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I think it's funny that the top two comments of this post are diametrically opposed, yet I kind of agree with both of them. The PDF is a terrible format, yet i

I think it's funny that the top two comments of this post are diametrically opposed, yet I kind of agree with both of them. The PDF is a terrible format, yet if I'm sending an email with an attachment I want you to see exactly how it looks on my computer then I'm exporting to PDF. However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. PDF is good for short things, a contract maybe. The best use case is forms which this doesn't really talk about but seems to address, the web has basically solved it, but there are times you want to send people a form to fill out that you don't want the formatting to be go wacky on, but still need to be editable. PDF can do this but isn't good at it, this seems to take that not good and make it good.

enriquto 7y ago
> However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. Wait, what format do you expext a book to be? I mostly skip any book that is not on pdf
- Terretta 7y ago
  Something that reflows when you change text size, font family, or page orientation.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    I am not sure that we can call a text that has not yet been typeset a "book". In any case, do you know any such format that does not completely botch equations? The closest I can imagine is html with mathjax.
    - aurbano 7y ago
      eBook formats can do that, but they may struggle with math notation - I haven't read any mathematical work on ebooks.
      - enriquto 7y ago
        I once did. I'm still in therapy to recover from the trauma.
    - contravariant 7y ago
      If you want a standalone HTML solution I reckon you could embed the formula as SVG. Or maybe you can somehow get MathML to look nice, but so far that seems tricky without using JavaScript to help (which might not be supported/desirable in a document format) and I'm not sure about the state of MathML support in e-readers. One of the problems with including mathematical formulae in a reflowable document format is that the concept of reflowable mathematical notation simply doesn't seem to exist, so In practice you'll end up with something equivalent to a picture.
  - majkinetor 7y ago
    You can also reflow with Foxit PDF Reader FYI (on all platforms)
    - enriquto 7y ago
      it does not seem to be available for openbsd. Do you have a link? (or at least to the source code)

enriquto 7y ago

> However if your book is only available as a pdf I'm probably going to skip it. Wait, what format do you expext a book to be? I mostly skip any book that is not on pdf

Terretta 7y ago
Something that reflows when you change text size, font family, or page orientation.
- enriquto 7y ago
  I am not sure that we can call a text that has not yet been typeset a "book". In any case, do you know any such format that does not completely botch equations? The closest I can imagine is html with mathjax.
  - aurbano 7y ago
    eBook formats can do that, but they may struggle with math notation - I haven't read any mathematical work on ebooks.
    - enriquto 7y ago
      I once did. I'm still in therapy to recover from the trauma.
  - contravariant 7y ago
    If you want a standalone HTML solution I reckon you could embed the formula as SVG. Or maybe you can somehow get MathML to look nice, but so far that seems tricky without using JavaScript to help (which might not be supported/desirable in a document format) and I'm not sure about the state of MathML support in e-readers. One of the problems with including mathematical formulae in a reflowable document format is that the concept of reflowable mathematical notation simply doesn't seem to exist, so In practice you'll end up with something equivalent to a picture.
- majkinetor 7y ago
  You can also reflow with Foxit PDF Reader FYI (on all platforms)
  - enriquto 7y ago
    it does not seem to be available for openbsd. Do you have a link? (or at least to the source code)