Interesting article about digital publishing and PDF

[amalthia]

Changing Mindsets: Digital Publishing is Not Simply a PDF I hope more Supernatural fan fiction authors (okay and any other author who thinks PDF is a good format) would read this before they only share a PDF single file version of their fic. I think at this stage in fandom I know many fans who are reading fics on a variety of devices where the PDF format ruins the flow of an author's story. (in the sense that weird stuff happens to fics in PDF format when read on small screens)

Comments

[delibby]

PDFs are horrible horrible things. Unless you have a real reason to make a file always look the same (scanning a form or something) you should NEVER use pdf as the only option.

My hatred for them is legendary.

[amalthia]

I'm also not a big fan of them. The weird thing is at work I'm currently working a project and all the electronic copies are in PDF. I'm just not sure if I should suggest that at some point in the future we provide true ebook versions. The website I'm designing will have a mobile interface and it should look okay on smaller screens but what good is that when people can't view the reports in a ebook format on a small screen?

[delibby]

Best suggestion I have is ask if anyone's tried reading the reports on a smart phone. See if you can show them the problem. There may be a reason why the have to be in pdf, and it could be a really stupid answer. When they first started scanning the reports they used pdf and always have and the rules say they have to be that way. Fine, but that doesn't do anything for readability.

If you can get them to see sense, you'll probably have to have both. Pdf is also an archival format, and that might be what it is. But maybe you could offer both the archival and a usable version.

[amalthia]

I'll take your suggestion to heart. :) Not sure we have time to change anything anyways. I'm only there on a one year contract.

[yourlibrarian]

At this point I'm glad they even have a PDF, but I am THRILLED when they have an AO3 link because then I know I'm not going to have to convert that file. I particularly liked the image in that article demonstrating visually the problems with the format vs. reading devices. Handy!

[amalthia]

I'm also thrilled when I see an A03 link! :)

I think the main reason I linked to this article is because of the image! It did such a great job of visually showing people what is wrong with PDFs. Sometimes a picture makes a lot more sense than words.