02-26-2013, 10:44 PM | #61 | |
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Just go ahead and sell it - you should get not that far below what you paid for it - and get the device that suits your needs. Or return it, if you're still in the "buyer's remorse" period. Happy reading. |
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02-26-2013, 11:57 PM | #62 |
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I believe the poster was talking about books, not A4. Adobe recommend reflowing and do it in their own reader. Refusing to do it in an ereader like kobo is a real head-in-the-sand attitude.
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02-27-2013, 03:14 AM | #63 |
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workaround
As a workaround, when I really need to, I would do pdf to ebook conversion on calibre (which basically does a reflow), and then upload the converted document to ereader instead of the pdf. This does not work on scanned pdf's, but I guess neither it would work on reflowed documents. For scanned documents, OCR solution (the free ones being tesseract-ocr or its graphical forntends for windows, osx and Linux, or Cuneiform (for Linux)) would be appropriate, but I guess that is too much of a hassle - easier to print the scanned pdf and read on paper
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02-28-2013, 04:49 PM | #64 | |
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And this is from the company that created PDF. Now apparently it's possible for a document creator to optimize their document for reflow using tags. I wonder how many bother? So what's the better approach... implement reflow, and risk the wrath of people who complain the feature sucks (a feature that not even Adobe themselves can make work properly) or Kobo's current approach, which is to display the document exactly as specified (which, after all, was the primary purpose of PDF in the first place?) I suppose an argument could be made that Kobo shouldn't support PDFs at all. I'm very glad they do. It works great for what I need it for. |
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02-28-2013, 04:54 PM | #65 | |
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02-28-2013, 05:15 PM | #66 |
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So they would either have to make reflow an option (and still have to face the complaints of folks who would use it on the "wrong" PDFs) or turn it on by default and have to explain how their PDF reader only works with some PDFs. Doesn't sound terribly appealing to me either way.
Kobo is a company that has created an e-reader primarily so that people can read e-pubs purchased from Kobo. They've gone the extra mile to distinguish themselves by allowing books from numerous different sources. But it escapes me why they should put time, effort & money into a feature that would benefit only a tiny minority of their potential users. I am rather curious about something... where do people get novels in PDF? I can't think of any place that sells novels in PDF only. For the simple reason that PDFs are a lousy format for e-readers... |
02-28-2013, 05:19 PM | #67 | |
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Most libraries I use, powered by Overdrive, offer PDFs for many of the books. I agree, epub is becoming / has become more prevalent - thank goodness. |
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02-28-2013, 05:45 PM | #68 |
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02-28-2013, 05:48 PM | #69 |
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I've actually been presented with ONLY a PDF version on occasion. I am really glad that is becoming less and less common.
I think ePubs should be the standard - but it isn't helped by companies inventing there own proprietary variations. |
03-02-2013, 05:08 AM | #70 | |
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I would assume that the current state where KOBO advertises 'full pdf compatibility' creates more disappointed users. Explaining the difference between pdfs being - strictly technically - fully supported but ergonomically utterly unusable is no easy task either (look at this thread). And it has to be said that, even discarding the potential implementation of text reflow, the current handling of pdfs on KOBO readers is ergonomically dysfunctional since, once you zoom, turning pages is an ergonomic nightmare. Anyhow ... pdf reflow unquestionably would be perceived as a big improvement in usability by the majority of users. And it is a functionality/feature that people are used to by now. To argue that it is against the design principles of ADOBE pdf seems a bit weird since Acrobat reader itself offers this functionality (and it works perfectly fine there ...). |
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03-03-2013, 10:42 AM | #71 | |
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You can argue the same way about my feelings that the functionality would only benefit a small minority of Kobo's market. All I have to base *that* on is the fact that very few mass-market retailers offer pdf-only product. Marginally better then using the consensus of a forum, but not by a heck of a lot. In any case, Kobo uses a third party application, licensed from Adobe, to display epubs. They use their own rendering engine for their "value-added" kepubs. It would not surprise me that the fact that they can render PDFs at all is a side-effect of using Adobe software and hence will never get any development time from Kobo. Last edited by ottdmk; 03-03-2013 at 10:45 AM. |
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03-03-2013, 07:05 PM | #72 |
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The Adobe software supplied and used in other ereaders I have used, supported reflow. I can only reason, therefore, that the PDF viewer Kobo are using is their own.
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03-04-2013, 12:16 AM | #73 | |
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OTOH, since the results I've seen using reflow on my computer were pretty poor and my major need is to have PDFs with full page diagrams displayed in a readable size, I will continue to use my iPad for PDFs. Regards, David |
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03-04-2013, 12:54 AM | #74 |
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It is informative to read modileread's own wiki about reflow.
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/PDF#Reflow |
03-04-2013, 01:18 PM | #75 |
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NEVER EVER argue with users!
I really hope that it's not KOBO's point saying, as someone claimed here, that "If you don't like how PDF documents render on a device, get your material in another format more suitable for the device". The market never ever believed excuse! Users will for sure get other device if you can't do it well! is it simple? and there is no chance of argument when user makes the decision! if the user wants to have a better PDF reading experience, and if SONY is just a LITTLE better than KOBO, the user will for sure choose the SONY e-reader! remember : NEVER EVER argue with users! just try you best to do it! it's okay if you can't do it perfectly, but at least you should try to do it better than the others! |
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pdf, reflow, support, turn page, zoom |
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