PDF is not an eBook format

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

jswolf said:
>One big downside for PDF....

>Because it is fixed it's not all that good for people who need to have a larger font size
>on screen. because once it's made, that's it, it's made.

And you're ignoring the possibility of a .pdf having tags and being reflowable, why?

Because reflowed PDFs are not as well-formatted as the average ePub. They lose their paragraph indents entirely, and the tagging has problems with short paragraphs (dialogue and poetry, mostly). Reflow also keeps the original page breaks, which leads to orphan lines.

And I've got several PDFs that, even with tagged reflow (and my willingness to read several lines of dialogue lumped together in a paragraph) have no comfortably-readable size; the M setting gets me text the same size as the original, only with no margins, and the L is too big for me to comfortably read.

Reflow is a tolerable workaround for PDFs that are unreadable on their own--letter-sized monstrosities; magazine articles in columns. Expecting it to work for well-designed PDFs is a cop-out; it says "I can't match what the reader needs, but they can pretend it's a badly-made ePub if they don't like the original version."

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Reflow is a tolerable workaround for PDFs that are unreadable on their own--letter-sized monstrosities; magazine articles in columns. Expecting it to work for well-designed PDFs is a cop-out; it says "I can't match what the reader needs, but they can pretend it's a badly-made ePub if they don't like the original version."

Maybe it's a cop-out that says I'm smarter than to take an 18 year old technology (HTML) that failed to make meaningful progress on typographic quality and use it for making books.

You seem to be ignoring far too many things that have been stated, explained, and suggested fairly recently, Elfwreck... so I won't get into any lengthy arguments with you this time around.

I find the utter willful deafness (blindness?) of people in this thread incomprehensible.

- Ahi

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The issue isn't, "can ePub look as good as optimized-for-your-screensize PDFs?" They cannot; no question there.

The issue is, "which will publishers be willing to spend money to produce: Optimized PDFs, or reflowable formats?" We have the answer to that one.

Name a company that sells PDFs sized for 6" screens.

The pro-ePub crowd aren't comparing the relative, possible merits of PDFs to ePubs; we're comparing the PDFs we can buy now, and expect to be able to buy in the next few years, to the ePubs we can buy now, and expect to be able to buy in the next few years.

Originally Posted by Ahi

I find the utter willful deafness (blindness?) of people in this thread incomprehensible.

And I find that both (?all?) sides in this discussion are showing an utter willful deafness to the quite legitimate preferences and desires of the other posters!

You people value different things, darn it!

What Elfwreck wrote in his/her last paragraph above seems to express the position of (most of) the pro-ePub crowd pretty well. Ahi has done a fine job of showing that really good typography is just plain missing from today's ePub renderers. And both positions are reasonable and legitimate.

I wish that Ahi and the "ePub is hopeless" crowd would stop making comments like the one I quoted above. Even the folks like me who half agree with him about typography are alienated by such.

I also wish that the "ePub is the only way forward" crowd would recognize and admit that full-auto layout is a long, long way from reaching the level of the best human-optimized typography. And that full-auto layout may never reach the level of the best human-optimized typography.

All that said...

OF COURSE we all would prefer better typography to lousier typography (assuming no difference in the price of the book, that is). And there's really no reason why an ePub renderer needs to do worse than latex/TeX does for automatic (e.g. no hand-tweaking) layout. The renderers I've seen to date do much worse than that, which really sucks. I'm also sure that there's plenty more room for improvement in auto-layout once the ePub renderers catch up with TeX.

As for my particular bias, well, here goes:

For reading fiction using different font sizes depending on lighting and how tired I am, I value reflow over fine typography. I also read on 5 different-sized screens at different times, which provides a further bias towards reflow. But for my very favorite books, I want a beautiful hard-cover edition that meets all standards for archival longevity, with the finest typography available. And I'm prepared to pay fairly serious $$ to get that, too. Beyond that, there're plenty of in-between cases as well.

I wish you folks would all lighten up a whole bunch.


Xenophon
(wearing his online-curmudgeon hat today)

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ahi

You seem to be ignoring far too many things that have been stated, explained, and suggested fairly recently, Elfwreck... so I won't get into any lengthy arguments with you this time around.

I find the utter willful deafness (blindness?) of people in this thread incomprehensible.

I'm sorry about that, because I agree with you on a lot of points. And I like PDFs.

