing on TeX would likely need to be restructured to meet the needs of the big corporations selling the end product before TeX could be used as a rendering engine on a commercial device. This is, most likely, something Knuth would happily do.

Before something like that would happen, though, the big companies (Amazon and Sony being the only real players in this market that amount to anything serious) would have to get their heads out of their collective backsides and really come up with a true typesetting direction they want their machines to pursue. Were I in charge, I would be trying to craft my device to mimic the printed page as closely as possible. I would want to give my readers an experience that was as close to indistinguishable from reading a paper book as technically feasible. That is not where ePub is at right now. At the moment, the entire mobile reader industry is a slapped-together, get-it-out-the-door-and-charge-as-much-as-possible-for-it haberdash that's all about throwing stuff at consumers without really planning and thinking long-term about the product and what it should be. Whenever (if ever) we move away from this quick-buck paradigm and head more into the long-term-planning phase as the entire print industry slowly moves away from paper entirely (decades down the line), we'll eventually then have a product that really does look like a printed book no matter how many times you hit the zoom button. Sadly, that's not where we are right now, although we could be a lot closer if the industry had chosen a different rendering engine for its standard than ePub.

[DawnFalcon]

The whole point is you're pushing a fixed layout on me, and I don't want a fixed layout. I agree it's utterly ridiculous!

I understand precisely what TeX is designed to accomplish. and why it's developed as it has. And once more I'd rather have a designed-for-ebook standard using XHTML - ePuB - rather than the designed-for-print, legally-problematical TeX, which would add to the costs of creating ebooks because it uses a different markup language than those familar to anyone with web-design and layout experience. (Barriers. Every one a barrier to making ebooks)

"come up with a true typesetting direction they want their machines to pursue"

The whole point is I do not want a typesetting direction forced on me by the creator of my e-reader. That's print-book thinking, and forcing a fixed format onto the user regardless of their wishes will certainly, as you note, make it take decades for any sort of takeoff of ebooks, when you're ignoring every advantage of the format!

In less than a decade, e-readers will routinely have wireless. Then there's an awful lot you can do with dictionary referencing, eARC's and revisions and even dynamic interaction with ARG's.

You've certainly managed to convine me to study the motives of anyone pushing TeX as an ebook renderer very closely!

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

The whole point is you're pushing a fixed layout on me, and I don't want a fixed layout. I agree it's utterly ridiculous!

The point we've made over and over again is that TeX does not have a fixed layout. The only reason you think this is that you're used to PDFs produced by TeX. PDFs have fixed layouts. TeX source doesn't. It's scarcely different from HTML.

I understand precisely what TeX is designed to accomplish. and why it's developed as it has.

Not if you think TeX has a fixed layout, you don't.

And once more I'd rather have a designed-for-ebook standard using XHTML - ePuB - rather than the designed-for-print, legally-problematical TeX, which would add to the costs of creating ebooks because it uses a different markup language than those familar to anyone with web-design and layout experience. (Barriers. Every one a barrier to making ebooks)

Nonsense. Utter nonsense. TeX software is free. How could it drive up costs? Neither TeX nor XHTML was not designed for ebooks, but TeX was designed for something closer to an ebook than XHTML was.

Anyone who understands HTML can make the transition to TeX fairly smoothly. Unless you know both mark-up languages (which I do), don't pretend to understand what you don't.

Anyone who can understand <i>...</i> tags can understand \textit{...} tags.

I've actually created ebooks both with HTML source and with TeX source. The process of doing the markup is almost indistinguishable. If anything, TeX is a little easier for books, since it was meant for books. There are special tags for creating tables of contents and index and footnotes and bibliographies. Not so with HTML, though with a little effort you can do it there too. But those differences are not important. The difference that is important is that I get better results with the same effort with TeX.

The whole point is I do not want a typesetting direction forced on me by the creator of my e-reader. That's print-book thinking, and forcing a fixed format onto the user regardless of their wishes will certainly, as you note, make it take decades for any sort of takeoff of ebooks, when you're ignoring every advantage of the format!

Again, you clearly do not understand what TeX is if you think it's about fixed formats.

