It's the File

[mythusmage]

Elements of Magic: Mythic Earth was, as far as I can tell, converted to PDF by using Adobe Acrobat 6. Now, there are some PDFs produced using Acrobat 6 (or similar utilities) Acrobat Reader 5 can read, but apparently some feature in Adobe Acrobat 6 was used when producing the PDF others don't use that makes it unreadable in Reader 5. Either that, or something happened during conversion that 'corrupted' the file. A 'corruption' Reader 6 or 7 has no problem with, but which stymies Reader 5.

So now I'm waiting for my print copy of EoM:ME to arrive, which is supossed to take a couple of weeks. (I hope the printer doesn't have any problems.)

So I now make a small request of all you ebook publishers, make sure your product can be read by Reader 5. Your goal, after all, is not to impress your customers with your neat and nifty production toys, but to sell product.

(Or you could drop a tenner or two to me via PayPal (link below), but only if you think my writing's worthy enough to warrant such. (If I had a dime for every hit my blog gets, I'd be getting an additional $200.00 a month on the average.))

 

[maransreth]

Acrobat 7 is out and I know from experience as I prefer to use Acrobat Reader 5, that some pdfs wont be opened. Like Acr 6 the reason is backward compatibility of some features.

If you look at 0One Games maps for example, they will never be able to be read in Acr 5 due to the layering options involved in creating the file.

So what am I saying here? As pdf publishers continue to explore the boundaries of Acrobat, there will be those who wont be able to use the features that they will come up with.

 

[JimAde]

Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just upgrade your reader to the latest version? Is it an OS issue?

 

[mythusmage]

Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just upgrade your reader to the latest version? Is it an OS issue?

Yes.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Some combinations of machine and OS cannot run newer versions of Acrobat Reader. Therefore, it would be nice to tag those newer PDFs which require AR6 or AR7. I'm not saying it would be worth it, just that it would be nice.

-Dave

 

[robomage]

Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just upgrade your reader to the latest version? Is it an OS issue?

I cannot run anything higher then Acrobat Reader 5.x on my computer because of Windows 98.

 

[JimAde]

I guess the ideal thing would be for the publisher to make two versions: one with all the latest bells and whistles, and one that's compatible with, say, version 4 of the reader. I don't know how big a hassle that would be.

 

[Marius Delphus]

I guess the ideal thing would be for the publisher to make two versions: one with all the latest bells and whistles, and one that's compatible with, say, version 4 of the reader. I don't know how big a hassle that would be.

Version 5 seems to be the happy medium, as it covers both Windows 98 and MacOS 9.x. AFAIK, the only "modern" OS requiring Acrobat 4 is MacOS versions earlier than 8.6.

The point of a layered (Acrobat 6) file [EDIT: one of the points, that is] is to reduce the number of files that need to be created, uploaded, and downloaded. If I personally decided to go with an Acrobat 4 or 5 solution, I wouldn't bother with making an Acrobat 6/layered version. YMMV.

 

[0-hr]

Perhaps those items that work with ancient software should make a point of advertising the fact and all the rest should assume people are using operating systems written in this century...