PDF is not an eBook format

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Book A) A bit bigger than the rest, classic cloth hardcover with stitch binding, good quality and design, $30
Book B) Almost same size as Book A, but perfect-bound (glue bound) trade paperback, good paper and design, $20
Book C) Mass market paperback, passable paper and OK printing, but not particularly good. Fairly compact, $10
Book D) Somehow-legal txt file printed with an inkjet in a big font on low-grade recycled paper, in a cheap D-ring binder, A4 sized $2
Book E) Another mass-market-sized paperback but from a different publisher with much better paper, cover art, and typography than Book C. $18

Which one would you buy? No shuffling like "depends on what kind of book..." allowed.

If I'm financially flush, book C is my first choice. I like the small size & portability of mmpbs; I've always preferred them to hardcover or trade paperbacks. When I've got less money to spare, I'll take D; it's several steps up from the dot-matrix printed books I used to sometimes read. (Does it have to be in a big font? Why wasn't it laid out in two or three columns like a newsletter? That's what I do when I'm printing ebooks.)

I appreciate good layouts in books, but I'm fairly oblivious to the finer points of typography. (And I say that as someone who's chatted with people who design fonts for a living; I appreciate the elegance and complexity involved, but the nuances are wasted on me. I have preferences, but a book's layout has to be truly hideous before I'll stop reading.) Portability is my top concern; I read fast, and nearly constantly when I can, and I want the next book at my fingertips when I finish this one. The only books I want in hardcover or durable bindings are reference books, generally RPG manuals.

I won't say that my interests are best, or that the industry should revolve around them... but the industry should take them into consideration, because I won't pay extra for good typesetting; I'd rather buy text files that I have to format myself.

I don't expect the industry to settle on one format of ebook any more than we've settled on one size of computer screen, or one type of car, or one material for cooking pots. Different needs, different interests, different media.

My ebook reading preferences are:
1) PDF I've made myself: 3.46x4.6" pages, .1" margins, 9pt Fontin condensed .1 pts 3pt between paragraphs 1st line indented .3" main text, 12 pt centered chapter headers, title page formatted to my artistic whims of the moment, PDF with chapters bookmarked and tags;

2) PDF I've made myself to share with other people: font change to Georgia, proabably 10 or 11-pt main text size;

3) ePub
4) RTF 15 or 16 pt basic font size,
5) Calibre-made LRF (which goes here, but in practicality doesn't exist; I don't convert to LRF, and Sony's LRX's are all made with a larger font than I'm comfortable reading)
6) Commercial "paperback sized" PDF, cropped to remove headers/footers, possibly with bookmarks added, with tags & metadata added,
7) Txt
8) Commercial "paper back sized" PDF, locked to prevent editing. (This'd be ADE PDFs, which I don't have any of? Or PDFs I pick up somewhere that I don't have access to my unlock software.)
9) Letter-sized PDFs.

I don't know which of those PDF versions is supposed to make me give up my ePub preference. I do know that there is NO hint from publishers that they're considering making PDFs sized for e-Ink readers, of any size.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks

This attitude reminds me very much of the people who insist that the ONLY way to see a movie is with a behemoth screen HD television with surround sound stereo and a $20,000 home theater investment.

Yes, expecting multi-million dollar publishers to keep to the bare-minimum quality standards established over the last few centuries is EXACTLY like demanding to watch television only in HD on a $20,000 home theater!

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks

If a given creator will not create content to suit the audience's needs because the creator insists on dictating exactly what the viewer/reading experience should and MUST be, please step aside. There are a multitude of creators behind you who would be happy to sell the majority of consumers content in a format that suits their needs.

Hopefully as per your insightful stance, you're sticking solely to multiangle DVDs from now on. Just don't watch them when the kids are home.

- Ahi

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by ahi

Yes, expecting multi-million dollar publishers to keep to the bare-minimum quality standards established over the last few centuries is EXACTLY like demanding to watch television only in HD on a $20,000 home theater!

- Ahi

lol@publishers

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

lol@publishers

It's taking less and less to make you fall back on empty (and not even altogether coherent) attempts at ridicule.

Are you just publicly delighting at the thought of self-publishing from your helium-balloon again while the entire publishing industry automatically crumbles miles beneath your feet?

