4 ms·

It sounds like what you're really asking for is a proper e-book format, like EPUB. PDF is not an e-book format, it's a presentation format, for print-equivalen

It sounds like what you're really asking for is a proper e-book format, like EPUB. PDF is not an e-book format, it's a presentation format, for print-equivalent documents. They aren't interchangeable.

derekp7 10y ago
Right, but the problem with EPUB and Mobi is that I haven't really seen technical books done well with them, with various tables, diagrams, charts, etc. These are presented much better when they have a human eye lay them out on the page. That's where a multi-format PDF would come in handy -- you could still have a human editor lay out the pages for 2 or 3 different page sizes, and then the reader would pick the appropriate one (given the constraints of the reader device and font size).
- jsjohnst 10y ago
  Have you looked at many O'reilly, Pragmatic Programmers, or Apress books? I own a library of over a thousand titles from those publishers and generally any ePub created in the past 3-4yrs from them is top notch.
  - derekp7 10y ago
    I just bought this bundle, which is all O'reilly, so I'm assuming the ePub's are from them. Was looking at the Emacs one, and so far not too bad. But there are still issues, such as I came across a table that had the headers line at the bottom of one page, and the rest of the table on the next page. Things like this, you can probably put hits / rules in the ePub file for, but it still benefits more from having a human do the layout.
    - jsjohnst 10y ago
      I already own that ePub so I'll check it on my end to see if it's specific to the Humble Bumble version. Which table should I check? Also, which reader are you using out of curiosity?
      - derekp7 10y ago
        I tried it using Google play books, and also FBreader. The specific table depends on the screen size, font, orientation, etc. In my case, it was one of the tables in the preface, when viewing portrait mode on my phone. When bringing it up on my tablet, the same effect could be seen on any other table that happens to start at the end of the page.
- anjefu 10y ago
  You could get close to this by just using multiple PDFs. However, no one seems to do this (@haskellbook is the only exception I can think of), so perhaps editors feel it's not worth the extra time and effort.

derekp7 10y ago

Right, but the problem with EPUB and Mobi is that I haven't really seen technical books done well with them, with various tables, diagrams, charts, etc. These are presented much better when they have a human eye lay them out on the page. That's where a multi-format PDF would come in handy -- you could still have a human editor lay out the pages for 2 or 3 different page sizes, and then the reader would pick the appropriate one (given the constraints of the reader device and font size).

jsjohnst 10y ago
Have you looked at many O'reilly, Pragmatic Programmers, or Apress books? I own a library of over a thousand titles from those publishers and generally any ePub created in the past 3-4yrs from them is top notch.
- derekp7 10y ago
  I just bought this bundle, which is all O'reilly, so I'm assuming the ePub's are from them. Was looking at the Emacs one, and so far not too bad. But there are still issues, such as I came across a table that had the headers line at the bottom of one page, and the rest of the table on the next page. Things like this, you can probably put hits / rules in the ePub file for, but it still benefits more from having a human do the layout.
  - jsjohnst 10y ago
    I already own that ePub so I'll check it on my end to see if it's specific to the Humble Bumble version. Which table should I check? Also, which reader are you using out of curiosity?
    - derekp7 10y ago
      I tried it using Google play books, and also FBreader. The specific table depends on the screen size, font, orientation, etc. In my case, it was one of the tables in the preface, when viewing portrait mode on my phone. When bringing it up on my tablet, the same effect could be seen on any other table that happens to start at the end of the page.
anjefu 10y ago
You could get close to this by just using multiple PDFs. However, no one seems to do this (@haskellbook is the only exception I can think of), so perhaps editors feel it's not worth the extra time and effort.