Comments on: Free: PDF vs. MP3? http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/ Mostly involving links about publishing, technology and design Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:41:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Times Emit: Why Agents Need Good Websites http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-27492 Times Emit: Why Agents Need Good Websites Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:59:18 +0000 http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-27492 [...] It’s all good that there is lots of debate being reported about piracy, future models, and other “big” issues. But the failure (to the best of my knowledge) of the industry to make any real progress on the ground, such as to define even what a fair royalty on a digitally sold book should be, doesn’t bode well for the actual, day-to-day implementation of “digital issues”. If they don’t hurry up and sort out digital rights, then there is a real danger of the digital book going the way of the song. [...] […] It’s all good that there is lots of debate being reported about piracy, future models, and other “big” issues. But the failure (to the best of my knowledge) of the industry to make any real progress on the ground, such as to define even what a fair royalty on a digitally sold book should be, doesn’t bode well for the actual, day-to-day implementation of “digital issues”. If they don’t hurry up and sort out digital rights, then there is a real danger of the digital book going the way of the song. […]

]]> By: Free: PDF vs. MP3?-Music Mp3 Download http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-24161 Free: PDF vs. MP3?-Music Mp3 Download Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:31:35 +0000 http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-24161 [...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIf we look back to the birth of the MP3 platform, then it was very hard to get music in that format without resorting to “free” (or rather, pirate) sites. Napster was pretty much unchallenged from the late nineties until the launch of … [...] […] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIf we look back to the birth of the MP3 platform, then it was very hard to get music in that format without resorting to “free” (or rather, pirate) sites. Napster was pretty much unchallenged from the late nineties until the launch of … […]

]]> By: Peter Collingridge http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-23958 Peter Collingridge Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:59:14 +0000 http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-23958 @Alex I agree - PDF is pretty poor. I hate reading (or trying to read) PDFs on my phone. Do you know much about how "illegal" books are being distributed; i.e. Gutenberg (which I know is legal, obviously) is great at using text, how are the pirates and hackers distributing? What other formats are there that you've seen that you do rate. Other than print and paper ;) ? @Alex

I agree - PDF is pretty poor. I hate reading (or trying to read) PDFs on my phone.

Do you know much about how “illegal” books are being distributed; i.e. Gutenberg (which I know is legal, obviously) is great at using text, how are the pirates and hackers distributing? What other formats are there that you’ve seen that you do rate. Other than print and paper ;) ?

]]> By: Alex http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-23957 Alex Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:49:03 +0000 http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2008/02/13/free-pdf-vs-mp3/#comment-23957 I hope pdfs aren't adopted. Pdfs are (by their very name) a print defined format. And who wants to print out 400 pages of A4 in order to read an 'electronic' book? The problem with pdfs is that they are pre-formatted to a specific page size. All the display characteristics are locked down in the pdf. Pdfs that are set up for A4 can be unreadable on small (smaller than A4) screen devices. A scaled down pdf often renders at a very low quality on most devices (you still end up with unnecessary margins without manual trimming) and the on-the-fly processing is very intensive. The file bloat with embedded vector and font information is also often only really appropriate to the printed copy. The ideal 'standard' format would be an minimal markup of plan text. All you need is line breaks, basic formatting (bold, italic etc), indexable headings and chapter breaks. Although there should be a suggested font face (for print versions and the typesetters), this should be configurable so that the font-face, size, line height, justification etc can all be controlled by the device used to read the book. There are a few apps which take pdfs and rip out the raw data to make them accessible to all (rastafarian for example). Continued improvements in these applications is our best hope to liberate the lovely content locked within those restrictive pdfs. I hope pdfs aren’t adopted. Pdfs are (by their very name) a print defined format. And who wants to print out 400 pages of A4 in order to read an ‘electronic’ book? The problem with pdfs is that they are pre-formatted to a specific page size. All the display characteristics are locked down in the pdf.

Pdfs that are set up for A4 can be unreadable on small (smaller than A4) screen devices. A scaled down pdf often renders at a very low quality on most devices (you still end up with unnecessary margins without manual trimming) and the on-the-fly processing is very intensive. The file bloat with embedded vector and font information is also often only really appropriate to the printed copy.

The ideal ’standard’ format would be an minimal markup of plan text. All you need is line breaks, basic formatting (bold, italic etc), indexable headings and chapter breaks.

Although there should be a suggested font face (for print versions and the typesetters), this should be configurable so that the font-face, size, line height, justification etc can all be controlled by the device used to read the book.

There are a few apps which take pdfs and rip out the raw data to make them accessible to all (rastafarian for example). Continued improvements in these applications is our best hope to liberate the lovely content locked within those restrictive pdfs.

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