Do you consider PDF to be a legitimate "e-book" format? Why or why not?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by NatCh

That's an interesting point of view, akiburis. Would you mind elaborating on where you see those other formats as being lacking compared to PDF? I'm less sensitive to such nuances myself (I figure if I can read the words clearly without moving my lips, I'm doing pretty well ), and I'd like the perspective of someone who is more aware of them.

It depends upon your expectations.

The point to PDF is a portable format that will look the same on whatever device it is viewed on, and when printed will reproduce the paper document on which it is based.

The problem with PDFs from an ebook viewpoint is that they aren't designed to reflow, and implicitly assume a larger viewing area than most devices used to view ebooks possess.

Making them reflowable presents a different issue. I just got a PDF of the program book from a convention I'll be attending this weekend. The PDF reproduces the paper publication, which is an 8.5x11 magazine format with multiple columns. How do you go about reflowing that for display on a smaller screen? Without breaking the layout, which may be significant, you don't.

And the PDF not only reproduces that paper publication, it produces it: the printer that produces the paper version of the book uses the PDF as input to the image setter that produces the film used to make the plates for the press.

As a sometime designer, I find PDFs extraordinarily useful. I can generate a PDF for review that exactly duplicates how the printed matter will appear, can be handed off to the printer's prepress as input to their equipment that generates the plates, and can be provided electronically to folks who don't require the paper version. I also have far more control over the appearance of the documents, and can embed images and fonts in arbitrary ways that I don't think I could do with something like MobiPocket.

But I don't find it a useful format for ebooks precisely because of its strengths. On an ebook, I am concerned far more with legibility than design. I likely won't have multi-column formats available, and may have restrictions on the fonts and images I can use. Since the intended output device will have restricted viewing area, there will be limits to what I can do in any case.

I won't have control over the fonts available on the reader's device, nor control over leading and measure. I just do the best I can with the book creation software, and cross my fingers.

In summary, I think PDFs are a de facto ebook format, simply because of the volume of material produced in that format that people will want to read. I just don't think they are a preferable format for dedicated ebook readers because they simply assume a larger display than teh device is likely to have.
______
Dennis

[ath]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

@ath: You seem to be coming from the perspective that the job of an ebook is to be a pbook. If that's you're perspective, then you're going to love PDF. If however, like me, you believe the job of the ebook is to make the pbook obsolete, then PDF is simply not the answer.

I believe that an ebook must fulfil a number of requirements, many, possibly even most of which are the same as those we place on pbooks. No device today fulfils even an acceptable subset of these requirements. Non-reflowable PDF at least guarantees that the visual quality the book producer set for the ebook will be what the reader gets. No other rendering method that I know of can make any similar statement as to visual quality. For that reason, I view PDF as the best of all bad e-book rendering methods we have today, and for that reason I regard PDF as a legitimate e-book format.

Once there is a solution that makes PDF obsolete for this purpose, while at the same time provides the quality levels that any book (e or p) should reach, I happily wave goodby to PDF: it has then been legitimately superseded. But as there is still a very long way to go to that point (I guesstimate at least 6-8 years), I will continue to regard PDF as a legitimate e-book format - if only for the time being.

Note: I'm not concerned what with could or might be done tomorrow, only with what actually is doable today. And I am not at all concerned with reading A4 pages on an A6 device -- that's like handing a book buyer a box of unfolded printed sheets, and expect him to 'read' them.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by ath

Note: I'm not concerned what with could or might be done tomorrow, only with what actually is doable today. And I am not at all concerned with reading A4 pages on an A6 device -- that's like handing a book buyer a box of unfolded printed sheets, and expect him to 'read' them.

If you are not concerned about A4 pages in PDF then you are saying that PDF is a great eBook format except that it cannot read 99% of the documents it is meant to read on eBook Readers. Thus you are saying the only legitimate eReader must be a large bulky device. I suspect you are not in the main stream of this forum but each can have their own opinion.

Dale

[Jeff Duntemann]

I'm late to the party, but let me toss one more grenade into the room: Page images are the general case, and reflowable text is a special case, which we only need because we have another 10-15 years to go before a truly mature high-res (1000 DPI or higher) low-power reflective flat display technology becomes cheap and ubiquitous. For anything but pure text, page images are essential. In my business (computer books) reflowable text has been tried (think HTML) and in my view has been a disaster.

This isn't just me being an old guy; I've asked my readers and my customers, and their response is consistent: Except for fiction and illustration-free nonfiction, PDF is the only thing that works. Reflowing can be done where necessary--even from a PDF, given proper software--but it is a compromise made necessary by low-res displays, catering to only one slice of the publishing business.

