4 ms·

PDF is an abomination & a relic.

by spdegabrielle 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sbmthakur 5y ago
What alternative do you suggest?
- spdegabrielle 5y ago
  A strong case for HTML + CSS is made on page 9 of 'An Uninteresting Tour Through Why Our Research Papers Aren't Accessible' by Jeffrey P. Bigham, Erin L. Brady, Cole Gleason, Anhong Guo, and David A. Shamma. in CHI EA '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 2016 Pages 621–631https://doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2892588 https://doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2892588 https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2016/pdf-accessibility.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2016/pdf-accessibi...
wolverine876 5y ago
OK, so what do you recommend for readability and also for stable presentation across platforms? Reading a book on a screen, I find PDF far superior to HTML or Word or text.
- neolog 5y ago
  > Reading a book on a screen, I find PDF far superior to HTML or Word or text. What do you like about it for reading? It seems worse than HTML or MOBI for lots of reasons.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    The readability. I'd have to do some experimenting to determine what factors have that effect for me, but layout, typography, etc. I read a lot of HTML text, but for books the readability of professionally laid out books makes a difference to me. I haven't tried Mobi though and would like to. Any suggestions would be appreciated: I am reading books, often scanned. I need efficient markup tools (bookmarks, highlighting, annotation) using a separate editable markup layer (so I can edit my markup and easily strip the markup), the ability to copy blocks of text (for notes), and preservation of content and my markup across Mobi applications and decades into the future (e.g., like PDF/A). And complete end-user control - the book is mine, stored on my systems.
    - neolog 5y ago
      https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/
- spdegabrielle 5y ago
  HTML + CSS. It's not a secret that competent news sites provide good readability and stable presentation on everything from a smartphone to a high dpi desktop and laptop displays. e.g medium.com and https://www.theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com I don't know about you but sometimes a smartphone is the only display I have available - and reading pdf's on a phone is undeniably terrible.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    I read alot of news on my computer, but for longer reads, the presentation of PDFs (e.g., a scanned book) makes a noticeale difference. Should HTML+CSS really be able to do everything PDF does? And is it commonly implemented that well, at least by well-resourced sites? > reading pdf's on a phone is undeniably terrible I actually find it to be fine, but I am thinking of book pages, so maybe 8 x 6 inches. What I miss are efficient tools such as markup, bookmarking, etc.

PDF is an abomination & a relic.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sbmthakur 5y ago

What alternative do you suggest?

spdegabrielle 5y ago
A strong case for HTML + CSS is made on page 9 of 'An Uninteresting Tour Through Why Our Research Papers Aren't Accessible' by Jeffrey P. Bigham, Erin L. Brady, Cole Gleason, Anhong Guo, and David A. Shamma. in CHI EA '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 2016 Pages 621–631https://doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2892588 https://doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2892588 https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2016/pdf-accessibility.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2016/pdf-accessibi...

wolverine876 5y ago

OK, so what do you recommend for readability and also for stable presentation across platforms? Reading a book on a screen, I find PDF far superior to HTML or Word or text.

neolog 5y ago
> Reading a book on a screen, I find PDF far superior to HTML or Word or text. What do you like about it for reading? It seems worse than HTML or MOBI for lots of reasons.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  The readability. I'd have to do some experimenting to determine what factors have that effect for me, but layout, typography, etc. I read a lot of HTML text, but for books the readability of professionally laid out books makes a difference to me. I haven't tried Mobi though and would like to. Any suggestions would be appreciated: I am reading books, often scanned. I need efficient markup tools (bookmarks, highlighting, annotation) using a separate editable markup layer (so I can edit my markup and easily strip the markup), the ability to copy blocks of text (for notes), and preservation of content and my markup across Mobi applications and decades into the future (e.g., like PDF/A). And complete end-user control - the book is mine, stored on my systems.
  - neolog 5y ago
    https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/
spdegabrielle 5y ago
HTML + CSS. It's not a secret that competent news sites provide good readability and stable presentation on everything from a smartphone to a high dpi desktop and laptop displays. e.g medium.com and https://www.theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com I don't know about you but sometimes a smartphone is the only display I have available - and reading pdf's on a phone is undeniably terrible.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  I read alot of news on my computer, but for longer reads, the presentation of PDFs (e.g., a scanned book) makes a noticeale difference. Should HTML+CSS really be able to do everything PDF does? And is it commonly implemented that well, at least by well-resourced sites? > reading pdf's on a phone is undeniably terrible I actually find it to be fine, but I am thinking of book pages, so maybe 8 x 6 inches. What I miss are efficient tools such as markup, bookmarking, etc.