Re:IDPF, EPUB Standardizing Body, Has Combined with W3C
by mrec on Sunday February 05, 2017 @08:21PM
(#13575851)
More generally, PDF is a vector graphic format, not a text format. A bunch of things we absolutely take for granted, like selection and copying, simply don't work reliably. (I've hit a number of glitches with the JS-implemented PDF readers that make me pretty sure they're just OCRing the rendered page, which is a ridiculous state of affairs.)
Re:IDPF, EPUB Standardizing Body, Has Combined with W3C
by taejo on Monday February 06, 2017 @07:37AM
(#13578870)
> they're just OCRing the rendered page
Not quite. Usually the PDF specifies each character (although the reader still has to do a slightly wacky conversion from glyph name to unicode character) but the position is specified as an (x,y) position, so the reader has to reconstruct the order that they come in, add spaces and newlines, etc.
ePub allows content to reflow in order to fit the screen size, while PDFs are a fixed size.
It's not typically a problem if you're reading the book on a desktop or laptop, but it becomes frustrating when you're on a tablet or mobile device.