The majority of my ebook reading is PDF. About half are ones I threw together myself (and I know they're thrown together; they're arranged for my preferences and ignore any concerns that don't bother me, like justification; I don't mind ragged right edges), and the other half are mostly from publishers or fan-made projects, not sites like Feedbooks.

I've read several of the Tor freebies on my PRS-505. I can deal with cramped type; most of the time, I can deal with letter-sized pages with 12pt fonts. (Some fanfic is released as "ebooks" which are letter sized PDFs.) And I know that, if I'm willing to deal with a 4.5x8" book, with margins, squished onto my Sony's screen, or a letter-sized book with 1" margins all around, obviously, the fine points of typography are not important to me.

I like it, but I don't need it. I'd pay extra for it... but not a lot extra.

And I've seen nothing--nothing at all--to indicate that mainstream publishers will *ever* produce multiple PDFs for ebooks, or even a single PDF that's arranged differently from the print version.

That's probably the key argument you're facing. Saying, "of course they will, when ebooks get popular," is not convincing anyone. PDFs have been plenty popular for years, and other than a handful of RPG gamers, nobody's produced commercial PDFs to fit properly in a computer screen, much less an ebook reader.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Sonist

E-reader technology will fast move beyond tiny, monochrome screens and weak processors. With mass production, comes general standardization of screen sizes, and resolutions.

Sorry, I'm really not that interested in what'll be the case in a few decades time. I'm interested in now. More, small-format is an advantage to many people, so counting on all the screens being bigger in the future is unwise.

More people read newspapers and magazines, than books. Readers will only become truly mass market items...

So, you need a format, which can handle complex layouts, such as magazines and newspapers, as well as books...

Well, guess what? Magazines and newspapers won't stay in the same format. Their current form is a reflection of the limitations of text. It'd be better to look at their website, and realise with wifi a HTML rendering engine is not much different to ePuB's XHTML one, and indeed I'd not be surprised to see a spinoff standard handle that.

PDF is a dead end for that, it cannot handle dynamic content.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

That's probably the key argument you're facing. Saying, "of course they will, when ebooks get popular," is not convincing anyone. PDFs have been plenty popular for years, and other than a handful of RPG gamers, nobody's produced commercial PDFs to fit properly in a computer screen, much less an ebook reader.

Well... then perhaps this is the whole of our (i.e.: yours and mine) disagreement, Elfwreck.

To me the present-day quality of eBooks is so atrocious that it doesn't sound realistic to me to suggest that this will continue into the time when eBooks become mainstream.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

the fine points of typography are not important to me.

I like it, but I don't need it. I'd pay extra for it... but not a lot extra.

There's no reason to pay extra. Getting typography right is trivial and inexpensive. The fact that it isn't done has nothing to do with cost or time considerations, and everything to do with the fact that you and I do not matter to publishers as customers. Once that changes, so will eBooks... and then, publishers will pay attention to typography despite nobody giving a damn or even noticing it, just as they have been doing since the invention of the printing press.

Do you think my reasoning here is faulty? I don't understand why you assume the present embarrassing state of the eBook market will continue to have a choke-hold on the future thereof.

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Sorry, I'm really not that interested in what'll be the case in a few decades time. I'm interested in now. More, small-format is an advantage to many people, so counting on all the screens being bigger in the future is unwise.

Well, guess what? Magazines and newspapers won't stay in the same format. Their current form is a reflection of the limitations of text. It'd be better to look at their website, and realise with wifi a HTML rendering engine is not much different to ePuB's XHTML one, and indeed I'd not be surprised to see a spinoff standard handle that.

PDF is a dead end for that, it cannot handle dynamic content.

You're making less and less sense with each post in increasingly authoritative tones, despite clearly having a loose grasp on the subject being discussed.

Did you add JSWolf as a friend yet?

And what on earth do you think Wi-Fi is????????

- Ahi

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by ahi

What if you get a badly made eBook? By God, I bet it will look bad! And if you can't fix it? Hmmm.... maybe you'll get a damn refund, like you do when a movie you purchase is unwatchable due to some technical error.

So you're saying that when I load the PDF up on my 5" screen rather than the 7" one and it's "broken" I'll get a refund? Hm...let me think...no, the publishers would have to be nuts to do that. But that's the choice, PDF for every possible combination of font size, screen size, desired margin width and so or, or use a reflow format which allows user preference to control that.

It's a control issue. Stop pretending you know what's best for my reading preferences. With print books, you needed to guess them. With ebooks you don't, stop trying and give me options. I don't care if it's missing some fancy formatting if I can have the margin and font settings which make it far, far easier for me to read.

