Why do so many people use/care about PDF?

[DDHarriman]

Hello

At least 4 reasons:

1 - Its the (almost) 100% academic market format;

2 - Its the (almost) 100% business market format;

3 - it’s going to be the archiving format for normal 2D (at least) documents - PDF/A ISO standard 19005-1 (more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A);

4 - it’s very easy to create - throw a bunch of images to a pdf file and almost every pdf reader will let you see it as an identity.

Note: PDF is not going to be away, expect the contrary.

Best regards,

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by chyron8472

Why is it that so many people want to use PDF's on their ebook readers? It's my understanding that they're so specifically designed to appear a certain way per page. whereas ebook readers, by their very nature, are very fluid in how they can format books.

In fact, I know of more than one family member who takes documents and and converts them to PDF before sending to BN or Amazon (depending on the reader) to be converted to a proper format. Meanwhile, the Calibre manual says explicitly how terrible PDF is to convert from and why.

Why do people care about PDF so much?

My immediate emotional reaction to PDF is extremely negative. I don't like the format for many of the reasons mentioned above.

Having said that, PDF support is important to me because what matters most to me is content.

I have a number of RPG game manuals which were only released in PDF format. They use complex formatting with multiple columns, illustrations, charts and tables; so converting them to something reflowable is a pain - if it's possible at all.

This leaves me with two choices - throwing away the money I have already spent - or using a portable device that supports PDF. PDF matters to me because content matters, and when I have content that's only in PDF - well...

[Daveoc64]

While the whole idea of PDF (a format that effectively ensures a document will appear in a specific way - usually always taking up the size of an A4 sheet) makes it annoying for most ebook readers, people are obviously swayed by the content is produced in PDF.

[wvcherrybomb]

I despise PDF. It's big, clunky, and slow. I have disliked it since we first met in the 90's.

Having an ereader has renewed my hate.

[daesdaemar]

If I have something I want to read on my ereader which is in text, rtf, or doc format, I will covert to pdf formatted to my reader's screen size and font/size of choice. Nothing looks better!

[jocampo]

I have no other choice. I own couple of technical books on PDF format only. Not willing to spend more money on the pbook version or buying the mobi format so I must read it "as is ". On some rare cases PDF is the only available electronic format too.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by daesdaemar

If I have something I want to read on my ereader which is in text, rtf, or doc format, I will covert to pdf formatted to my reader's screen size and font/size of choice. Nothing looks better!

A much better way is to use calibre and convert to native mobi. Then select font size inside kindle. You can also install your own font.

I mean, what happens when your eyes get tired and you want to use a bigger font? Can't do that with PDF.

PDF is a necessary evil. When not necessary, it's just evil.

[BobLenx]

PDFs are unreadable on a Kindle. Far too much maneuvering to read. Waste of time to even try it. Not sure why Amazon bothered - the format simply doesn't work.

[jgreely]

Originally Posted by chyron8472

Why do people care about PDF so much?

Mobi, ePub, etc have very limited formatting capabilities, the built-in fonts on the devices are either missing characters or lacking in character, and the reflowable layout engines typeset text worse than a Sixties pulp paperback.

Tiny low-resolution e-reader screens with slow refresh will go away. PDFs will not.

A quick example of why I am delighted with the PDF support on my Kindle 3: JNTO Practical Travel Guides. These free A4 PDFs cover every significant tourist destination in Japan, and are filled with clean black-and-white maps; not simple bitmaps, but real print-quality scalable graphics that you can zoom in on. Yes, the small text is annoying, but you can work around it, and the maps are fantastic.

-j

[ProfCrash]

If I was still in academia I would care about PDF's since journal articles are saved as PDFs. I would probably be looking at at Sony 950 as an additional e-reader to my DXG.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

I read a lot of manuals in PDF format for games and gadgets. However, I read them using Adoobe Reader 9 on my PC. I wouldn't dream of placing them on an eReader.

I'm with you.

[physics]

Another vote for academic papers. Every paper on arXiv is available as a pdf, and most journals have pdf's of their papers. For graduate level classes, we often use papers as texts (instead of textbooks); it's nice to have access to the three or four papers relevant to today's lecture. Similarly for meetings- and it's particularly nice to have the library for when someone brings up that paper that we discussed two months ago, the paper copy of which is lost on my desk and that I remember nothing about.

As for converting, well, at least Amazon's conversion service butchers math equations- they're all hopelessly wrong. Also, even if the math equations weren't butchered, you lose the page numbers, which can make meetings more difficult. (On the top of the third page, the author makes the small mixing angle approximation...does anyone see how this actually changes his equations? Wait, can you give me a sentence at the top of page 3 so I can find it?)

That's why I care, at least. However, I agree that you absolutely need a large screen ereader- I can't imagine trying to read one on the small kindle/nook/etc.- and better support (TOC!) would make my life much nicer.

[tbear]

I often use PDFs to read my personal documents on my ebook reader.
Some of them are converted from technical articles and lecture notes using programs like paperCrop and briss. Some are generated using Latex.
Using pdfs, I can precisely control margins,
place equations, tables and pictures
and justfy texts as I want.

Some criticise PDF because of it's slowness. But PDF are slow only when it is designed so. (For instance, PDFs for large prints, or high-resolution scans)
These slow PDFs can always be converted to much faster ones by down-sampling images, and rasterizing vector images. PDF is a fine file format. It just has different purposes.

[Daveoc64]

Originally Posted by BobLenx

PDFs are unreadable on a Kindle. Far too much maneuvering to read. Waste of time to even try it. Not sure why Amazon bothered - the format simply doesn't work.

This is a pretty broad statement.

For some PDFs I'd agree, but there are many where you can fit a full A4 page on the Kindle's screen and read the PDF without any problems.

The convenience of being able to carry several textbooks on my Kindle with no extra weight certainly outweighs the small downside that the text is a bit smaller than it is for books.

Other PDFs are perfectly readable if you look at them in landscape mode, splitting each page into two or three sections - this is still more convenient than lugging paper around everywhere.

The other use I've found for PDF on the Kindle is that it provides (IMO) the best way of displaying PowerPoint presentations. If I get lecture notes as a .ppt or .pptx I can save it as a PDF (using PowerPoint) and each slide is saved as a page in a PDF that looks great on Kindle.

[GlassX]

I also have hundreds of scientific journals in pdf and I cannot possibly print all of them or be in front of a screen reading them. So that's why I have to read them in Kindle.

I disagree that pdfs are unreadable in Kindle. Duokan proves it. The problem is that Amazon does not care and they just used a very poor pdf reader which seems to be designed only for giving you pain. I have installed Duokan only for pdf reading.