A small rant about pdf books

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Like it or not, PDF is the file format that's most popular, at least for free downloads.

I'm sure it is the most popular because the majority of people will be viewing it on a PC. But, for most people using an eInk device it will be bad.

My recommendation to authors that want to put free Downloads in PDF is to create one formated to a 6inch screen. This is how Michael McCollum formated his "Sony Format" files before I got him making native LRF files. Every 6inch reader that can read a PDF will be able to use it. And, folks reading on a PC would be able to read it.

BOb

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

My recommendation to authors that want to put free Downloads in PDF is to create one formated to a 6inch screen.
BOb

Why format to an arbitrary screen size, when a tagged PDF file will resize to any screen--and let the user adjust the type size?

(I'm making an assumption here, which is that the Adobe on the Sony Reader supports PDF reflow the way a PDA does. I don't actually know if that's true.)

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by starrigger

(I'm making an assumption here, which is that the Adobe on the Sony Reader supports PDF reflow the way a PDA does. I don't actually know if that's true.)

The 505 with the new firmware supports reflow.... but it is not optimal from what I've read. Also, the 500 does NOT support reflow. Nor does the Jetbook, CyBook, BeBook/V3/EZ Reader, Soribook. Kindle just out right won't display a PDF. Probably based on all the complaints they've seen about Sony's initial "support" of it.

BOb

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Why format to an arbitrary screen size, when a tagged PDF file will resize to any screen--and let the user adjust the type size?

Adding to the above... if you tag it and still format it to a 6inch screen... the PDA and other mobile devices will still be able to reflow it, but it will display properly on the Sony 500/505/700 (not sure can you turn off reflow?)

BOb

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

The 505 with the new firmware supports reflow.... but it is not optimal from what I've read. Also, the 500 does NOT support reflow. Nor does the Jetbook, CyBook, BeBook/V3/EZ Reader, Soribook.

That's just weird, given that the creaky, old Adobe Reader 1.0 -- which is the only version my ancient PDA can run -- does support reflow, why wouldn't they support that function on newer readers?

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Adding to the above... if you tag it and still format it to a 6inch screen... the PDA and other mobile devices will still be able to reflow it, but it will display properly on the Sony 500/505/700 (not sure can you turn off reflow?)

BOb

I suppose you could do that, yes. But if you're going to that much trouble to customize it to the Sony, why not just create a Sony file?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by starrigger

I suppose you could do that, yes. But if you're going to that much trouble to customize it to the Sony, why not just create a Sony file?

Just thinking of the best possible alternative if you are going to create 1 file. That's all. I think any ebook store/author should provide PDF (tagged)/Mobi/Sony those seem to be the big three and support most readers. LIT would be a bonus, but a PC reader could use the PDF. Are there devices that read LIT but not tagged PDF? If so, I don't know. There is also the "Palm" format which is a scaled down mobi basically from what I understand.

BOb

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Why format to an arbitrary screen size, when a tagged PDF file will resize to any screen--and let the user adjust the type size?

(I'm making an assumption here, which is that the Adobe on the Sony Reader supports PDF reflow the way a PDA does. I don't actually know if that's true.)

It isn't clear that Secure Adobe PDFs even have tags (we can't tell because they are encrypted). In any case, Adobe Digital Editions ignores tags - from Jim Lester of Adobe Systems (here):

Also there was an earlier question about reflow. The PDF does not have to be "tagged" to be reflowed.(and we actually ignore the tags if we they are there - we got better results that way) Because of this there are cases were we will really mangle the PDF during reflow because the text flow in the PDF do not match what you would expect as reading order, but other than the edge cases the results are pretty good.

I think Jim may be implying that tags help the reflowing (by disallowing many bad edge cases), even though they are not used. I don't have a PRS-505, but its reflowing looks pretty good in the examples I have seen. The problem is that all reflowing stops at every single page boundary in the original document and this simply isn't reflowing as it is normally understood.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by charlieperry

The essence of my rant is that pdf isn't really an ebook format and it shouldn't be sold as such.

Maybe there's a simple solution to this problem in which case I'd love to hear it.

As mentioned, it's possible to add tagging to PDFs so that they reflow, but it often isn't done.

In some cases, you wouldn't want it to.

A PDF is supposed to accurately represent a printed page. Indeed, a PDF is likely what will go the the printer as the electronic copy they will feed to an imagesetter to make plates for the presses. If your design specifies multiple columns and inset illustrations with text flowed around them, reflow is the last thing you want it to do.

Stuff gets issued as ebooks in PDF format because those issuing them haven't considered the case of the reader trying to read them on a handheld device, The assumption is that the PDF will be read on a desktop or laptop, or sent to a printer.

I can read PDFs on my PDA, but don't get them unless there is no other electronic format available for the content, for precisely the reasons you state. I may also attempt to convert them with Mobi Creator. How well this works depends on the PDF. Single column PDFs with in line illustrations convert fairly well. Others are generally hopeless.
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Dennis

[GntlmnBndt]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

There is also the "Palm" format which is a scaled down mobi basically from what I understand.

Depends on which "Palm" format you are talking about. Sounds like you are talking about what many call PalmDoc or just DOC, which is actually AportisDoc format. People think it is a subset of Mobi (or iSilo, or TealDoc, or...) because virtually all the Palm ebook readers, including Mobi, could also read AportisDoc files. The format was compressed, but only displayed plain text, so there were several other formats that added various features, but DOC files were a reliable fallback. Several formats were actually extensions of AportisDoc, but I do not know if Mobi is one of them.