You've certainly managed to convine me to study the motives of anyone pushing TeX as an ebook renderer very closely!

My motive is that I'm someone who has done both, and TeX gives better results. What other motive could I have? No one can make money pushing TeX. Knuth designed it to be free.

[DawnFalcon]

No, someone who is familiar with XHTML is not necessarily immediately going to know the details of creating a TeX book*. Not to a professional standard. There are training costs, and there are the delays this causes. And then you have to remember that this is only for a limited subset of ebooks, and the question of value immediately arrises.

(How is knowing XHTML going to tell you what, for example, /badness does?)

Sure, TeX has the tags for footers and such. Where are the tags for dictionary referencing (and not), for dynamic content, for pop-up text, for moving to a pre-set bookmark? All these things have been discussed as possibles for ePuB, and I don't see them being discussed for TeX. You want to freeze ebooks into having the same content as a printed book, which I simply don't.

TeX is not a standard, and if you don't understand the legal problems (you cannot have conditional "public domain". There has to be a proper liscence, and there isn't!), then I'm sorry, but they do exist and they will cause problems. Intentions count for nothing, what matters are the actual legal practicalities.

Your motive? To freeze ebooks into pbook's feature set, if you're aware of it or not. That's what being limited to a general TeX renderer* means. Again, if there was an effort to clean up the legal problems of having the renderer on the device, and to create a proper subset for ebooks then perhaps I'd feel differently, but as this stand that's what using TeX means for ebooks.

(*Although what you actually probably mean is a DVI driver, no?)

It's not coincidence that PDF is the standard output from TeX.

Edit: Oh, and don't forget that in the short term you have to deal with DRM. I don't believe TeX supports DRM natively, so it would need another custom DRM format layered on top of it...

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

...
Very few paperbacks are that large here, they're far more typically A size (~8" diagonal) rather than "trade" size (which is 135 mm x 216mm (5.32" x 8.51") - a 10" diagonal), 7"x9" is a hardback size.
...
"But the new Apple MacBooks do 7 hours on video"

Knowing someone with one, I will quote his take on that: "If you're watching just the right format in a letterbox format". Okay, actually it was ruder than that, but that's the gist of it. And for the iRex, you mean 6-7 hours? Well, how does that compete again?

Where is "here?" The supermarket checkout stand?

Because this is where the smallest size of paperbacks, that you refer to, is generally found. And maybe that's why you're used to cr@ppy typesetting....

I have had an 8" e-reader, I currently have a 6" one, as well as an 9.7" one. For me, the 6" inch provides an experience similar to reading a manuscript though a 6" frame. Fine, but not exactly enjoyable.

The Kindle DX is better, but the screen is still not large enough to get me to the size of a hardcover, and the lack of decent PDF support means, that it still feels like I am reading a manuscript, rather than a book.

As to your MacBook comment, I can't make any sense of it. And I do have one of the new sealed battery MacBooks, so if you have a question, just ask.

[DawnFalcon]

...Waterstones.

Please, if you're going to be insulting, at least pick something which isn't clearly untrue.

And sure, you want a larger screen. That's fine. But don't try and extrapolate that beyond your own experience when a lot of people do fine with smaller screens, and whey they say that the size of a device is a major consideration!

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

No, someone who is familiar with XHTML is not necessarily immediately going to know the details of creating a TeX book*. Not to a professional standard. There are training costs, and there are the delays this causes. And then you have to remember that this is only for a limited subset of ebooks, and the question of value immediately arrises.

I taught myself enough TeX to be able to produce a professional looking book in an afternoon.

I didn't understand what you were saying about DVI drivers. It doesn't matter if it's producing DVI or PDF or PS or whatnot to me.

(How is knowing XHTML going to tell you what, for example, /badness does?)

You don't need to know anything about badness in order to be a TeX user... any more than you need to know advanced PHP, ASP or JavaScript to write a basic HTML document. If you want to do more advanced stuff with it, like creating new style sheets, etc., it helps, and it has the power for that stuff, but it's not relevant.

