PDF Products Idea

[smetzger]

Hi,

After reading the interview with Monte and learning that he will continue to release PDF products I had a thought.

One of the annoying things about PDF books is that you cannot look at a whole page of text at a time. You kind of have to scroll down to the next section before you get a page break. But, this could be avaoided if you did the page layout in landscape. This would make the product much more readable in electronic format. Anyway just an idea for anyone who is publishing electronic products.

 

[Mark]

It's an interesting idea, and no offence, but I think there are a couple of problems with it.

Firstly, at the font sizes most publishers use to cram all of the text info they can on to a page can be rather small no matter whether the layout is portrait or landscape. The smaller font sizes are used to make its value per page count acceptable and keep printing costs down for the end user by not requiring too many pages be used. Either format would require scrolling if viewed at a size to make it easy to read.

I think that secondly, though to a lesser degree, most people are comfortable when using a printed version of a pdf in portrait format. Granted it isn't that big a deal to some people, but there would be a few who wouldn't like it in landscape after printing.

I'm guessing that people who use their pdfs at the desk, and with a large monitor might prefer a landscape layout.

Let's assume, if I'm not out of line piggy-backing a further question on yours, that these problems are not insurmountable or "deal-breakers" to the end user as buyer and look also a bit toward more hightech situations. Do you think it would make any difference, either way, to anyone who was using an E-Book or similar medium?

 

[Morrus]

Would you then not just have to scroll left and right instead of up and down?

 

[DPG Darrin]

IMO, the ideal way to set up a PDF is so that it can be printed to look identical to a book page. I can see numerous issues cropping up from aligning them as suggested.

One interesting thing I saw from one publisher (I wish I could remember who though - they aren't D20), they produced a PDF in 2 formats. One format had art and was deisgned to print. The other was lacking art and alot of formatting, but was designed to be readable on a computer monitor. The page count was higher and the font size was larger, but each page fit perfectly on a the monitor, so all you have to do when you finish a page is hit the down arrow.

I could see producing an alternate version of our future PDFs in that format, with the only stumbling block being that it could be hard to format the page being worked on to the exact dimensions of the screen. If anyone knows of any neat tricks in MS Word to do this, I would love to hear them.

 

[smetzger]

Would you then not just have to scroll left and right instead of up and down?

No I don't believe that you would.

Yes, it would look a little different if it was printed out. But I rarly print out electronic versions, especially when its a magazine.

 

[Cergorach]

Well, i don't really have that problem, but then again i use a 22" monitor at home ;-)

At work i did have some problems with my 17", but after turning the pdf 90' clockwise and turning my monitor 90' CCW i have no more problems ;-p