The only document format that actually carried the "Palm" name though was Palm Reader, renamed to eReader after Palm sold it. Mobipocket software cannot read eReader files.

The Bandit

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I think any ebook store/author should provide PDF (tagged)/Mobi/Sony those seem to be the big three and support most readers. LIT would be a bonus, but a PC reader could use the PDF. Are there devices that read LIT but not tagged PDF? If so, I don't know. There is also the "Palm" format which is a scaled down mobi basically from what I understand.

BOb

For what it's worth, here's the current ranking of popularity of formats in my free downloads, in descending order:

PDF, untagged (runaway favorite)

PDF, tagged (distant second, but far ahead of the third)

PRC
HTML (close behind PRC)

RTF
PDB
LRF (closely clustered)

LIT
EPUB (very close)

This is pretty similar to the popularity ranking listed on manybooks.net, though they offer more formats.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GntlmnBndt

Depends on which "Palm" format you are talking about. Sounds like you are talking about what many call PalmDoc or just DOC, which is actually AportisDoc format. People think it is a subset of Mobi (or iSilo, or TealDoc, or...) because virtually all the Palm ebook readers, including Mobi, could also read AportisDoc files. The format was compressed, but only displayed plain text, so there were several other formats that added various features, but DOC files were a reliable fallback. Several formats were actually extensions of AportisDoc, but I do not know if Mobi is one of them.

The only document format that actually carried the "Palm" name though was Palm Reader, renamed to eReader after Palm sold it. Mobipocket software cannot read eReader files.

There are an assortment of Palm formats.

The Palm DOC file is a plain ASCII text file, compressed with a variant of RLE compression to save space in RAM. It was developed by Aportis back in the days when Palm devices didn't have expansion cards, and might have 8MB of RAM or less to hold the OS, programs, and data. Aportis went out of business long ago, but the format was reverse engineered, and most viewers for OS display it as well as their "native" format.

There is a newer format called zTXT that is also plain text, but uses a Palm shared library port of Zlib to provide gzip compatible compression.

The first reader for Palm devices to support things like fonts, color, text attributes, links, and embedded images was Peanut Reader, created by Peanut Press, an early ebook publisher targeting Palm device. Peanut Reader used a format called PML (Peanut Markup Language). Palm bought them and made them the Palm Digital Media division, and called the reader PalmReader.

Palm subsequently sold the Digital Media division to Motricity, a provider of mobile content solutions, who called it eReader, and Motricity in turn sold it to Fictionwise who have retained that name. There have been cosmetic changes in the reader over the years, but no change in the PML format. If you have an old copy of Peanut Reader on a Palm device, it should display any eReader title.

MobiPocket has a version of the viewer for Palm devices.

Other formats also exist, such as TomeRaider (noted for large file support: there is a cut down version of Wikipedia for TomeRaider on Palm OS), and the Plucker format used by the open source Plucker offline HTML reader for Palm OS. (I have about 3,200 volumes in Plucker format.)

Anything in RAM on a Palm device must be in Palm Database format. Palm files will all have a PDB or PRC extension. The extension is not used by the viewers to identify files. Instead, all Palm Databases have a database header, with a Creator ID and a file Type, and applications look for matching Creator IDs to know what files they own and can process.

Palm programs also exist to handle PDF files, RTF files, and Word documents, though conversion to the internal form used by the program on the device may be required.
______
Dennis

[DaleDe]

You must have tagged your PDF using open office if the size is very much bigger. It is a poor substitute. Generally a tagged document being used in untagged mode looks and works identically if tagged with a proper tool.

Dale

Originally Posted by starrigger

There is a simple solution, though it might not be available to you as a book purchaser. That's for the PDF file to be tagged to reflow text at the time it is made. (Many newer PDAs can also tag PDF files as they are transferred onto the device. Apparently your reader does not do that. I don't know, but would guess, that this process doesn't work with DRM'd PDF files.)

If you have a PDA in addition to your Reader, you might try copying your PDF files onto the PDA, then copying them back. If it got tagged in the initial transfer, you might then have a tagged copy that you could put on your Reader. As I say, though, this might not work if there's DRM on the file.

Like it or not, PDF is the file format that's most popular, at least for free downloads. If you look at my downloads page, you'll see that I have my books in two different PDF formats--one untagged, and one tagged. (The tagged is a larger file, and doesn't look as good on a big screen.) By far the largest number of downloads are of the straight PDF, even though it's the least usable format for a small screen.

If publishers are going to put books into PDF format, they ought to tag them properly. I suspect ignorance is the main reason they don't, though I could be wrong about that.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

You must have tagged your PDF using open office if the size is very much bigger. It is a poor substitute. Generally a tagged document being used in untagged mode looks and works identically if tagged with a proper tool.

Dale

I experimented with Open Office, but actually I tagged mine with Framemaker. The file is approximately double the size of the untagged. Open Office gave similar results, but its output didn't reflow on my old PDA (though tests by others reported that it worked on their newer ones).

The difference in appearance on a large screen is because I modified the source file for the tagged PDF with a font that I thought looked better on a small screen. And I took out the headers and page numbers, etc. I did have a problem with the tagged file wanting to take out vertical spacing.

[DaleDe]

I use framemaker and I have never seen the file size double based on adding tags What version framemaker? What was the original source format. What problems did you observe view tagged files in untagged mode?

Dale