delving into ebook readers

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sat, Jun 09, 2012 at 11:00:15PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> ebooks in epub format are not a problem.  TPL uses Adobe's DRM, but
> perhaps not exclusively.  So Kobo and Sony readers should work.
> 
> I've not really encountered DRMed PDFs, but they apparently exist.
> 
> Does it reflow PDFs?  That's pretty hard to do in a generic way, I
> think.  PDF gives the producer full control over layout, and that
> layout normally does not fit in an e-ink reader.

>From what I have seen, the new one scales them and allows pretty quick
zoom in and out and since it has a touch screen it can be used to move
the pdf view around when zoomed.

> Panning and zooming a PDF on an e-ink display seems like a horrible
> experience.

On the newer much faster ones, it isn't that bad.

> With an iPad-like tablet
> - you have a lot more real estate
> - panning and zooming are quite fluid
> - the device is more expensive, heavier, and has shorter battery life

And can only be read indoors.
Also doesn't tend to have nice dedicated page flip buttons.

> (My daugther reads PDFs on a Nokia n810.  One step before loading the
> documents on the tablet is to strip off the margins.  I don't know how
> painful the reading process is.)

-- 
Len Sorensen
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