Sure, TeX has the tags for footers and such. Where are the tags for dictionary referencing (and not), for dynamic content, for pop-up text, for moving to a pre-set bookmark?

You don't need tags for dictionary referencing. All works would be dictionary-reference-able: that's a feature of the display software, not TeX. The same goes for bookmarks. Actually with thing like beamer, you can already do pop-up text and some dynamic content with it. And if not, it's easily expandable.

All these things have been discussed as possibles for ePuB, and I don't see them being discussed for TeX. You want to freeze ebooks into having the same content as a printed book, which I simply don't.

If ePub can be expanded to do it, so can a similar format using TeX rather than HTML for its core rendering. Why would you think otherwise?

TeX is not a standard, and if you don't understand the legal problems (you cannot have conditional "public domain". There has to be a proper liscence, and there isn't!), then I'm sorry, but they do exist and they will cause problems. Intentions count for nothing, what matters are the actual legal practicalities.

First of all, there are licenses, such as some of the Creative Commons licenses, which are for all intents and purposes conditional public domain. It may be that Knuth would have to make the legal issues clearer, but there's nothing preventing him from doing so, and I can't imagine any roadblocks here. What, specifically, do you see as a legal hurdle here? You speak vaguely. Who is going to be suing whom? Do you honestly think Knuth is going to file a lawsuit with Amazon or Sony if they put TeX software on their readers and charge for the hardware?

Your motive? To freeze ebooks into pbook's feature set, if you're aware of it or not. That's what being limited to a general TeX renderer* means.

I don't mind the reader having other renderers. But you really think that using a TeX renderer to render the text has anything to do with the other features a reader may or may not have? Why would it?

Edit: Oh, and don't forget that in the short term you have to deal with DRM. I don't believe TeX supports DRM natively, so it would need another custom DRM format layered on top of it...

HTML doesn't support DRM natively either. They add the DRM to the ePub archive that contains HTML source. Presumably they'd do the same for some kind of archive that has encrypted TeX source underneath it. This does make my skin crawl, as I've already explained, but DRM does that...

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I taught myself enough TeX to be able to produce a professional looking book in an afternoon.

I didn't understand what you were saying about DVI drivers. It doesn't matter if it's producing DVI or PDF or PS or whatnot to me.

Well yes, but it's important. You have to match the features of the program you're making with TeX file with with the ones avaliable in the DVI driver. This isn't allways easy or obvious. With ePuB being a standard, you know what features you can drop back onto, with TeX this would be a real issue and incompatability would not only be possible, it'd be highly likely between different vendor's e-readers.

You don't need to know anything about badness in order to be a TeX user... any more than you need to know advanced PHP, ASP or JavaScript to write a basic HTML document.

It's necessary to understand it, and a bunch of other commands, for debugging the output. HTML and ePuB's XHTML are close in scripting language terms, TeX is different. This isn't trivial.

First of all, there are licenses, such as some of the Creative Commons licenses, which are for all intents and purposes conditional public domain. It may be that Knuth would have to make the legal issues clearer, but there's nothing preventing him from doing so, and I can't imagine any roadblocks here. What, specifically, do you see as a legal hurdle here? You speak vaguely. Who is going to be suing whom? Do you honestly think Knuth is going to file a lawsuit with Amazon or Sony if they put TeX software on their readers and charge for the hardware?

In legal terms, "think" is meaningless. The issue to be considered is risk. Use under a CC liscence is a valid liscence, but when there's an attempt to put conditions on something supposedly in the public domain, it can and has been argued that it is not only not public domain, but that no liscence exists.

HTML doesn't support DRM natively either. They add the DRM to the ePub archive that contains HTML source. Presumably they'd do the same for some kind of archive that has encrypted TeX source underneath it. This does make my skin crawl, as I've already explained, but DRM does that...

But you're going to have to add another DRM system in to handle TeX, further fragmenting the market. How is that helpful?

And you say Tex "could" be expanded. Well, again, ePuB is having these things dicusssed now. Getting ebooks into doing the things that only they can do is a far better way of pushing their adoption, as a standard, and speeding up work on the rendering engine, than doing the things print books can do and being as marginalised as they are now before slowly bringing in vendor-specific ways of doing ebook-only things.

