When will PDFs be over?

[dmccoy1693]

My big problem with eReaders: price. They're insane. When I can get a cell phone for less then $50 after all the discounts and rebates, I don't want to spend $300-600 just to read a book that does not come with atleast one book I want. I'd rather pay a little more for a phone with a little larger screen that can handle PDFs or some other standardized format (if some other standardized format existed).

Either that or I'd rather buy something that can replace my laptop in functionality. The plastic logic device sounds cool, if I can still use all the applications I need for my day job (acrobat and visio are the two most complex programs I use). I'd rather buy a ASUS's Eee PC with a full version of windows, qwerty keyboard, mouse pad, and 8.9" color screen with better resolution for less than the Kindle and 1 pound more weight.

 

[jgbrowning]

People like books. People like the book format. Devices that don't mimic the book format are not appropriate for book content.

All IMHO,

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

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.

IMHO, the reason why e-books haven't caught on, in addition to the buy-in price, is that they don't offer the same "text location awareness" that books do. Once the devices are the same size as text books, and more importantly figure out how to let someone flip around a book very very quickly when looking for particular information, they'll become a lot more popular. And of course, that will allow PDFs to become that much more useful.

I think we're getting very close to that time. Hopefully within a year or two things will pick up on the e-book front, but with the world economy the way it is I can see the potential for a longer development period.

joe b.

 

[RFisher]

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!

sigh

There you go. There’s the answer to this thread right there in genshou’s entire post. So many things that we have the building blocks to do, but which get met with so much resistance because people can’t see beyond their experience or beyond where we are to where we could be.

It’s the same attitude that can’t grasp the benefits of cross-platform development. It’s the same attitude that leads to web sites that overuse Flash because they can’t see beyond the “>50% have Flash installed” factoid that came from data collected by somebody else’s web site.

I wonder, genshou, do you know anyone who is visually impaired?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

... 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.

I think the Kindle and similar devices are now really beginning to take off. Over the next five years or so, competition will increase and prices will drop drastically. And maybe then there will be some kind of standard.

My big problem with eReaders: price. They're insane. When I can get a cell phone for less then $50 after all the discounts and rebates, I don't want to spend $300-600 just to read a book that does not come with atleast one book I want. I'd rather pay a little more for a phone with a little larger screen that can handle PDFs or some other standardized format (if some other standardized format existed).

Yes, they are expensive. Still, if you can afford it, they are well worth it.

So far, I've almost exclusively bought printed RPG books, but once I can afford to buy a Plastic Logic reader, I will likely switch over to PDF purchases almost entirely - the sole exception will core rule books and the like which I need to swap around with other people at the game table (as well as books unavailable as PDFs).

PDFs tend to be cheaper (especially when you'd need to ship the printed books to another continent) - and the idea of putting my entire gaming library on a single device is tremendously appealing to me. I mean, the average game book PDF usually has a size of less than 10 MB - and there are already 16 GB SD memory cards out there. That means I could theoretically 1,600 game-related PDFs on it...

(Of course, I won't use it exclusively for gaming. As a scientist, I also read plenty of scientific papers in PDF form as well. This would save me from printing them out and cluttering my office table...)


And another thing to consider: There are already very large collections of great literary works in the Public Domain which you can freely download. If you want to read them on paper, you would have to print them out first - which results in additional expenses and more stuff cluttering up your apartment. But putting it on your ebook readers is a lot more convenient than that. The collected works of Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft and many more are just a few mouse clicks away. And, as I'm currently figuring out, it is also possible to download entire websites and read them offline without having to stare at an illuminated monitor...

People like books. People like the book format. Devices that don't mimic the book format are not appropriate for book content.

Hmmm. When reading text-only books on my Kindle, I haven't really found that much of a qualitative difference between that and reading them as print products. Sure, I have to recharge the battery every four or five days or so. On the other hand, my ebook library takes up much less physical space than my physical library...