- Ahi

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by ahi

It's taking less and less to make you fall back on empty (and not even altogether coherent) attempts at ridicule.

Are you just publicly delighting at the thought of self-publishing from your helium-balloon again while the entire publishing industry automatically crumbles miles beneath your feet?

- Ahi

No, I just don't take anybody seriously who throws around words like 'philistine' in a conversation about design. Your arguments have no weight now, very little currency and zero interest to me. Hence the laughter, and lots of it, from the belly too

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by ahi

Hopefully as per your insightful stance, you're sticking solely to multiangle DVDs from now on. Just don't watch them when the kids are home.

- Ahi

Which part of "...that suits their need" you didn't understand?
Blu-Ray suits my needs, HD-Radio does not. Did you had a point of any sort?
Reflowable formats suit my needs for e-books, Pdf only to send report to the boss. Sorry, but I think you snapping at people because they don't need what you do. Adapt. I bet hand writers also complained about a printing press. And narrators about hand writers

BTW. Few centuries tradition very often means absolutely nothing. Horse cariages and sail boats come to mind.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by dmikov

Which part of "...that suits their need" you didn't understand?
Blu-Ray suits my needs, HD-Radio does not. Did you had a point of any sort?
Reflowable formats suit my needs for e-books, Pdf only to send report to the boss. Sorry, but I think you snapping at people because they don't need what you do. Adapt. I bet hand writers also complained about a printing press. And narrators about hand writers

BTW. Few centuries tradition very often means absolutely nothing. Horse cariages and sail boats come to mind.

OH

MY

GOD!!!

I couldn't care less what these people or any other people think they want.

Despite the 20,000+ downloads of my only eBook offering this year (PDF and other formats), it is in no way significant to my business model--in fact I do it quite entirely for the public good.

So I don't need to adapt, because...

1) eBooks are at best tangential to what I do.
2) my eBook is (and my future eBooks will be) available in multiple formats.
3) PDFs (both mine and other people's) are downloaded like hotcakes--PDF *IS*, despite the general unavailability of eBook-reader-sized PDFs, the most popular eBook format. Hell, this is borne out even by surveys that Mobileread members sporadically try to taint in favour of ePub.

The reason I am snapping at people is because they are talking out of their ass. Merely liking books doesn't make you competent to comment on bookmaking, much as merely liking cars doesn't make you competent to comment about car-restoration. This thread is a testament to legions that are convinced they are right on a topic they clearly haven't the slightest clue about.

Instead of thinking about horse carriages and sailboats, think about basic design principles. Cars still have windows, and some are open to the air... just like carriages were. Boats likewise retain basic design principles that have proven themselves over the centuries... regardless of whether they use sails or motorized propellers.

Typography in books is like windows on carriages. eBooks will have to get it right if they are ever to become a serious alternative to books, the same way as cars aren't being built as windowless tanks even though recording/display technology would make it feasible to do so.

You might be so brilliant or unique that you don't need proper typography in your books, just as you might be so brilliant or unique that you don't need windows on your car... but that doesn't mean that typographically-broken books or windowless cars are respectable concepts that society will ever embrace or even accept. They won't.

There are utterly straightforward solutions to people wanting variable-size fonts that still use fixed layouts. The key thing to understand is that reflow is a fundamentally broken concept in relation to books--it will not survive the maturing of the eBook market, like it or not.

And, to answer your question, as to which part of "suits their need" I don't understand: I understand everything perfectly. It's just patently clear that the person commenting, like too many people in this thread and on this board, are not knowledgeable enough to either understand what it is they want... because in effect what keeps getting repeating here ad nauseum basically translates to:

I don't want my eBooks to be specially designed to be easy and pleasant to read because I want my eBooks to be easy and pleasant to read.

Typography is ENTIRELY about enhancing the reading experience by making the text "disappear" and letting the reader focus on the content. If you have decided not to care about that... its nonsensical to talk about ease of reading, which nonetheless seems to be people's mantra about reflow... and is basically nonsense.

Fixed layouts and adjustable font-sizes are perfectly compatible concepts that I am certain will be joined in the future, eBooks eventually featuring quality typography with multiple font-sizes.

Reflow however is fundamentally incompatible with quality typography. Why? Because typography is not a machine-solvable problem. It requires a human mind. Therefore if your layout is not fixed, proper typography is practically speaking impossible to achieve for the overwhelming majority of process documents.

