I recently subscribed to Scientific American digitally, and like many if not most digital subscriptions of previously paper media, it is a .pdf file that is downloaded.
I think I’d prefer it simply to be rendered in .html. I’m not very proficient in HTML, so I cannot say I know all the capabilities, but I cannot recall seeing any type of layout in a magazine that couldn’t be reproduced in html. And I’m not even talking about html 5, what with its app-like capabilities. Hell, at the very least it could be a page that just displays a high-quality .jpg of a scanned page.
The advantages of html of course are that any device with even minimal web browsing can view it, no big initial download, and no pdf view is needed. What are the disadvantages?
I know people would like to save a copy, like saving an issue you particularly like, but the .pdf can be offered additionally for this purpose.
I wonder if there is simply not good software for converting the page into HTML?
The big advantage of the PDF format is that it looks exactly the same across all viewers. That’s almost impossible to achieve with HTML, even if you limit yourself to major browsers.
Edit: Also, you have a lot more control over how things are laid out in a PDF. Doing a multicolumn layout in HTML is difficult to say the least.
EVERYBODY hates pdf files. When I see that appendage, I always groan.
But Palooka has the answer. pdf files are teflon, and it takes super-powers to hack them. Publishers do NOT want their material edited and then passed off as “reference.”
I imagine that both of those are the primary reasons. With a PDF, you don’t have to add in additional steps of redesigning from print format to HTML (much less dealing with different browser formats), and you’re keeping the integrity of the content you created, without easily opening it up to being hacked.
It takes a great deal of work and testing just to get a complex web site to look the same in all major web browsers - and that’s without all of the layout tricks in a magazine.
When I had my newspaper (really more of a regional magazine printed on newsprint), it took a lot of work to get the printed page to come out just right. Clipping paths, text-wrapping algorithms, translucency, drop-shadows, hand-tweaked kerning, fractional leading; much of this can’t be replicated accurately in HTML/CSS. Once I’ve spent hours getting that page to look just right in InDesign (and on paper), I’m not going to do all of that work over again to come up with something acceptable in HTML/CSS.
As much as I agree with VOW about PDF files, they’re an easy solution. One command, and you’re done.
It takes a great deal of work and testing just to get a complex web site to look the same in all major web browsers - and that’s without all of the layout tricks in a magazine.
When I had my newspaper (really more of a regional magazine printed on newsprint), it took a lot of work to get the printed page to come out just right. Clipping paths, text-wrapping algorithms, translucency, drop-shadows, hand-tweaked kerning, fractional leading; much of this can’t be replicated accurately in HTML/CSS. Once I’ve spent hours getting that page to look just right in InDesign (and on paper), I’m not going to do all of that work over again to come up with something acceptable in HTML/CSS.
As much as I agree with VOW about PDF files, they’re an easy solution. One command, and you’re done.
I don’t hate PDFs. I have never come across one of these carnivorous PDF files with big sharp teeth that wrestle PCs to the ground and then rip out their innards. I have seen Adobe software faint at mere mention of one, but there are plenty of other apps that handle them just fine.
As for the OP, I think its it takes no additional effort to upload the PDF to a web browser right after you submit it to the printer. Even some iPad magazine apps are just a shell around a PDF file.
Well, it does take some. The PDF that goes to the printer is print resolution uncompressed, so you need to run a second PDF file to upload to a web site. A typical issue of my paper generated a 40Mb PDF for the printer, but only about 2Mb for the website.
Lots of magazines and websites let you subscribe to them in HTML format – they’re the online version of the site. What they don’t do is led you download an entire issue in HTML format, because frankly that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Copy protection is not the issue. It’s about design and the ability to aggregate content into a single package – that’s what a magazine is, after all.
A PDF is not a great solution for mobile devices, admittedly, but that’s what apps are for.
I never understood the hate for PDF files, either. I do hate Adobe Reader, though. Using Apple Preview works perfectly well for me with no issues whatsoever.
I hate Acrobat and Acrobat Reader, but pdf’s are no problem. Foxit, Sumatra, and other third party software behave quite nicely and have a much smaller footprint.
I have no problem with PDFs either, and I always wonder what people mean when they say they have a hard time with them. They’re very, very handy … especially if you want hard copy.
Now then. There is such a beast as poorly-constructed PDFs, like full-page scans saved as a PDF instead of just rendered as the raster file that it is (TIFF, JPEG, BMP, etc.).
There have been threads about PDF like/dislike on the SDMB before … have to go look one up and see what the pros/cons are.
I used to work for a newspaper and a magazine (at my college) doing the Web sites for both. This was back in the late 90s/early 2000s, so the Web was pretty new. I also worked for Cleveland.com which is the online version of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The best they could do to get the newspapers online is to have some sort of plugin that scrapes text from the Quark files and pushes it to a service from which the Web editors grab the text and put it into a pre-made HTML format.
This loses all formatting from the original layout and usually doesn’t include all the photos, if any.
Anything more than that, you’re adding man hours to build up HTML pages to match the design.
For the magazine - which in the case of most magazines means skillfully-designed, artistic pages - it takes dozens, if not hundreds of man hours to re-produce the layout. And this isn’t because someone isn’t good enough or technical enough. It’s mainly because laying out for Web and Print are two completely different animals and as the Web developer you have to conform to what the print designers did. That’s the way it goes.
So you can do all of this dicking around and spending tons of money to develop nice HTML pages that look like the product you produced in the first place (which by the way are very large if they are to be available offline, considering all of the images and stuff).
Or you can press the “Print to PDF” button in Quark or whatever, as soon as the issue goes to press, and have a nicely-designed, complete copy of your magazine or newspaper as your editor intended it to look, right at your fingertips in seconds. No extra hands required.