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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

#41

Post by klodolph »

mercer wrote: post #24
klodolph wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The share buttons and navigation chrome certainly can be put in a PDF, they're just incredibly uncommon. I've even played video games that were distributed as PDF files.

Pdf games? Do you have an example you could send me, perhaps? I'm really curious.

The ones I played were adventure games, basically a bunch of areas (implemented as pages) linked by buttons, with some extra logic thrown in. If you can imagine the kind of scripting capabilities you'd need to run a PowerPoint style presentation from a PDF file, and the kind of scripting you'd need to make sophisticated interactive forms, you're on the write track.

Unfortunately I don't know what the games I played were called.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#42

Post by accordionclown »

1a. .pdf is a fine format.

1b. unless -- as is increasingly the case these days -- you're reading it on a screen smaller than the one for which the .pdf was designed, in which case .pdf is an awful format.

2a. .epub is a fine format.

2b. unless you're reading it in a viewer-app which is wonky, which most of them are. (the inconsistencies of rendering with this so-called "standard" are unbelievably bad, and seem to be getting worse rather than better as time goes on.)

3a. when you try to re-use text by copying it out of a .pdf, you often get some really bad stuff that loses a lot of important styling.

3b. when you try to re-use text by copying it out of an .epub, it's not much better.

4a. the standard line is that an .epub is just "a website packaged into a .zip file", implying that anything you can do on a website can be done in an .epub.

4b. the standard line is a lie. an .epub requires .xhtml rather than .html, and a complex mess of associated files, and most .epub viewer-apps have trouble supporting the full gamut of .css, and also do not allow you to use javascript at all.

conclusion: the state of sharing documents on the web in a way that allows offline use while enabling the convenient re-use of text is a sad state indeed.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#43

Post by zie »

logfromblammo wrote: post #36
robert-zaremba wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "Sav…

Someone already did it for us: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dotepub/?src=...

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#44

Post by robert-zaremba »

falcolas wrote: post #22
robert-zaremba wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the thing. 1) If you use simple HTML / EPUB majority of publications are good for printing. 2) Think about a relief of storing this documents on an ebook reader

> majority of publications are good for printing This is a problem. PDF supports "all". Epub would have to have equivalent support, as well as native support in most/all vanilla OS distributions to be a real competitor for PDF. > Think about a relief of storing this documents on an ebook reader For many people this is their phone or tablet. Both of which support PDFs as well (as do many standalone ebook readers). You…

Majority of publications are simple text with few tables or diagrams. We don't need complex typesetting for that. Printing from EPUB should be good.

You always need an extra app to view PDF. It's either installed by default or not. Phones, tablets, and other screen devices have available EPUB, MOBI, HTML browsers to install.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#45

Post by robert-zaremba »

ldjb wrote: post #40
robert-zaremba wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 additi…

I hope one day all popular browsers will render EPUB straight away. Should be lot easier then PDF.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#46

Post by robert-zaremba »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #14
robert-zaremba wrote: post #2

Do you publish on the Internet? Do you read a lot of publications on your digital devices? How about stopping using PDF for internet publications and using EPUB instead (or some other screen independent format)? Please, share your comments.

Trying to be helpful... I think you may be getting down voted because it is generally considered bad form to submit your own blog unless it is a "Show HN" but if the content is good it can out weight that and an article can be up voted anyway. But if you do submit your own content it is probably best to let the content speak for itself vs trying to solicit HN as a discussion forum.

Thanks for a comment. What's the reason for not posting own article to content discovery services / agregators? It's a common thing.

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#47

Post by throwaway2016a »

robert-zaremba wrote: post #46
throwaway2016a wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to be helpful... I think you may be getting down voted because it is generally considered bad form to submit your own blog unless it is a "Show HN" but if the content is good it can out weight that and an article can be up voted anyway. But if you do submit your own content it is probably best to let the content speak for itself vs trying to solicit HN as a discussion forum.

Thanks for a comment. What's the reason for not posting own article to content discovery services / agregators? It's a common thing.

HN is not a typical aggregator.

HN historical is not a marketing site, it's a forum where technologist share things they find interesting. So any form of self promotion is usually viewed with a bit more critical lens than if it was submitted by a third party. Rightly or wrongly the bar is set higher.

People liked your article (it made it to the front page) but your comment above feel like it is extra "sales" oriented even if the article itself if not about a product.

If you must comment on your own story you should do it as if you were commenting on another user's post, in first person. For example, you could rewrite your comment as:

"I wrote this article because I was frustrated with the poor reading experience when content is delivered in PDF. What do you all think?"

Re: PDF is not portable in the digital world

#48

Post by discreditable »

ferdterguson wrote: post #39
discreditable wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That is what I use lately. It's not perfect but it's the closest thing I have found.
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