Yes, PDF for e-books still sucks. But if you must create PDF files for work or whatever, think about the new Open Office Suite 1.1, which is free and include a PDF export feature and even Flash translation for graphics. I have not tested the PDF feature out and don’t know how it would work for, gasp, e-books. Will welcome reports from readers.
Speaking of Adobe, I learned via the eBook Community list that Adobe is picking up Small Screen Rendering tech from the creators of the Opera browser. Result? PDF supposedly might not be as much a hassle on PDA screens. That still won’t win me over, given Adobe’s other problems, but would appear to be an improvement.
Update, 3:15 a.m., Oct. 4: Tested Open Office’s PDF export on The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism, by Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle. Seemed to work fine when read in Adobe Reader 6.0 on my desktop. Click here for the PDF. You may need to wait. The file is almost two megs. Right now the book is crudely formatted, so please don’t blame Adobe for the lack of directional quotes or true dashes–or for the other barbarities