Any of this getting through to anyone? This must be the 30th time I state this in this thread... although since even programmers semi-regularly fail to comprehend this, I suppose it's understandable that lay people would think otherwise.

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

No, I just don't take anybody seriously who throws around words like 'philistine' in a conversation about design. Your arguments have no weight now, very little currency and zero interest to me. Hence the laughter, and lots of it, from the belly too

In other words... you've nothing to add to this thread... but you'll keep acting juvenile. Is that about right?

Godspeed to you!

- Ahi

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks

... HD television with surround sound stereo and a $20,000 home theater investment.
....

"... HD television with surround sound stereo...?"

Powerful argument.... I'll just have to assume, that your knowledge of PDF, typography and design, is only equaled by your knowledge of Home Theater.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

If I'm financially flush, book C is my first choice. I like the small size & portability of mmpbs; I've always preferred them to hardcover or trade paperbacks. When I've got less money to spare, I'll take D; it's several steps up from the dot-matrix printed books I used to sometimes read. (Does it have to be in a big font? Why wasn't it laid out in two or three columns like a newsletter? That's what I do when I'm printing ebooks.)

The parameters of the exercise are not to suggest comprehensive realistic choice, but rather allow people a shot at their instinctive default choices. The problem is that people who haven't read my opinions would automatically assume that one or more choices is somehow wrong, and so they try to bypass the constraints of the exercise in order to suggest that they've transcended any attempts I'd make to belittle them. Truth is, it's just an exercise, and to a point it helps illustrate the angles we discuss this topic from.

I appreciate good layouts in books, but I'm fairly oblivious to the finer points of typography. (And I say that as someone who's chatted with people who design fonts for a living; I appreciate the elegance and complexity involved, but the nuances are wasted on me. I have preferences, but a book's layout has to be truly hideous before I'll stop reading.) Portability is my top concern; I read fast, and nearly constantly when I can, and I want the next book at my fingertips when I finish this one. The only books I want in hardcover or durable bindings are reference books, generally RPG manuals.

Certainly many people are like this. I was looking around for The Catcher in the Rye the other day at the bookstore and picked up a very compact version that attracted my eye on size alone. Picked it up and thumbed through it, rather aghast by the terrible printing. For once, I understood what was meant when some folks claimed their ebook reader yielded better viewing quality than some paperbacks. This thing was so poorly printed on such mediocre paper that I didn't even bother looking at the price on the back. Doesn't make me any better or worse than people who snatch it up for being a compact copy regardless of textual presentation.

I won't say that my interests are best, or that the industry should revolve around them... but the industry should take them into consideration, because I won't pay extra for good typesetting; I'd rather buy text files that I have to format myself.

I don't expect the industry to settle on one format of ebook any more than we've settled on one size of computer screen, or one type of car, or one material for cooking pots. Different needs, different interests, different media.

This is a very reasonable statement. Of course, currently you're paying extra for novelty of digital when it comes to modern books. Paperback pricing and higher for intangible book-viewing licenses is ridiculous. It's almost like the publishing industry is mocking ebook readers sometimes. There are potential solutions, but it seems that ebook development is still in the dark ages, and epub is a sort of patchwork that will "more-or-less" get the job done for the limited (but rapidly growing) consumer base. Seems most people who own Kindles and other ebook reading devices have ridiculously low aesthetic standards anyway, and that doesn't really help in terms of pushing to protect the design-oriented sides of bookmaking in the digital era. PDFs are done generally without thought to that market, since the majority of ebook reading is still done on a PC.

My ebook reading preferences are:
1) PDF I've made myself: 3.46x4.6" pages, .1" margins, 9pt Fontin condensed .1 pts 3pt between paragraphs 1st line indented .3" main text, 12 pt centered chapter headers, title page formatted to my artistic whims of the moment, PDF with chapters bookmarked and tags;

2) PDF I've made myself to share with other people: font change to Georgia, proabably 10 or 11-pt main text size;

3) ePub
4) RTF 15 or 16 pt basic font size,
5) Calibre-made LRF (which goes here, but in practicality doesn't exist; I don't convert to LRF, and Sony's LRX's are all made with a larger font than I'm comfortable reading)
6) Commercial "paperback sized" PDF, cropped to remove headers/footers, possibly with bookmarks added, with tags & metadata added,
7) Txt
8) Commercial "paper back sized" PDF, locked to prevent editing. (This'd be ADE PDFs, which I don't have any of? Or PDFs I pick up somewhere that I don't have access to my unlock software.)
9) Letter-sized PDFs.

