PDF Embedded Images Display Corrupt?

[RogueTrooper]

Just got the PRS600 as a gift, and I like the unit though as some have said it is a little reflective - I can live with that.

I loaded some PDF's I have of technical books and am a little surprised / disappointed and confused at the result. See attachments, one using the Adobe 9 reader on PC, the other what I see on the PRS600

The question I really have is as to why the device displays this way, is the PDF viewer not 100% compatible with ADOBE or PDF standards?

Sorry if post has been done before I could not find anything similar in the searches just tried.

Thanks in advance for any feedback proffered.

RT

[wallcraft]

For everything you ever wanted to know about PDFs in ADE, see Bill McCoy's Q&A: What PDF version for eBooks?

In summary (from the above and the ADE FAQ):

Digital Editions supports a superset of ISO standard 19005-1 (PDF/A). PDF/A is designed to support more secure, long-term information archiving; it is based on a subset of PDF 1.4 (the version of PDF supported by Acrobat 5.0). Additional PDF capabilities in Digital Editions beyond PDF/A include basic encryption, DRM-based encryption, JBIG2 image compression, transparency, and compressed object streams.

I'm not sure that the Sony's support all of these extensions to PDF/A, because all its readers except the PRS-900 are using a very old version of mobile ADE.

In your case, is the Sony example at one of the font sizes that includes reflow? It looks like each box is an image and they have all been reflowed into a line of images. This may even have nothing to do with PDF standards if the text is actual text overlayed on the boxes. Any page that is composed of text and images placed exactly on the page to produce a diagram is going to fail in "reflow" mode - since it is trying to produce linear text. What ADE "should" do in that case is display the complete page (i.e. go back to the small, non-reflowed, font size for this page only). This is what happens on some pages that are a mix of text and images, but obviously not in this case.

On the PRS-600, you may be able to use the small font size (no reflow) and than zoom to magnify the page.

[RogueTrooper]

Many thanks for the comprehensive answer. Since the objective for me was to be able to access a lot of technical detail, I may have to see what future readers bring to the table and jump ship. For now though it will suffice, I can get 98% from the text!

Cheers.

[RogueTrooper]

BTW - that particular book does work in the small font - so I can visualize the text concepts!

Thanks again.
:-)