Good looking pdf file

[ElaHuguet]

Hehehe... VillageReader, are you suggesting that I take the html file that James made from my pdf, reformat it, and turn it into a pdf again?

[VillageReader]

Originally Posted by ElaHuguet

Hehehe... VillageReader, are you suggesting that I take the html file that James made from my pdf, reformat it, and turn it into a pdf again?

Only if you want page breaks

[ElaHuguet]

And the original pdf? What was wrong with its page breaks?

[ElaHuguet]

@Ath:

I'm sorry, I hadn't seen the edit on your post with your experiments... I've loaded it onto the iLiad to test them out.

The first one, apart from the ragged look (which I'm not too fond of, but that's something else), is too close together, the font is rather high, and there's not enough interline spacing for reading comfort. The second and third are great, I can't see much difference between them, but both are very readable and nicely set out. The fourth has too much space, as you said. The fifth (small font) IS readable on the iLiad without problems (unless you have bad eyesight, I don't), but the small font makes the lines too long unless you increase the side margins, methinks.

Having looked at Georgia, I went back to Century, because I don't like the way Georgia eats up the space between lines. I didn't get further than the g's on my font list though, so I might find something decent like Palatino further on. Right now, I have a conflict of interests, LOL, since I can either actually read a book, or prepare it. I'm taking turns.

[ath]

Originally Posted by ath

As I don't have an iLiad yet, it's difficult to evaluate how well it works on that device.

That problem has now been corrected, so here are my own impressions of the Georgia-test file I posted some time ago:

a) and b): 10/12 is too tight: Georgia has rather high x-height, and clearly needs more leading.

c) seems a shade too tight (10/12.2)

d) seems about right for my eyes (10/12.5), although there is some crowding in one or two places.

e) Georgia 9.5 is possibly a little small for the iLiad (or its PDF reader), but leading seems OK for the size. (I wish I knew how much scaling the PDF reader applies ...)

I thought d) would be too large, but the lack of contrast of the e-paper needs a bit more from the text, so this works better than I expected.

Apart from that: top and bottom margins may be a little too small. The top edge throws a rather heavy shadow that eats up the margin (if light comes from the wrong place). And I'd like to see a bit more space between the
lowest text line and those pesky icons at the right. The latter is the more irritating: I'd drop the bottom line before I increased the top margin.

Georgia is not ideal for the iLiad, though: it wants something blacker.
Probably Utopia or something like that ...

And I'm getting seriously irritated over the iLiad's inability to be both USB-connected and read PDF files ...

[scotty1024]

Originally Posted by ath

(I wish I knew how much scaling the PDF reader applies ...)

I would suggest creating a test file with known desired measurements inside it, load it on the iLiad, then get a ruler out and measure them.

[ath]

Originally Posted by scotty1024

I would suggest creating a test file with known desired measurements inside it, load it on the iLiad, then get a ruler out and measure them.

That just gives me a lot of measuring error. The construction of the
iLiad is such that there will be a lot of that.

An alternative would be to know the exact PDF document size that makes the PDF reader scaling 1.0 -- it should not have to be measured, it should be well known beforehand, as inherent in the construction of the PDF reader.

One earlier attempt produced 120 x 151 mm ... while I get something closer to 123 x 149.5 mm (or rather 349 x 424 Postscript points). 3 mm along one edge ... that's lots of error...