1) There will be standard screen sizes.

You mean like there are standard screen sizes for laptops and mobiles? Oh wait, sure they're "standard", but there are dozens of them. Given the variety of reasons people want e-readers, the same will happen for them. Each requiring, in your method, a considerable amount of typesetting time. This is expensive.

"It seems inelegant, until LaTeX and/or PDF supports elegantly storing multiple layouts (without storing the content twice or more times over)."

Until? Please link any movement whatsoever in PDF towards this (and not the 2002 effort for PDF, either). LaTeX has some fairly broken support for this which is incompatible with most DVI drivers.

How many professional podcast makers do you chase for not using the same formats as TV broadcasters, incidentally?

storage space will cease to be an issue soon enough

Again, you dismiss the issues of today with a handwave and say "oh but it dosn't matter". It does. The shape of ebooks today dictates how they'll evolve. Trying to dismiss arguments based on storage size, power and rendering time relegate your arguments to speculation. Heck, you're dismissing the requirement to typeset and proofread a dozen plus versions of a book as trivial.

And...er...you don't know what wi-fi is? Oh my.


Xenophon - What Ahi wants allready exists. They're called print books. Sorry, but I have a problem with their limits being pushed onto ebooks. (What we call print books will become one end of a spectrum of text, the no-interactive one, and increasingly rare in the future).

The majority of my reading is HTML, and I'll freely admit I have a script which adds the Webrights javascript bar to other ebooks. I am very wary of buying PDF because I cannot tell ahead of time if it's DRM'ed or not - some sites downright lie about this (And I refuse to buy DRM'ed books as inherently broken, I'd rather buy the print book).

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by ahi

Getting typography right is trivial and inexpensive.

Oh... then there's no reason why ePUB readers can't get those trivial enhancements

The fact is good typography is not trivial, as you know, and it is only inexpensive because it can largely be done with free tools, but it takes time, knowledge and expertise.

Getting typography a whole lot better that it is now (for HTML renderers) would be trivial, just use proper justification and ligatures. But that does not make it "right". You have to manually check every end of sentence to make the spacing a bit wider there (in English typography), for instance, you have to manually check every hyphenation to make sure it's right, you have to manually check every pagebreak looking for widows, orphans or too much whitespace (and rivers, and stacks...), you have to check every floating figure/table, you have to be careful with undesired linebreaks (it's better not to split "Mr. Smith" if possible, for example), etc. And many of those things have to be checked again if you change the font size, or the page size.

In short, the sort of things that "can only be done with PDF" are not easy or trivial, but the things that are easy or trivial "can be implemented in ebook renderers", and that would already be a big improvement.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

....

I refer you to my earlier remark.

Originally Posted by Jellby

Oh... then there's no reason why ePUB readers can get those trivial enhancements

The fact is good typography is not trivial, as you know, and it is only inexpensive because it can largely be done with free tools, but it takes time, knowledge and expertise.

Getting typography a whole lot better that it is now (for HTML renderers) would be trivial, just use proper justification and ligatures. But that does not make it "right". You have to manually check every end of sentence to make the spacing a bit wider there (in English typography), for instance, you have to manually check every hyphenation to make sure it's right, you have to manually check every pagebreak looking for widows, orphans or too much whitespace (and rivers, and stacks...), you have to check every floating figure/table, you have to be careful with undesired linebreaks (it's better not to split "Mr. Smith" if possible, for example), etc. And many of those things have to be checked again if you change the font size, or the page size.

In short, the sort of things that "can only be done with PDF" are not easy or trivial, but the things that are easy or trivial "can be implemented in ebook renderers", and that would already be a big improvement.

I'm sorry... but most of this, Jellby, is so close to being right that it would be too painstaking for me to point out the myriad places/reasons where it is slightly but significantly off.

Long story short--certainly a lot of easy and trivial typography cannot be implemented in eBook renderers on account of being impossible to correctly handle at display time.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

And I find that both (?all?) sides in this discussion are showing an utter willful deafness to the quite legitimate preferences and desires of the other posters!

You people value different things, darn it!

I hear what your saying... but the two positions are not on equal footing.

One side is trying to desperately defend the current broken state of the eBook market by pointing out the myriad possible workarounds and insisting that only formats that will forever continue to permit such workarounds are viable.