I don't know which of those PDF versions is supposed to make me give up my ePub preference. I do know that there is NO hint from publishers that they're considering making PDFs sized for e-Ink readers, of any size.

As you noticed, people who support PDF as a book format support it on principle, but not on current provider offerings. Many here agree that PDFs done nowadays are generally of a very low standard. That does not diminish the potential of the format, which to them (and me) is superior for presentation purposes when used effectively. Yes, the key word is effectively, which is not done currently. I'll buy an ePub of a book instead of a PDF under most circumstances because ebook production is so miserably poor that ePub is about the best out-of-box offering. That's not a credit to ePub, but an insult to the publishing industry.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

This is a very reasonable statement. Of course, currently you're paying extra for novelty of digital when it comes to modern books. Paperback pricing and higher for intangible book-viewing licenses is ridiculous.

I don't buy DRM'd ebooks. That cuts out the "pay extra for novelty" part... non-DRM'd ebooks tend to be cheaper than paperbacks, pretty much everywhere that sells them.

This limits my ebook reading range; I don't get to read current bestsellers. However, it's not like there's any shortage of good free reading material online.

And I have occasionally bought paper books in order to cut the bindings, scan & convert them to ebook formats so I can read them. I expect to do more of this in the future.

It's almost like the publishing industry is mocking ebook readers sometimes. There are potential solutions, but it seems that ebook development is still in the dark ages, and epub is a sort of patchwork that will "more-or-less" get the job done for the limited (but rapidly growing) consumer base.

Publishers are fighting hard to promote "one purchase = one person reading," which has never been the case for print books; their focus on this concept scrambles all the rest of their thinking about ebooks, including what formats to offer.

Part of what got print books' typography established, was the open exchange and sharing of those books--people loaned them to friends, who said things like "damn, how can you read this tiny type?" If only one reader got the book, if it was comfortable for that reader, he'd buy another book from that company. If he didn't like the layout or font, he wouldn't--but he also wouldn't be likely to write a letter to the publisher; he'd assume that since they printed lots of them, *someone* must like that layout.

Shared books are part of how we got standards for layouts and typography. By not allowing ebooks to be exchanged among buyers, publishers have cut off a lot of their potential feedback about what works & what doesn't.

As you noticed, people who support PDF as a book format support it on principle, but not on current provider offerings. Many here agree that PDFs done nowadays are generally of a very low standard. That does not diminish the potential of the format...

Nor does it give any hope that publishers in the future will use the format to its fullest potential.

Putting proper metadata in PDFs is a matter of 30 seconds, if it's done the slow way, with Acrobat Pro & individual files. Applied in batch to a hundred or more, it's only a few extra seconds. And yet many publishers don't bother to do this with their PDFs, especially their free promos. (Why they expect people to buy their books when the freebies are badly-formatted, I have no idea.)

It's not that I've got anything against PDFs, but that I don't expect publishers to bother offering good ones. I don't expect them to use ePub to its fullest ability, either, and I'd be frightened if they tried--I've been to some of their websites, and I don't want their HTML attempts in my ebooks.
However, mediocre ePub is a hell of a lot better than mediocre PDF, for almost everyone who reads ebooks.

[Kostas]

Originally Posted by ahi

The reason I am snapping at people is because they are talking out of their ass. Merely liking books doesn't make you competent to comment on bookmaking, much as merely liking cars doesn't make you competent to comment about car-restoration. This thread is a testament to legions that are convinced they are right on a topic they clearly haven't the slightest clue about.
- Ahi

Wait, does liking books gives us the right to have an opinion on how we want them to look?
Or should we leave this to "typography experts"?
I suddenly feel guilty for my ignorance.
And I do think that pdfs are perfect on my computer but want anything else but pdf on my handheld device.
Am I as a consumer-reader on the topic though I have not the slightest idea about typography technicalities?
Well, my ignorant's 2 cents guess is that in 2 years from now pdf will be an exception on mobile reading devices.
Just because there are hords of ignorants like me who very subjectively find that pdfs are not satisfactory on a small screen.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's not that I've got anything against PDFs, but that I don't expect publishers to bother offering good ones. I don't expect them to use ePub to its fullest ability, either, and I'd be frightened if they tried--I've been to some of their websites, and I don't want their HTML attempts in my ebooks.
However, mediocre ePub is a hell of a lot better than mediocre PDF, for almost everyone who reads ebooks.

