my current dd laptop is also an early 2013 MBP, which I had installed Linux on a few years ago. however recently I picked up music again and preferred to use Mac for certain software. oh man was the reinstallation process a nightmare. the recovery install didn't have a browser that would render the Firefox download page. the Mac app store didn't have downloads for the highest version of macOS I could install on Intel architecture. it was problem after problem but now in finally running the last version I'll be able to run: 11.17. funny how much can change or become obsolete in only a decade :D
but wasn't that the point of pdf? we consumers of PDFs are the downstream users, not the target demographic. PDF solved a problem for publishers and magazines, not for consumers needing to read properly typeset digital documents. we just got the bread crumbs and then they became standard
epub I believe are essentially what we as programmers would come up with, xml, html, and style sheets
disclaimer: this is only partially informed speculation
> PDF solved a problem for publishers and magazines, not for consumers needing to read properly typeset digital documents. we just got the bread crumbs and then they became standard
I'm not quite sure what you are saying: PDFs of course provide "properly typeset digital documents" to consumers. Do you mean that consumers don't need or want those? I think they do - look how much effort is put into presentation in every format on every platform.
I think, more importantly, PDF also provides consumers with a high-quality document they know they can read every easily, anywhere - any platform, any time, etc. - with just a click. What other format comes close? Imagine not having it - do you have the app to open the document? will it look like the original? when someone refers to the diagram on page 54, is the pagination the same for your copy/platform/etc.?
Also there is annotation, long-term presrvation, authentication (signatures), etc. but I don't want to sound like a broken record.
> PDF also provides consumers with a high-quality document they know they can read every easily, anywhere - any platform, any time, etc. - with just a click
Actually that's exactly what I feel like PDFs don't give me. When I come across a PDF report, I immediately know it'll be a massive pain to read on a phone, on my e-reader, etc. and I'll have to wait til I get on a desktop. And even once I do, I have little control over the reading experience (I often use reader mode for websites to strip out daft decisions by designers, or even just to normalise font sizes to something I'm comfortable with).
You can't read it "easily on any platform" since it fails at basic text reflow for the width off your screen! There is nothing proper about this if we're talking digital
Page 54 from the original is also trivial to preserve with any reader's pagination, it's just a numeric separator
Good point about screen width. Personally, I don't have much problem with it - I just move the doc left/right as I read, but I know most people don't like it. (Come to think of it, formatting in columns might be a good idea for modern PDFs.)
> Page 54 from the original is also trivial to preserve with any reader's pagination, it's just a numeric separator
Pagination changes in different readers. That's why PDFs work so hard to be consistent.
By the way, precise page navigation is broken in PDF as well - you can have page 54 as displayed below a page and an actual page 54 as displayed in your reader because people love those fancy roman iii numerals
That's what I said, but this doesn't matter much, you can have the original page 54 span for 4 reader's pages if the reader has a small screen with each of those 4 pages having the same number 54 so you can maintain the reference to the unmarked diagram
Page turning would change two numbers, one of them would always increment by 1
But the same issues exist today with PDF since you have page count (more visible since it's usually permanently visible in the app) and page labels, which are often different and thus can confuse your friend
(by the way, does 2nd paragraph count include the last line of the previous paragraph at the top or does it start count at first full paragraph?)
(The better solution of more precise, e.g., per-paragraph, marks is, I think, also easier outside of PDF since PDFs don't retain text structure, only its visual position)
> Page turning would change two numbers, one of them would always increment by 1
I don't think most end-users will like that.
> But the same issues exist today with PDF since you have page count (more visible since it's usually permanently visible in the app) and page labels
Yes, not a good situation, so why duplicate it elsewhere? Anyway, if I say 'page 545', IME people understand it's the document's page number and not the PDF page count.
If you have such understating people they'd have no issues understanding that there are two systems of coordinates in the new format just like in PDF (reader page vs writer page / absolute page vs writer page)
But you don't need to duplicate it, all I was saying is PDF as exists has no benefits here.
Also, speaking of columns, when you reflow page to fit the narrow screen, you can simply make the same page longer instead of splitying, then you can have your same single writer page number. Basically, it's a non-issue for format comparison purposes, you can make UI whatever you like (unless it's PDF where nothing can reflow)
Pagination is preserved in PDFs, even if the page numbering is complicated.
> when you reflow page to fit the narrow screen, you can simply make the same page longer instead of splitying, then you can have your same single writer page number.
You could do that, but IME, formats/apps besides PDF don't preserve pagination. Consistency across platforms, applications, etc. is hard.
Yes, horizontal scrolling can be very inconvenient. On the other hand, reflowing content can destroy information. Sometimes scrolling is just the least worst option.
What I'm thinking of is diagrams, graphs or trees where the relative position of elements is what conveys the actual information.
In other cases, the information may not be destroyed entirely but much harder for people to see. For instance, automatically reflowing the London tube map would make it look totally unfamiliar.
The London tube map was definitely not what I had in mind when talking about "documents" in my OP. Of course some things need to have precise layout, but PDFs are used inappropriately for many things that do not.
Exactly. And epub will be an option for that just as soon as we have an html+css format that renders exactly the same on different clients and platforms when authored by someone who doesn't know what they're doing... so roughly never.
> epub will be an option for that just as soon as we have an html+css format that renders exactly the same on different clients and platforms when authored by someone who doesn't know what they're doing... so roughly never.
But to read something e.g. a manual it should render differently on a phone or a big screen they are different sizes.
If it renders the same then it is not fit for purpose that is reading on a screen.
There are reasons to use pdf if the document must be the same on all devices but you need more than a plain pdf as you could edit a pdf to change 1s to 9s.
ePub indeed sounds like the standards-based answer here, but there are simply no great readers for it that I know of that don’t insist on somehow making every opened doc part of some library, assuming it must clearly be a book.
Okular (the default standard document viewer on the KDE desktop) opens ePubs, PDFs, plaintext, and I'm sure other formats as well. It also has highlighting and annotation capabilities. I'm quite sure every other operating systems' GUI environment has at least one similar app. I know MacOS has a "Preview" app built in that opens a zillion file formats in a read-only viewer.
Firefox addin for ePub
Part of calibre can be used as just a reader (it might not be packaged easily for the user but can be done from the command line)
Adobe Digital Editions (this does also have a library and does try to make you add it when you stop reading)
I suspect Fbreader might be OK - its earlier versions were but I have stopped using it after it added things.
Plus the basic unzip the file and just look at the files with a web browser.
also, when being asked questions I rehearse and rephrase the answer in my head often stumbling or pausing uncomfortably long to actually get it out for fear of it sounding weird or wrong or dumb.
printing money obviously can't be the "root" cause because it's not an independent variable - it's the product of a social institution implementing policy which was decided on.
so, who decided? why? to benefit whom? i suppose therein lies the root cause.
A policy decided on through a collusion between government and the private central banks, which benefits both of them and steals from the population through the Cantillon effect and the stealth real wage reduction.
Workers are getting pay cuts while thinking they are getting pay rises, and they then blame the shops who have to ask for increasing numbers of the the devaluing units of currency in exchange for the same item.
