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PDF is not portable in the digital world

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Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#31

Post by Spivak »

ldjb wrote: post #19
emeraldd wrote: post #3

My first thought on this is that EPUB is not fully portable either ... it's just non-portable in a different set of circumstances. If you want to publish on the internet, for general consumption, just use plain html. That's about as portable as you can get without moving into raw text.

Plain HTML isn't so good if you want to include images in your document or have multiple pages. You end up making the user download a whole bunch of files if they want a copy of the document. The great thing about EPUB is that all the files are bundled together in a single .epub file. You can copy the file and move it around without worrying about keeping the structure intact. I think that perhaps the main issue curr…

> Plain HTML isn't so good if you want to include images in your document or have multiple pages.

Am I missing something? This is practically the only thing that vanilla HTML is good at?

It seems like you could get all the benefits of EPUB with an archive of HTML files.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#32

Post by Spivak »

sigzero wrote: post #17
robert-zaremba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EPUB / MOBI reader is not a problem this days

That really doesn't speak to his statement. The majority of devices read PDF by default where EPUB/MOBI, the user needs to go get an app.

10 You should publish PDFs because devices include readers.

20 Devices have readers because everyone publishes PDFs.

30 GOTO 10

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#33

Post by discreditable »

massar wrote: post #7

Rendering a Microsoft Word/Powerpoint document as a PDF is a good thing as then one does not need a Doc/Docx/PPT/pptx viewer anymore while most devices come with a PDF viewer builtin (eg. Chrome :) (and as a bonus it kills the anims if they are there) this while keeping the formatting intact (some minor color changes though depending on one export it). I tend to keep a whole bunch of things I want to 'read later' in…

On the topic of MS Word, I really wish their export to html function was more simplistic. Most of the time I just want to export the document structure (headings, tables, bold, italic, etc.) and not include all of the styles and extra markup.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#34

Post by dragonwriter »

PDF a perfectly portable in the digital world (the only world in which it has ever existed.)

It's not perfectly optimized for every display (or print page, the two being equivalent) size, resolution, etc., but then neither is any other format that can handle the same range of content, nor will any format ever be until we have AI layout that does as good as professional layout from a single source file for all media sizes and properties.

I find professionally laid out PDFs that are designed for letter/A4 size pages to superior in practical use to any reflowable format I've yet seen at pretty much every size for most content more complex than plain linear text like you'd find in a novel. (Smartphone and smaller devices aren't great for it, but then they aren't great for reading content more complex than linear text regardless of format.)

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#35

Post by dragonwriter »

jrimbault wrote: post #16
noir_lord wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have agreed until I got an ipad mini 2 (for safari testing), screen resolution is high enough that it's close to print experience.

I think robert-zaremba is talking about screen size ? Not screen resolution. IMO, reflowing text is big advantage if you're going for "portability accross screen sizes".

> IMO, reflowing text is big advantage if you're going for "portability accross screen sizes".

It's a big advantage of your content is all pretty simple text; it's less useful for any other content. For complex content, you really need human attention to size-specific layout to getting anything better than just zooming content designed for one size.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#36

Post by logfromblammo »

robert-zaremba wrote: post #10
psion wrote: post #6

I find PDF to be way more portable than most other document formats in terms of saving a document or for printing a document. Saving an HTML page has it's own set of problems, and if I share it I have to make sure to get all the images gathered as well. Word processor documents depend on system fonts, etc., and I cannot be sure that what my document depends on is installed on the other computer. With a PDF, I can be…

That's where EPUB / MOBI comes for.

EPUB is essentially an entire self-contained HTML web site in a ZIP file container.

Whatever you can do on a website, you can theoretically do in an EPUB. It might not display as expected when rendered by an e-reader or printed, however, which is why most EPUB files stay rather safe and unambitious in their CSS and JS.

I'm a bit disappointed that web browsers don't generally function as EPUB readers or include a "Save As... EPUB" option, but I can't seem to muster the motivation to write a Firefox add-on to do that. It wouldn't even be that difficult, as I have created EPUBs from filesystem directories using nothing more than 7Zip and a shell script.

There is a possibility that law firms would pay for a premium version that included a crawler and some form of cryptographic validation that could prove that the EPUB file was created at a certain time, from a certain IP address, and hasn't been altered since then. The idea being that trademark owner's lawyer takes a snapshot of a website selling knockoffs when sending the C&D letter, then another when filing the lawsuit, and the evidence for the complaint is preserved without having to rely on static snapshot images of the rendered website or third-party archive sites.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#37

Post by logfromblammo »

Spivak wrote: post #31
ldjb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plain HTML isn't so good if you want to include images in your document or have multiple pages. You end up making the user download a whole bunch of files if they want a copy of the document. The great thing about EPUB is that all the files are bundled together in a single .epub file. You can copy the file and move it around without worrying about keeping the structure intact. I think that perhaps the main issue curr…

> Plain HTML isn't so good if you want to include images in your document or have multiple pages. Am I missing something? This is practically the only thing that vanilla HTML is good at? It seems like you could get all the benefits of EPUB with an archive of HTML files.

EPUB is an archive of HTML files.

It has a handful of metadata files to tie all those HTML files together, but it is essentially a ZIP container full of HTML, CSS, JS, and images. Rename filename.epub to filename.zip and open it up some time.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#38

Post by unsignedint »

I'm understanding hard time understand some of the point this article makes; particularly the claim about that you need to think about typesetting and design more. Most of word processors these day have some type of style system that akin to HTML.

PDF is also one of few formats that is readily available that has a well defined archival spec (PDF/A) which further makes it more compatible across the readers. (As essentially it requires documents follow certain specs.)

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#39

Post by ferdterguson »

discreditable wrote: post #33
massar wrote: post #7

Rendering a Microsoft Word/Powerpoint document as a PDF is a good thing as then one does not need a Doc/Docx/PPT/pptx viewer anymore while most devices come with a PDF viewer builtin (eg. Chrome :) (and as a bonus it kills the anims if they are there) this while keeping the formatting intact (some minor color changes though depending on one export it). I tend to keep a whole bunch of things I want to 'read later' in…

On the topic of MS Word, I really wish their export to html function was more simplistic. Most of the time I just want to export the document structure (headings, tables, bold, italic, etc.) and not include all of the styles and extra markup.

Pandoc?

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#40

Post by ldjb »

robert-zaremba wrote: post #30
mercer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I think about it I'm kind of surprised that browser don't natively show EPUB files.

there are plugins for that (same as you have with PDFs, though you reuse same rwndering engine, since EPUBs are html documents under the hood)

There are plugins, but having to find and install one is an extra step that I think a lot of people don't take.

It's far different than being able to link to a PDF file and having it instantly display in the browser. As far as I'm aware, Firefox, Chrome and Safari (and possibly other browsers) can all display PDFs natively, so I think it would be convenient if they could also display EPUBs without the need for additional plugins.

As you say, EPUBs use HTML under the bonnet, so rendering should be pretty straightforward.

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