When will PDFs be over?

[Jeff Wilder]

Six years, and not yet ubiquitous...

True enough, but technology has never stopped accelerating. Well, give or take a Dark Ages.) Think about the web as it existed in 1999 as compared to now.

That's why I think it's bizarre ...

Portable devices that you might actually use for reading (much less gaming, specifically) are pretty new, and are not themselves ubiquitous. Ergo, you should not see a book-format that's ubiquitous for some time yet.

... and this is why I think it's inertia. Ebook readers haven't developed because nobody reads ebooks. Nobody reads ebooks because the formatting sucks. The formatting sucks because there aren't ebook readers to develop for. Ebook readers haven't developed because almost nobody reads ebooks.

And it's not a new form factor. Palm Pilots were invented in, what, 1997 or 1998? The Newton existed before then.

 

[jdrakeh]

Umbran brought to my attention that the conversation has been focused primarily on producing documents for devices not intended to serve primarily as document readers by design. This is a huge contributing factor to the lack of document formats and e-book products specifically designed for such devices.

Perhaps ironically, cell phones are designed primarily to serve as phones and PDAs are designed primarily to serve as Personal Data Assistants (i.e., organizers). More functionality has been added over the years, of course, but this doesn't change the fact that such devices are still primarily designed to serve as phones and organizers, respectively. Anything else is an added bonus, but not a primary function of the device.

Complaining that the industry standard for all of e-publishing isn't a file format created for use with a device that is not intended to perform primarily as a document reader or e-book (and probably never will be) seems pretty silly. It's kind of like complaining that .ILSR and its associated hardware isn't the de facto standard for network storage (you can use it for that, sure, but that's not the primary function that it's designed for).

Devices that are actually designed to serve as document readers first (e.g., the Amazon Kindle, iRex Iliad, etc) have the best chance of spawning a new cross-platform file format for e-publishing — not any time soon, however.

 

[Umbran]

True enough, but technology has never stopped accelerating. Well, give or take a Dark Ages.) Think about the web as it existed in 1999 as compared to now.

Technology moves forward, at ever increasing rates, yes. But having tech, and knowing how to apply it for best use for people are not the same thing. That latter takes time to figure out.

The web has the benefit of having become extremely inexpensive for the functionality it provides. The same cannot be said for portable devices.

Nobody reads ebooks because the formatting sucks.

I think you're off the mark. It has little to do with the formatting, and more to do with the fact that until recently, the screen tech and battery life of the devices generally didn't come near supporting their high prices. Even today, the best devices for reading on the market each cost over $300, and that's not counting any actual content! Sorry, but that's a major barrier to entry.

And it's not a new form factor. Palm Pilots were invented in, what, 1997 or 1998? The Newton existed before then.

Palm devices are not good for books - anything with a screen smaller than the page of a paperback simply shouldn't bother trying to wedge itself into the book market.

The Kindle and the Sony Digital Book Reader may be approaching a useful form factor and size, but they still lack major functionality, and are pricey.

 

[jdrakeh]

Palm devices are not good for books. . .

They're also, as I mention earlier, not designed to be e-book readers. Replacing books or home PCs is not a primary function of any Palm OS device or cell phone. Anybody attempting to use their iPhone or Palm Pilot as a replacement for a fully functional PC or library full of books is using that device in a manner that it was never designed to be used in.

Again, yes, you can use these devices to read e-books but, seeing as how it's not their primary (or even secondary) function and how most consumers would rather not read an e-book on a screen that's the size of a Post-It note (or smaller) when much better alternatives exist, expecting publishers to support Palm Pilots or cell phones as the industry standard for reading e-books verges on madness.

It would be like every purveyor of office goods suddenly deciding to support blenders as the industy default for document shredding

 

[Mercule]

I don't think the problem lies so much in using PDFs as it does in using PDFs well. PDFs have the capability to hyperlink, which is hardly ever (IME) used in even the table of contents and index, let alone throughout the book. I'm sure there are scads more features that could be helpful, but I can't believe anyone even publishes a PDF without some hyperlinking.

Personally, I have a "spacial" memory for things in books. I flip through them and certain pictures, tables, etc. retain some attachment, in my head, to things close to them even if those things aren't topically relevant. That lack of three dimensions is why, even though I stumbled upon of the unauthorized 4e PDFs, they did me little to no good in actually understanding anything. I have a tablet PC, which is pretty close to the size and shape of a physical book, and the PDFs were still a pain.

Small PDFs are a different matter, though, as they're both smaller and more linear. Of course, I was a bit miffed when WotC rotated Dungeon PDFs to landscape, but I understand how that helps most people.