IMHO, the reason why e-books haven't caught on, in addition to the buy-in price, is that they don't offer the same "text location awareness" that books do. Once the devices are the same size as text books, and more importantly figure out how to let someone flip around a book very very quickly when looking for particular information, they'll become a lot more popular. And of course, that will allow PDFs to become that much more useful.

Well, that's what search functions, bookmarks, and internal hyperlinks are for.

 

[jmucchiello]

Jeff, the reason it is hard to view PDFs on a handheld device is most handheld devices lack the computing power. I'm sure in 5 years the new iPhone (I'm betting on something like iWork, iCompanion or iComm as the primary purpose will not longer be telephone connectivity) will be able to view any off the shelf PDF flawlessly.

Internally, PDFs are postscript files divided into weird chunks. Postscript is a powerful programming language designed to put ink on paper. Over the last 5 years Adobe has been moving away from the ink on paper paradigm. And they won't be sitting around the next 5 years with their thumbs in places no one wants a thumb. No, they will add more and more features to the PDF format to make it more friendly for small screens. PDF 7 (or was it 6) introduced the article format. Not many PDFs take enough advantage of this format. It is designed to be an alternative to the book format. When integration of that format in the readers is more common, PDF makers will make better use of it.

The funny thing about changing times is that change cuts two ways. Most people who complain about change bemoan its speed and don't want to be left behind. And others complain change is too slow. Electronic document delivery is only slightly younger than computer networking, say 40 years old. Document systems in the 70s involved low-res paper scans stored in TIFF format costing millions of dollars and email. The 80s brought us TeX, troff, ps and bookman format (SGML). The 90s brought HTML (a bastard child of bookman format), Windows help file, and eventually PDF (an amalgam of postscript and file streaming). Next? Unless Kindles start jumping out of Cracker Jack boxes, PDF is not going anywhere.

Tangent: Anyone want to release a TiddlyWiki book? You could easily get it to print only exactly what you want and it reflows automatically. But I don't know if I'd want try reading such a document. For a book like Magic Item Companion, it would probably be perfect. But I don't think I'd want the PHB in that format.

 

[dmccoy1693]

If there's one thing this thread did, it influenced me to get a Netbook when my laptop dies (which it currently is in the process of).

 

[genshou]

sigh

There you go. There’s the answer to this thread right there in genshou’s entire post. So many things that we have the building blocks to do, but which get met with so much resistance because people can’t see beyond their experience or beyond where we are to where we could be.

It’s the same attitude that can’t grasp the benefits of cross-platform development. It’s the same attitude that leads to web sites that overuse Flash because they can’t see beyond the “>50% have Flash installed” factoid that came from data collected by somebody else’s web site.

I wonder, genshou, do you know anyone who is visually impaired?

Yeah. Me.

 

[webrunner]

An ideal format for computer reading would place almost no importance on page layout. Good layout gets in the way of random access on computer screens. What's more important is the ability to read sequentially and the existence of hyperlinks. Things like sidebars are totally worthless in an ideal computer-formatted environment. The 'sidebar' would be it's own article, or an expandable (defaulting to invisible) piece of text. The compendium gets close to something ideal, but it doesn't have the option to show all the powers you found on one long list that just lets you read.

Stuff you need to read together should be in long pages. Stuff you don't doesn't need to be displayed unless you ask for it.

 

[Umbran]

So many things that we have the building blocks to do, but which get met with so much resistance because people can’t see beyond their experience or beyond where we are to where we could be.

On the other hand, how much time, energy, and money is wasted each year developing things that some visionary thinks are "where we could/should be", but that in fact nobody really needs?

It’s the same attitude that can’t grasp the benefits of cross-platform development.

Your broad brush is really getting annoying. Please stop telling people what their attitudes are. Putting words and opinions in their mouths is rude.

Some folks don't understand the benefits of cross-platform development, yes. And some others fail to realize that the benefits can be reasonably estimated, and compared to the cost, and the extra development found to be not worth the effort. And still others decide that they know where the balance lies, even though they have not actually crunched the numbers for a particular project.

Or some folks accept that people doing business tend to know their business, and make decisions for good reasons that aren't publicly known. I like these last sort of people. They are reasonable.