My vote isn't precisely for PDFs but for page images, and PDFs are how page images are currently done. I'd cheer for a better PDF format, and the format may improve over time. I read PDFs very successfully on my X41 Tablet PC right now, and will read them on the descendants of the Sony Reader and the Iliad as digital paper resolution improves. My Sony Reader is good for fiction and that's what I use it for. Technical books, magazines, and anything depending in any way on photos, tables, equations, or drawn art requires PDF to be an ebook, and that's probably two thirds of what I read. (Most of it, alas, is still on paper and paper only.)

The industry is still young. Let's take the question up again in five years and see how things have gone.

[kovidgoyal]

Yes it's important to have the ability to represent complex objects, not just text, but still, page images!! You lose any advantage to having the content in digital form. You can't search it, index it, modify it, extract content from it. Pretty much the only advantage you're left with is the ability to store it and duplicate it. You may as well stick to paper. Page images are a complete dead-end. At least PDF isn't a total page image, you can still access the text as text.

[nekokami]

I don't think the resolution of the screen is the only factor. The size is also a factor. If we have flexible screens in the future, so they can be folded and carried in a smaller space, fixed page sizes might work. But even with very high resolution displays, smaller screens displaying a full letter or A4 page won't work for everyone, and panning is not always a solution, especially for multicolumn formats. I don't think one solution will work for every non-fiction document.

And I agree with kovidgoyal, page images lose much of the value of digital reading.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

If you are not concerned about A4 pages in PDF then you are saying that PDF is a great eBook format except that it cannot read 99% of the documents it is meant to read on eBook Readers. Thus you are saying the only legitimate eReader must be a large bulky device. I suspect you are not in the main stream of this forum but each can have their own opinion.

Dale

Devices that read eReader format eBooks are small as they are palm devices. You should not be using the term eReader in this instance as you are very likely to confuse someone with what eReader really means. eReader DOES NOT mean ebook Reader in the generic sense.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

This isn't just me being an old guy; I've asked my readers and my customers, and their response is consistent: Except for fiction and illustration-free nonfiction, PDF is the only thing that works.

But a lot of technical documentation is now written in a Wiki or something like that and it seems to work. Images are used to present diagrams or other things that are hard to present in HTML. But you still get the text in HTML.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Yes it's important to have the ability to represent complex objects, not just text, but still, page images!! You lose any advantage to having the content in digital form. You can't search it, index it, modify it, extract content from it. Pretty much the only advantage you're left with is the ability to store it and duplicate it. You may as well stick to paper. Page images are a complete dead-end. At least PDF isn't a total page image, you can still access the text as text.

DJVU format is a good compromise. It can have both page images AND a text layer for searching and indexing. Also, the compression algorithms used are extremely effective for black-and-white text.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by igorsk

DJVU format is a good compromise. It can have both page images AND a text layer for searching and indexing. Also, the compression algorithms used are extremely effective for black-and-white text.

PDF can do this as well. DJVU has better compression but that is a different issue. For page formats and for reflow PDF could be made to work if the eBook devices could reflow the text in a reasonable manner. If we switched to DJVU we could be having this exact same discussion that you can't see shrunk pages. This issue is the software not necessarily the format.

higher resolution devices don't solve the problem because little bitty text doesn't get any bigger with higher resolution unless you couple the device with a magnifying glass and then you have to scroll around to read the text. this is not a good experience.

Its all SMOP anyway. (Small matter of programming)

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Jeff Duntemann

I
The industry is still young. Let's take the question up again in five years and see how things have gone.

Are you eyes going to get better in 5 years? Is everyone going to decide that we can easily carry around clipboard size devices in 5 years? I suppose some will be satisfied with scrolling out a large document and carrying a roller tube around but I don't think so. Technology can't always bail us out when physical boundaries are present.

Dale

[yvanleterrible]

Lets not forget that Adobe is concurrently working with Sony on a special Digital Editions package. A refit of PDF could be part of that.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I suppose some will be satisfied with scrolling out a large document and carrying a roller tube around but I don't think so.

Oh, I wish!

But it's not always appropriate, so I still want reflowable text.

[yvanleterrible]

You know, something like an eink folding map wouldn't be that far fetched. Any panel you flip open would turn on to display and reflow all the documents according to the number of open panels. It could work...as long as you remember the folding order.

[yvanleterrible]

Just for the fun of it I dragged a PDF book in Book Designer and it converted it! All I had to do is rework stuff to my likings and save to reader format. There were no pictures in the file so I don't know how that might have turned out.