Why the fascination with PDF?

[jæd]

Originally Posted by tribble

- Last line gets cut off, no overlap on page flip, so you basically have to guess a line every pageturn.

Will double check that as last night I was reading a book converted from chm... Pretty sure I would've noticed that...!

Originally Posted by tribble

- depending on how long your file is, you cant stop reading in between, unless you keep the iLiad running and leave the html application open.

Yes, that would be annoying... I've tended to split large pagers up to avoid this...!

[scotty1024]

Originally Posted by tribble

Have you tried reading a novel in HTML?
- Last line gets cut off, no overlap on page flip, so you basically have to guess a line every pageturn.
- depending on how long your file is, you cant stop reading in between, unless you keep the iLiad running and leave the html application open.

that already disqualifies totally as a book reading programm.

For reference files and short html pages you can easily read in one session, the html viewer does fine.

Unless you can't get the font to scale properly. I've pretty much given up on RFC's in HTML on the iLiad, especially after 2.7 shook up Minimo's font system. I'm re-writing the back end of my RFC parser to emit PDF's.

I've also gotten trapped a couple times. Some HTML files assume you can always hit the "back" button or otherwise work yourself out of a page. If you close Minimo while on one of those pages you find yourself unable to navigate out of there except by manually editing the manifest.xml to reset the last location.

Minimo also does a poor job of re-flowing some HTML pages. The page flows off the right hand side of the display and you have no way to view it.

[tribble]

for making the iLiad really useful when reading reference material, you would need to have several "books" open at the same time and easily and fast switch between them.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by tribble

for making the iLiad really useful when reading reference material, you would need to have several "books" open at the same time and easily and fast switch between them.

I think Irex's message is clear... Get an Illiad for each reference book...! Then switching between them is *easy*...!

[tribble]

Originally Posted by jæd

I think Irex's message is clear... Get an Illiad for each reference book...! Then switching between them is *easy*...!

They just want us to get that star trek feeling

[scotty1024]

Actually some time around Star Date 3274 they are planning on letting us re-assign the short cut buttons so we could have 3 quick switch book buttons.

[ath]

Originally Posted by jæd

So... Is the Illiad a printed page, or is it a screen...? At the moment I see the Illiad a device capable of displaying a page, which is why I favour screen based solutions, ie HTML... HTML is going to be much more flexible mainly because it is display agnostic, so it may not be as good as a custom document but will be better for more devices...

I'm not sure I understand your distinction. When it comes to PDF, the best result is obtained when you regard the iLiad as the printer -- it accepts 'paper' of a particular size, closely related to its screen size. Using other output formats will need scaling or pan-and-scan solutions, just as when you try to print a legal-sized document on a letter-sized page -- You just don't do that -- if you must have legal-sized documents, you get a legal-sized printer: common sense, really. Anything else will be a compromise, useful only for particular situations.

HTML is a useful alternative, of course, even if it's not completely display agnostic. (A competent HTML coder is able to stay away from those areas, though.) Once you need to display music, chess, math, you're reduced to bitmaps ... which need to be created outside HTML, and also make certain assumptions about available display width. "Illustrated books" in HTML, which there are some on the web, cannot be shown on a very small screen -- the illustrations are too large.

You select the solution that fits your quality targets -- simple enough.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by ath

Once you need to display music, chess, math, you're reduced to bitmaps...

Music, chess and maths have glyphs in unicode... And music and math notification have xml schemas to support them. Just need to have them implemented on the Illiad...

[jæd]

Originally Posted by scotty1024

Unless you can't get the font to scale properly. I've pretty much given up on RFC's in HTML on the iLiad, especially after 2.7 shook up Minimo's font system. I'm re-writing the back end of my RFC parser to emit PDF's.

Isn't that because you are using PRE tage...? I get the same problem in Firefox if I make the window small enough.

Originally Posted by scotty1024

I've also gotten trapped a couple times. Some HTML files assume you can always hit the "back" button or otherwise work yourself out of a page. If you close Minimo while on one of those pages you find yourself unable to navigate out of there except by manually editing the manifest.xml to reset the last location.

Isn't a rule of web designer to never rely on a "back" button...?

Originally Posted by scotty1024

Minimo also does a poor job of re-flowing some HTML pages. The page flows off the right hand side of the display and you have no way to view it.

Seen this bug... When I have a sec I'll make sure Irex know about it...

[scotty1024]

Things have taken a turn for the worse in 2.7. <pre> just means fixed space font and respect CR/LF.

Rules in web development?

Thanks, I needed a good hard laugh this morning.

[ath]

Originally Posted by jæd

Music, chess and maths have glyphs in unicode... And music and math notification have xml schemas to support them. Just need to have them implemented on the Illiad...

Music? Are you referring to the characters in the U-2600-267F range? How can I use them to make a saxophone part in a big band score? I can't.

Chess? Same place -- and I can use those that are there for so-called figurative notation, but how do I set a chess diagram? I can't get by without those. No way to do that.

Math? Much the same thing -- show me how I, in HTML, set up, say, an integral or a summation over a specified domain. It needs more markup than HTML has.

XML schemas ... is probably the way to do it, but going that way a) is tantamount to an admission that the material could not be done in HTML (which is the point from which my response was made), and b) introduces the problem that the recipient must have a reading program that understands the markup. It's not enough to parse it syntactically: the semantics of the markup must be retained as well.

And there's always the problem of locating the relevant schema, along with suitable documentation of it. I know of none for chess -- those I know are crippled or undocumented -- though I can't say about math and music.

[astfgl]

Originally Posted by jæd

Do you have a html page that demonstrates this...?

Ask and ye shall receive ... eventually. These pics are with 2.6, but I updated to 2.7 tonight and the problem is identical.

The problem is obviously caused by a dumb renderer and a font (height+linespace) which does not divide evenly into the screen height. The offset starts at the bottom of page one and gets worse till half the line is cut, then appears to get better until the page and line height coincide again, then repeats. These pics are from page 5 of the document.

If by chance your document has a font size and formatting which multiplies evenly to the content area height, you won't notice any problem. Extra vertical space for super/subscript, different font sizes, etc would give a more "random" look to the problem.

BTW, yes, I realise my font size is a bit small, I gave up on the format(and the Iliad) before finishing my document styles. My Iliad is sitting on a shelf until it becomes useable.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by astfgl

Ask and ye shall receive ... eventually. These pics are with 2.6, but I updated to 2.7 tonight and the problem is identical.

Thanks for this... Will make sure Irex see your sleuthing...!

[arivero]

Originally Posted by ath

Math? Much the same thing -- show me how I, in HTML, set up, say, an integral or a summation over a specified domain. It needs more markup than HTML has.
.

Here he is probably refering to MathML, a W3-aproved extension of html that actually is implemented in every mozilla browser (and a plug-in exists for Explorer). Problem is, the fonts are very dependent of the CSS style and sometime they get missed when printing the page. But the positional format, integral summations etc, does work. Although, the few users of this notation prefer to use itex2MathML translators.

[jæd]

Originally Posted by arivero

Here he is probably refering to MathML, a W3-aproved extension of html that actually is implemented in every mozilla browser (and a plug-in exists for Explorer). Problem is, the fonts are very dependent of the CSS style and sometime they get missed when printing the page. But the positional format, integral summations etc, does work. Although, the few users of this notation prefer to use itex2MathML translators.

Yep, I was going to reply to his post on the weekend but never got around to it... Basically think of xml as the containement/transport method and css as the display method... Of course you need the correct schema and method of display, but the same goes with html + pdf...