And yes, you /do/ want tags for dictionary referencing (there are multiple leanings for some words, you know, and it's useful to indicate which applies, for instance!). Then, as I said, there are things like embedded bookmarks (ones set in the book, not user-defined ones), popup text and so on...these can and should be in the book format, if they're to be adopted. They are clear areas where TeX is tied to print books and does not take into account the medium.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by frabjous

First of all, there are licenses, such as some of the Creative Commons licenses, which are for all intents and purposes conditional public domain.

No, they are not. CC licenses are no different from the note that gaming books add to their character sheet pages--"permission is granted to copy for personal use." Or from licensing a nonprofit org to make copies of a book to distribute.

The license is offered to the general public, but it's still very much a license on use that could be restricted by copyright. The fact that we've come to think of copyright as meaning either "nobody can use it unless they pay me" or "PD; anyone can do anything they want with it" is a problem resulting from litigious corporations; copyrighted material that's widely used with permission has been around for a long time.

It may be that Knuth would have to make the legal issues clearer, but there's nothing preventing him from doing so, and I can't imagine any roadblocks here. What, specifically, do you see as a legal hurdle here? You speak vaguely. Who is going to be suing whom? Do you honestly think Knuth is going to file a lawsuit with Amazon or Sony if they put TeX software on their readers and charge for the hardware?

I suspect that the issue is not whether Knuth would sue (see me pretend I know who or what Knuth is), but whether Sony, for example, were to put months and thousands of dollars into developing a TeX interpreter in an ebook reader, only to have that research snatched out from under them by their competitors, who could buy a reader, and grab the software to install on their own devices.

Sony's not worried about Knuth suing; they're trying (I'm hypothesizing) to protect their ability to sue Amazon for copying their code. If the code is open source, or some variant of a CC share-alike license, that may not be possible.

[Moejoe]

You can all stop arguing now. ePub is the standard, Sony have backed it exclusively, everywhere outside of North America is using it. Sony does it, Waterstones, Borders do it...even educated fleas do it.. let's do it...let's... oh wait, I've lapsed into Cole Porter again

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Jellby

To be fair, you should compare Adobe-rendered ePUBs not with carefully crafted PDFs, but with default letter-size, Arial-type, MSWord-created PDFs...

Most MS Word created PDFs are nasty things. Poor fonts, poor margins, poor type size... Just not nice.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Do you think that an industry-wide move to PDF instead of other formats will fix this? That publishers will produce PDFs arranged to match your reading requirements?

Problem with publishers making PDF for specific screen sizes is still an issue. Sure it might look good on my 505. But what if I was to decide to get a Daily Edition or some other reader with a larger then 6" screen? The PDFs would then not look good. PDF is a fixed format that is not good for situations where you need to have them tailored to a wide range of screen sized.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Problem with publishers making PDF for specific screen sizes is still an issue. Sure it might look good on my 505. But what if I was to decide to get a Daily Edition or some other reader with a larger then 6" screen? The PDFs would then not look good. PDF is a fixed format that is not good for situations where you need to have them tailored to a wide range of screen sized.

The best I could imagine for commercial PDFs is something like Feedbooks' setup... here's a couple of standard options (letter size, and popular reader size), and here's the button for the set-your-own-choices menu, so you can have the page size you want and possibly the base font size you want.

I don't expect any mainstream publishers to go for this; aside from the DRM nightmare I suspect it would entail, they're very caught with the notion that an ebook should look just like the print version. Sometimes I think this is to "fool" the customer into thinking it's "just as good," even though he's told it's not loanable or resellable. Sometimes I think they're just too lazy or oblivious to write code to allow it; they don't offer print books in multiple formats of the reader's choice, and don't understand why ebooks are different.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

You can all stop arguing now. ePub is the standard, Sony have backed it exclusively, everywhere outside of North America is using it....

I'd suggest asking your non-ereader equipped acquaintances, if they have ever heard of ePub. Then ask about PDF.

Their answers might give you a different idea of what is the standard....