Talk:Books

Is the OLPC laptop going to use pdf format? How does this interact with any intellectual rights which Adobe http://www.adobe.com might have in pdf? Is pdf now an ISO format rather than Adobe's intellectual property?

PDF is a data file format. Adobe has no rights to other people's data. That said, there are several open-source tools to produce, read or manipulate PDF data files. I'll stick something about this on the PDF page.

I learned to produce pdfs using Serif PagePlus 9 http://www.serif.co.uk in 2003. I found that pdf is a very effective format as it enables one to embed fonts in it, so one can use one's own fonts even if the person reading the document does not have the fonts installed on his or her computer.

Here is a link to a pdf document which I produced back in 2003 which might be of interest in a general sense in passing.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/poster.PDF

---

It should be noted that almost every composition program also includes save-as-HTML as an option; the output is eclectic, but no moreso than PDF output. Since an ebook has no need for "pages", PDF seems like a peculiar format. PDF is not particularly well suited to rewriting, splicing and recombining, or collaborative editing.

HTML seems like a no-brainer to me, with a rich toolset, good readers already available, a large number of people intimately familiar with the format, and an even larger number of people casually familiar with the format. All for a format that has always been best suited for reading. It seems like a natural fit.

We have more control over what the kids do than over what the content developers do. If content developers know PDF, they will produce PDF content. The OLPC needs to be able to support such a ubiquitous format. HTML is a no-brainer but tools which save as HTML often include Javascript and rely on ActiveX controls.

Also, I question the assertion about pages. An ebook will not fit all on one screen so it either needs "pages" or it needs to scroll like the ancient books that were burned when the library in Alexandria was destroyed. The OLPC screen has enough resolution to view an entire A4 page at once if it is rotated and the OLPC is held like an open book.

---

On a PC one can get a free reader for pdf from the http://www.adobe.com webspace. However, I remember the issues about Intellectual Property Rights and the OLPC laptop and therefore ask the following questions please.

1. What is the application that will be distributed with the OLPC laptops to read pdf documents?

2. Would Adobe Acrobat actually run on an OLPC laptop?

---

Khim: Of course it's possible to install Adobe Acrobat on OLPC, no problem. But... Adobe Acrobat is prime example of the famous "Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways". It's own libcurl and libssl, spellchecker and expat... No wonder it's huge: 18.5Mb binary, 16.1Mb - libraries, 47Mb - set of plugins, 4.7Mb - browser plugin. 86.3Mb just to read PDF file! I've seen whole linux distributions (with PDF reader and browser) smaller then that... And, of course, it needs a lot of memory to do it as well...

So no, Adobe Acrobat is out of question - something poppler-based (like evince, for example). No ECMAScript, no Forms but small and fast...

Evince will be used by the OLPC.