Can someone recommend a good, online PDF primer

bitemeok · 09-19-2011, 04:18 PM

Hi,

I recently purchased a PDF from Kobo books that did have OCR applied to it and was pretty much unreadable on my ebook reader because the fonts weren't scalable and there was no reflow for the text. I complained and they keep insisting that all PDFs are this way and that what they're selling is no different from what anyone else is selling. My favorite response from them was when I suggested the publisher should apply OCR to the file and they responded that "a PDF with OCR applied would be an epub file, and that's not what we're selling." I find this infuriating not because they won't give me a refund or anything--I would have been fine with that--but because they act like there's nothing that could be done to the file to make he ebook friendly and that I was crazy to suggest otherwise.

So could someone recommend an online primer or FAQ that would explain to these people who sell PDFs the difference between an OCR'd PDF and one that is just a series of page images.

Max

DSpider · 09-20-2011, 09:15 AM

Hmph. This is probably a copy-paste countermeasure so no one would "steal" their stuff. It's pathetic, really. You can't highlight text and you can't use the search function. They call it an e-book but it's no better than a regular book.

What they don't realise is that stealing is easy. Heck, print screen is faster than scanning. If someone really wants to, they will.

09-19-2011, 04:18 PM	#1
bitemeok Connoisseur Posts: 55 Karma: 42 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Silver Spring, MD Device: Sony PRS-300	Can someone recommend a good, online PDF primer Hi, I recently purchased a PDF from Kobo books that did have OCR applied to it and was pretty much unreadable on my ebook reader because the fonts weren't scalable and there was no reflow for the text. I complained and they keep insisting that all PDFs are this way and that what they're selling is no different from what anyone else is selling. My favorite response from them was when I suggested the publisher should apply OCR to the file and they responded that "a PDF with OCR applied would be an epub file, and that's not what we're selling." I find this infuriating not because they won't give me a refund or anything--I would have been fine with that--but because they act like there's nothing that could be done to the file to make he ebook friendly and that I was crazy to suggest otherwise. So could someone recommend an online primer or FAQ that would explain to these people who sell PDFs the difference between an OCR'd PDF and one that is just a series of page images. Max

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09-20-2011, 09:15 AM	#2
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	Hmph. This is probably a copy-paste countermeasure so no one would "steal" their stuff. It's pathetic, really. You can't highlight text and you can't use the search function. They call it an e-book but it's no better than a regular book. What they don't realise is that stealing is easy. Heck, print screen is faster than scanning. If someone really wants to, they will.

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