I agree, but that's another part of why this discussion has gone on so long. Most of the PDF advocates feel very strongly about the need to raise the standards for ebooks the future, and many of the ePub advocates aren't too concerned about what MIGHT happen in the future, but rather on the pragmatics of now.

I still prefer paper books over anything with e-ink due to general quality issues and responsiveness. However, when the technology is better, I'll be much more happy making more PDFs for myself. Right now, it almost seems futile. Polishing a turd, as they say.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

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.

Maybe it's me, but I don't understand what you're talking about. You don't need to use DVI driver with LaTeX--pdfLaTeX exists after all--and the only "program" that interacts with DVI driver that would need to be created already exists.

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.

Again, I don't understand what you're talking about. What's the relevant difference?

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.

Converting between standard TeX and XHTML most certainly is trivial. You're talking to someone who has done so multiple times. The only part of it that isn't trivial is the vast array of TeX code that currently has no counterpart in XHTML, since the latter is more primitive.

Just another advantage of TeX--really all you can do now for graphics in an ePub is embed JPG, GIF or PNG images, none of which are infinitely scaleable. With TeX you could put the TikZ code right in, or use .eps, and then you can zoom in to your heart's delight.

Of course you need to understand something to debug it directly, but how is that relevant? If you want people to use WYSIWYG editors or write their source in HTML and convert, debugging won't be necessary. Of course if they write directly in TeX, they'll need to understand TeX anyway.

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.

I don't understand the above sentences. What are you trying to say? If these sorts of legal issues aren't sorted now, they will be soon since this kind of endeavor is becoming more and more common.

Of course if something isn't unqualifiedly public domain, it's not public domain, but it doesn't have to be public domain if it's something in between, but their use of it falls under the usage restrictions of that in-between. And believe me, putting a TeX renderer on a device is certainly allowed by the TeX license, even if the full details of that license aren't entirely legally clear. If companies are scared away by the gray area, so much the worse for them.

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

The DRM system isn't going to be "handling TeX". What would that even mean? The DRM system just needs to be involved in en/decrypting the document's code, and I can't think of any reason why precisely the same system couldn't be used that works with HTML code.

And you say Tex "could" be expanded. Well, again, ePuB is having these things dicusssed now.

Don't put "could" in scare quotes. Dozens of new packages are added to CTAN every month. There already are LaTeX packages for embedding audio and video -- in that sense, it's further along that merely being "discussed".

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.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. "Doing the things print books can do"--how are print books relevant here? Are you going back to your untrue belief that TeX is currently being used only to produce print books?

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!).

LaTeX already has a way of marking what language a word is. That's all that is needed.

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.

There is no reason to think this would be harder to add to TeX than it would be with ePub.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

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.

As mentioned, I imagine some of this stuff will be sorted out as this kind of endeavor becomes more complicated. At least I hope so. I'll be very depressed otherwise.

I suspect that the issue is not whether Knuth would sue (see me pretend I know who or what Knuth is),

Donald Knuth (homepage / Wikipedia)

He's made it pretty clear that he considers TeX in all intents and purposes in the public domain, with one exception: he thinks any significant derivatives should have a different name, which is all he requires. If some reader company made their own version, and renamed it, there is no way anything would stand up in court against them. Again, if they're scared off by this, it's their loss.

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.

Sony right now doesn't use its own code. The OS is a free linux system that probably use precisely because they don't pay for it. The other elements, such as the PDF renderer, they pay for from software designers like Adobe. The attraction to using TeX is that they wouldn't have to pay for it. Yes, Amazon would be free to use the same code, but Sony is really making their money on selling you the hardware and the books from the store as is, and all that would be retained.

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. 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

Actually, what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily incompatible with ePub being the standard. It'd probably be easier to modify the TeX renderer to directly render ePub/HTML source (since HTML and TeX source is pretty similar as is) than to produce an entirely new high-quality renderer for ePub.