4 ms·
A few responses, not certain it's worth it to rant too much about a guy like this: 1) PDFs act like balls on certain computers, and they can't be embedded. Pla
by unalone 18y ago
A few responses, not certain it's worth it to rant too much about a guy like this:
1) PDFs act like balls on certain computers, and they can't be embedded. Plaintext lacks the layout abilities without heavy customization.
2) Copying and pasting isn't what text is all about. Very often the point of text is letting you read. And Scribd handles reading pretty well.
3) You can let people download the PDF from Scribd. That's what I do with a lot of the textbooks I find: download, convert to Kindle format.
4) Scribd isn't perfect, but saying there's no point to it is silly. It's a repository for documents. Therefore, there's a purpose for it. You might not need that purpose, but it exists.
5) If Scribd is amassing a following of an enormous size, and it is, then insulting it for not being meaningful is a stupid thing to do, unless you've done something that's so much better. I use Scribd to find textbooks, literature, gaming manuals, and much more, and I used it to display my novel, with a PDF download option. It's useful for me.
- axod 18y ago"It's a repository for documents." Um isn't the world wide web an open repository for documents? And quite a good one at that? What's the value add? Why choose to put documents in a single companies walled garden?
- rantfoil 18y agoThe web is a great repository of HTML documents with hypertext. But there is so much more to it than that. So much content is locked away in PDF and DOC. I think Scribd is still a valuable service because for 90% of computer users out there, PDF/DOC to Scribd is still a more viable way to post specific quanta of content online than the vagaries of CSS/HTML.
- palish 18y agoHow can content be "locked away" inside any digital non-DRM format? The purpose of a format is to represent content, and that's what PDF/DOC does. Also, in regards to your other point, I find Dropbox's "copy public link" mechanism to be a far easier way to share content than to upload it to any website (not just scribd), because I don't have to use a browser in the first place. The content is already uploaded and ready to be shared.
- unalone 18y agoThe purpose of a format is also to make that content accessible. If somebody has no PDF reader, how do you send them well-formatted documents? The only thing that comes close to working is something like .ppt, but that's an ugly solution (and what if they don't have PowerPoint?). Scribd gives a nice medium where you don't need anything beyond Flash to view content. For a lot of people, that's very useful.
- palish 18y agoWhile I agree with you in spirit, in practice pretty much everyone has a PDF reader in addition to Flash.
- axod 18y agoSo instead of asking them to use a pdf viewer, you're relying on them having a flash viewer installed instead :/
- unalone 18y agoWell, Windows has Flash preinstalled but not Acrobat. I have a lot of friends who can't read PDFs; I can't, when I'm on Windows.
- rantfoil 18y agoOn the PC, It's a latency problem. Acrobat is such a disaster that you do have to WAIT before anything ever shows up. Scribd at least is far more instant.
- unalone 18y agoFirst off, it's not walled. Scribd lets you take your stuff off their site in a variety of ways. A walled garden implies information going in and not coming out. With Scribd, if I add a text file anybody can download it. Scribd even reformats it into a bunch of different filetypes, for easy access. The world wide web is an open repository for information. "Documents" implies things formatted for paper. That means, among other things, retaining the formatting, fonts, and layouts of the original documents. It IS possible to do this all online, but it's annoying as hell and you have to do it specially for each document you put up this way. The value added is that Scribd indexes all these things in one easy-to-find place, that it lets you access them with Flash instead of Adobe Acrobat, and that it allows you to embed your documents on other web sites. I used to do that for a creative writing blog I had. I understand not wanting to use it - I stopped using it after I got a Mac and had preview.app available for PDFs - but it still has its uses, and that's the important thing to remember. I still use it, for sharing web site mockups to friends, many of whom are on Windows and some of whom don't have a PDF reader whatsoever. There is no format that their computer will like, but they have Flash players, so I can send it to them on Scribd.