Why do I keep pushing the ePub standard and complaining about PDF? Here’s a major reason.
For most reading, it helps to be able to change font sizes easily—in particular, if your vision is less than perfect. And PDF often limits your options, especially on small-screened machines. It is not a true reflowable format. In plain English, that can mean hassles such as having to scroll from left to right, because enlarging the letters can result in chopped-off lines. No, I don’t want to have to worry about different files for different machines.
The beauty shop angle
Ficbot agrees with me about easy size-changing: “Today at the hairdresser I was getting highlights, had to sit under a heatlamp for 45 minutes, and was not allowed to put my glasses back on. Hello, bigger font size!” Overwhelmingly our commenters are on her side in responding to Tamas Simon’s gutsy essay challenging the idea of reflowable formats. But I’m glad Tamas spoke his mind. Let’s not take anything for granted.
Important debate
This little debate is of no small importance to the e-book industry. Right now PDF just may be the most commonly used document format. But for e-reading on small devices, it is generally a disaster since most PDF e-book files are not tagged for reflowability. Yes, I’ll welcome thoughts from PDF-lovin’ folks, especially at Adobe and Wowio, where Gerry Manacsa regards PDF as being more designer friendly at this stage in its development than ePub is. To Adobe’s considerable credit, it’s been a leading advocate of ePub (although, yes, I recognize the business-drive motives).
Image: CC-licensed photo from SpooSpa. No, that is not Ficbot shown.