The other side is trying to point out that the very need for workarounds is a sign of careless neglect on the part of publishers and will eventually need to be remedied, regardless of how it impacts people's ability to poorly tweak their eBooks.

The use of fixed layouts (to avoid using the dirty word "PDF") needs in no way be a barrier to reflow on less common devices or for less common font-size preferences.

The carte-blanche use of dynamic layouts however does make achieving the typographic quality of even mediocre quality fixed layout eBooks literally impossible, because the task is not software automatable, and certainly not possible to correctly handle at display-time via software-automation.

In other words: if reflow-crowd gets their way, typography goes to crap and the pro-PDF crowd will forever be stuck typesetting their own books.

However if the pro-PDF crowd get its way, there's no reason to assume that technology would not develop to accommodate those who prefer dynamic layouts.

- Ahi

[EowynCarter]

Because reflowed PDFs are not as well-formatted as the average ePub. They lose their paragraph indents entirely, and the tagging has problems with short paragraphs (dialogue and poetry, mostly). Reflow also keeps the original page breaks, which leads to orphan lines.

Tanks you

Ok, just a stupid remark : there is noting preventing to have BOTH ePub and pdf.
Then everyone can get whatever version he or she is happy with.

I think the idea would be -> first ePub, we edit and proofread that ePub.

And than we use some software to convert to pdf's
Detecting the place where hyphenation is needed or orphan is the part easy. Then, you prompt the user to do the hard part : how should i deal with that one ?
Hard work still, but more doable than proofreading the same book X times.

But then, the real problem with e-books right now is that the publishers need to step it up, and actually spend some time editing ! Adobe need to step it up and support css way better.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

there is noting preventing to have BOTH ePub and pdf.
Then everyone can get whatever version he or she is happy with.

Sure. A format that can include both one or more PDF versions and an ePub version of the same book... and is actually supported by eBook reading devices in a useful and user-friendly way is totally fine with me. I would put my full weight behind supporting such a format.

- Ahi

[EowynCarter]

Ah, i was thinking to have different files alltogeter. It seams eavy to have an "all as one" file.

Though the concept is interesting for pdf's, to have one file per screen size.
Then you can have some selection like sound track or subtitles on dvd's.
I see one problem there, that is to stay where you are in the book when changing versions.

Thinking of it, it's annoying that when you pay an e-book, you have one format, rather than all of them.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Ah, i was thinking to have different files alltogeter. It seams eavy to have an "all as one" file.

Though the concept is interesting for pdf's, to have one file per screen size.
Then you can have some selection like sound track or subtitles on dvd's.
I see one problem there, that is to stay where you are in the book when changing versions.

I think a format with 1 ePub, and multiple PDFs (maskable by screen size [i.e.: do not offer the user of a 6" screened device the PDFs for the 10" screen], but those not masked presentable for user selection [do present them though with both the 10pt, 12pt, and 14pt font size 6" page size PDFs]) would be the ideal. Filesize need not be terrible, particularly if the zipping algorithm is able to recognize the similarity between the data contained in the various versions of the PDF. But even if the filesize cannot easily be optimized... it is not a real concern, because the cost of memory storage is dropping fast while capacity is increasing.

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Thinking of it, it's annoying that when you pay an e-book, you have one format, rather than all of them.

Very true. I would go so far as to say it's morally questionable. You are paying for the content--the publisher/seller should not without very good reason/justification withhold from you a few additional kilobytes that would maximize your ability to use/read that content as widely as possible.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

... How many professional podcast makers do you chase for not using the same formats as TV broadcasters, incidentally?

Uhm, the general public doesn't really care, they stream stuff like Hulu, or Netflix, which in fact do use the same formats as TV broadcasts.

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

... What Ahi wants allready exists. They're called print books....

Nope, what Ahi wants may come to exist when Apple, or someone else, introduces a large-screen, color device, which will do for tablets/readears what the iPhone did for smart phones.

But, what you want, already exists, and has existed from the most primitive times of desktop computing. It's called plain text. And no, it's not the future.

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

... The majority of my reading is HTML....

'nuf said.... Do you even have experience with an ereader?

I bet, you don't get why people want Flash and Java too....

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

... I am very wary of buying PDF because I cannot tell ahead of time if it's DRM'ed or not....

Uhm, PDF is one of the formats, from which you generally strip the DRM rather easily.

I am not married to PDF, but I am worried, that another new format, like ePub, which is not really robust enough to support very complex layouts and is therefore destined to be another dead-end, will only confuse the market, and turn people off e-books.