Enough with the PDF table of contents already!

[Yair]

Stop it already! Please!

QFT

I look at the previews. Never at the TOC. To open the TOC I need to click, tell the computer to save the file, open the folder (can't have it opened automatically from the browser), locate the file, open it with FileRoller, tell FireRoller to extract it to the directory I want to, and then go back to the folder, right click, and open it up in Adobe Reader. That's an awfull lot of work. In contrast, to see the html excerpts I just need to press on the link.

I prefer html. PDF I can live with, though I still prefer html. Zipped PDF is just way too much of a hassle to be worth it.

 

[D.Shaffer]

I like the PDF. It lets me zoom and print out if I want to.

It's the Zipping of the PDF that gets annoying. If it was just PDF I could just click on it and the plug in would handle it from there.

 

[Nellisir]

I'd say that few of us care how the TOC's layout is. We are interested in the C of the TOC.

QFT.

If I want to look at a pretty book, I'll grab the Draconomicon. I'm not looking at the ToC to admire the borders.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I think PDF is fine, it's becoming increasingly standard on the internet. It's the Zip that puts me off.
-blarg

I agree. The PDF part is just fine. With HTML you might have to worry about how pages render in different browsers (depending on how it's done of course). PDF...not so much.
I know that Preview (OS X) allows you to view PDF's and Adobe Reader is free so I dont understand what the beef is with PDF's.

 

[stonehill_troll]

If WotC do their layout in something like Quark, then exporting to PDF and putting that file out there is a lot easier than copy/pasting the text into HTML, and reformatting everything so that it looks OK.

I believe WOTC uses Adobe InDesign for their publishing tasks and its a simple File (pull-down) left-click "Print to PDF" - check "current page", or more likely they just have a macro pre set with "ALT P... something custom" for the current page. The output PDF can be preset to low quality up to 3-color print press quality (high quality) file sizes.

If I remember correctly (been about a year or so and don't have a copy of it installed at this work location), the whole TOC sections is nothing more than cross-reference codes to the rest of the documents, very similar to what MS Word or WordPerfect does. So copying into their default HTML webpages probably brings along a whole lot of garbage code.

There probably is (like I said been a while) be an output macro for publishing to web, but I believe it creates its own webpage format and would require quite a bit of work to clean it up and fit it within their standard webpage layout. Not to mention that in reformatting it's easy to get things screwed up. PDFing is the best method to get things out to the customer with the exact data and in the exact format you are planning to deliver the final product.

I agree that zipping is pointliess for a simple low-resolution 1 page file, but then I am spoiled with Verzion's FIOs, even several megs files are mere seconds to me.

 

[Syltorian]

I think PDF is fine, it's becoming increasingly standard on the internet. It's the Zip that puts me off.
-blarg

My feelings too... it seems a bit weird to have a 311 kb file (Complete Champion) sitting in a .zip...

 

[Arnwyn]

It is a pain - enough of one that I just ignore anything zipped on their site. What a waste of time.

I'll choke down the PDF (though I much prefer html for things like previews), but being zipped is unacceptable.

 

[Emirikol]

Someone at WotC's getting paid by the hour

jh

 

[WayneLigon]

The PDF file is fine, the .zip is fine. If they were not .zipped, people would complain about how evil WoTC wastes that quarter-second of download time.

 

[Mark CMG]

I don't think single page, or even low-resolution, several page pdfs need to be zipped unless they are only to be meant as downloads. If they are just meant to act as previews or as pages of a website, but need to be pdf because of some formatting issue, zipping the file might come off as unnecessary hoop jumping.