PDFS: How do you like them formatted?

[pawsplay]

Single or double column? Sarif or sans-sarif?

I have such a preference for print that I only buy PDFs when the book is unavailable in print, or if it's one I plan to use in campaign design rather than play. Thus, I only own a few, plus some comps from writing. Therefore, I don't have much of a preference. So, those of you who use PDFs extensively, what do you prefer?

 

[Asmor]

I used to prefer landscape, as a single page filled my monitor quite nicely. Now that I've got a widescreen monitor, though, I like them equally. Landscape is still superior (and not just in digital format, mind you), but with a widescreen monitor you can look at portrait-oriented PDFs as they would have been printed with two facing pages, so it's better for reading PDFs of actual books (as opposed to PDFs which were designed as PDFs to begin with).

 

[Freakohollik]

I like PDFs with 2 or 3 columns as I like to zoom in so the words are nice and big. Columns mean I won't have to scroll right and left to get the whole line. This is the most important thing to me. I prefer sans-sarif as it looks better on a computer screen, although this is not very important.

 

[Afrodyte]

Printer-friendly. I like having something to use in my hands.

 

[pawsplay]

Printer-friendly. I like having something to use in my hands.

What does printer-friendly mean to you? To me, that means black-and-white interiors and a mostly white background, probably a two-column format, and most of the time, a sarif font.

 

[BlightCrawler]

I have such a preference for print that I only buy PDFs when the book is unavailable in print, or if it's one I plan to use in campaign design rather than play. Thus, I only own a few, plus some comps from writing. Therefore, I don't have much of a preference. So, those of you who use PDFs extensively, what do you prefer?

I'm in a similar boat. Except I only get PDFs when they are provided free with the book (and often won't buy the book when there is a PDF also available for a high price, instead of free with the print or cheap!).

I prefer protrait, book formatting. On my monitor, I set up the 2 page view, so reading it allows me to see the facing page as well (which is often how the layout is intended to work). If it's just a PDF, I'm not picky. Big text, little art. It's hard enough reading on the computer as it is (although that's more of an attention thing).

And printing is important. NOt because I generally print it all, but because I will print parts. That's usually the entire point of the PDF. Printing out reference sheets and such.

 

[Gilladian]

Landscape annoys me for some reason, I'm not sure why. I like columns that I can zoom in on nice and big, because I have real vision problems.

That's one reason I actually prefer reading on the computer; its easier to get the text large enough to read easily.

I want text I can cut and paste, more than printable text; I use a lot of online documents when I run my games, and being able to cut text into the spot where I'll be using it is VERY helpful to me.

 

[Siberys]

For stuff I'll end up printing, I prefer portrait, sans-serif (preferably Arial), small sized print (8 is my norm), with two columns. 1 column doesn't read well, I find. I don't know why, though.

 

[pawsplay]

Siberys, I'm surprised to hear you prefer Arial. What I think I've heard in the past was "Arial for screens, Times New Roman for printed matter."

 

[jaerdaph]

I prefer landscape for viewing on a typical monitor, portrait for printing. At my old job I had a second monitor set up "portrait style" for viewing PDFs and working on DOCs, but at home, viewing a landscape PDF in Acrobat 9 using View -> Full Screen Mode fills up the screen nicely with one entire page and is easier to read without excessive scrolling . "Printer friendly" ink-wise isn't really a problem for me, but it's nice to have a clean print version and I understand why people prefer that. As for fonts, either works on screen for me, but I prefer serif (e.g. Times New Roman) in print.