 

[Umbran]

Personally, I have a "spacial" memory for things in books. I flip through them and certain pictures, tables, etc. retain some attachment, in my head, to things close to them even if those things aren't topically relevant.

Yes, that's a thing in hardcopy that is difficult to mimic in electronic format. Electronic is good for searching - but that requires that you actually know what you're searching for. When you don't know the term you need, but you can recall what general area of the book it is relative to your landmarks, a human can flip through a book faster than you can page through a file.

This, in large part, is why many folks still like hardcopy for reference materials.

 

[RFisher]

Think about how you would use XML and XSLT (and presumably XSL:FO for printed output) to produce chapter 2 of the 4e PHB. You need to reproduce the printed layout exactly, including the text wrap around images, high-quality typesetting, etc.

First, let me say that I’m not defending XSL. I think it was a mistake, but the idea behind it wasn’t bad.

It’s a big paradigm shift. It’s about marking up the content of the document so that automated “back-ends” can do what’s right for the medium they’re targeting.

No, you’re not going to get the exact layout from the automated “printed on paper” back-end, but you could get something that is just as high-quality. (Maybe even better.) Besides opening up the ability to take better advantage of non-print platforms.

In theory. In practice, there’s not enough people who believe in this to idea to make it happen. And the control freaks actively oppose it. And then you have people who want to believe in it, but instead of helping us get there, they just go with PDF and say “call us once you’ve got it working”. (Which is a very reasonable position I can’t much argue with.)

Open eBook wasn’t a bad start.

 

[genshou]

It would be like every purveyor of office goods suddenly deciding to support blenders as the industy default for document shredding

This analogy is so good I want to bear your manbabies.

Why would *I* as a purchaser of electronic RPG material want any format other than PDF? I can easily (and legibly) look at two visually appealing pages at a time on my screen, easily search the document using the processing power of a desktop or notebook computer, copy & paste material straight into my notes or onto my gaming wiki, and use a hyperlinked table of contents to get to the right section fairly quickly. If I want a collection of notes about a campaign or what have you, I have wiki software for that (and use it). If I want a well-written published document, I want it in book format so it's less of a pain to read "cover to cover". If all the information in a 100-page book was sorted into a series of separate documents (such as a bundled html database), I wouldn't bother reading 100% of it. It's easy to flip to the next page (or hit the right arrow key when perusing a PDF) and reopen the PDF to the same spot as last time if I have to take a break; not so easy to remember if I clicked each hyperlink when my browser doesn't store cache data between sessions.

If your PC doesn't have a large enough screen resolution to view a PDF two pages at a time legibly (1024x768), GET OUT OF THE STONE AGE AND SPEND FIFTY BUCKS ON A DECENT MONITOR!

As to handheld organizers, why would I want to read a book on one? They're even smaller than a real book, and I have to strain my poor eyes as it is when reading the text on those tiny screens. I'll lose the ability to see my fingers right in front of my eyes if I try to read hundreds of pages of gaming material on them.

 

[Vigilance]

Listen, I'm not disputing the truth of what you're saying, but I have to point out the tautalogical nature of it.

"Why have PDFs become the standard for a job they're not good at?" "Because they're the standard." "Uh, okay."

Sure, but it's not my job to change the status quo, only respond to what happens to BE the status quo.

In other words, I am platform agnostic. The day something besides PDF gains enough market share to be meaningful, I'll be right there putting out books for it.

Until then, PDF it is.

"How come there isn't a good standard format for reading ebooks on handhelds?" "Because nobody reads ebooks on handhelds," "How come nobody reads ebooks on handhelds?" "Because PDFs are much better printed or on a big screen." "Uh, okay."

This is a more complex question.

When RPGO looked at doing books on Kindle (and we still are), there really wasn't a good way to do an RPG book.

See, RPG books tend to have tables.

That makes reflowing text a bitch, and I haven't seen a good answer to that question yet. In other words, PDF really is the superior format for RPG books imo, since you set the formatting of a table, and it stays that way.

Anything that wants to reflow text tends to mangle tables in my experience, which has, admittedly, been limited, but that was our experience trying to work with the formatting for the Kindle.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Devices that are actually designed to serve as document readers first (e.g., the Amazon Kindle, iRex Iliad, etc) have the best chance of spawning a new cross-platform file format for e-publishing — not any time soon, however.

Ironically, there is at least one device (the Iliad) which can currently read PDFs without zooming, with an additional (the device by Plastic Logic) coming in the near future. These may actually end up reinforcing PDFs.

If you want a re-flowing format to supplant PDFs, hope for the success of the Amazon Kindle - since it uses such formats, and can't display PDFs...