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If you must suffer PDF on a PDA…
May 29, 2006 | 6:31 pm
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By David Rothman
…then read Bob Russell’s handy list of solutions in MobileRead. Of course, there’s sometimes a catch, as Bob notes–the DRM. Tough luck if your want to read a PDFed best-seller with a DRM Doberman inside. Then you’re most likely stuck with a proprietary reader from Adobe if another format isn’t around. Can’t win, eh?
Insightful ob from Bob: He notes that PDFs “are primarily suited for representing a page as if it was an electronic version of a printed page. This characteristic is fine, and often even beneficial, when you intend to print the document or view it on a large display. But it is generally hard to view on a handheld screen.” You can bet that the OpenReader format will avoid this major flaw.
And speaking of the dark side of the e-book status quo: Check out complaints about e-book prices and the Tower of eBabel.
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Comments:
David…I know it’s your Blog and you can do whatever you like…but PLEASE step back a bit on the OpenReader and DotReader propaganda…it’s starting to sound somewhat desperate…sorry.
I’m sure dotreader and OpenReader are fine, mentioning them in almost every post/article isn’t going to make it any better or worse.
Thanks.
Many thanks for the feedback, Roland. Along with others, I put a lot of myself into OpenReader and dotReader, so pardon my enthusiasm. For years I’ve been complaining about the shortcomings of e-book software, and I see OR, DR and other implementers such as FBReader as ways to nudge e-books in the right direction. Otherwise Adobe and the rest will call the shots at the expense of schools, libraries and society in general.
OpenReader is a cause, not just an e-book standard, and Mark Carey, CEO of OSft, feels the same about dotReader software. He’s a former public library trustee. His CTO, Gary Varnell, is highly respected for accomplishments within the open-source community.
Other than e-books in general and this blog and a library project making use of OR’s standards, OR is my main tech-related interest. In fact, I didn’t have “plug” on my mind when I mentioned OR above; it just came naturally.
Sometimes I will mention OR deliberately, however, to remind latecomers where I’m coming from. Transparency helps.
Another situation is when I think OR or dotReader woud be just plain news, such as this idea of serving up ads to reduce the price of books or even make them free. Also, remember that OR just made a series of announcements associated wtih BookExpo.
I’ll welcome feedback from others on this issue. Meanwhile Roland, feel free to complain to me at other times if you feel I’m overdoing the OR/DR bit.
Thanks,
David
Sure thing David!
It’s good that you remind latecomers and interested people in general about the project, your involvement and everything connected to it. It was only during the last couple of days that mention of the project seemed to become a bit of a “flood”…:-)
For some reason it seemed to be on your mind a lot…^^