What do you Want to see in PDFs?

[MongooseMatt]

We produce a lot of books on PDF via Drivethru (and we are starting to move into other venues of digital publishing, such as the Kindle and Nook).

So, now seems the right time to ask - what would you like to see in the digital versions of our books that might not be possible in the printed versions? What clever or interesting features have you seen that you would like to appear in, say, Traveller or Legend? Bookmarks are the obvious feature, and we are currently working to put those in all of our PDFs that do not yet feature them, but what else would you like to see?

All comments welcomed!

 

[Stainless]

The recently released "Adventurer, Conqueror, King" pdf is liberally scattered throughout with hyperlinks that take you to the relevant section of the book. So if you're at the start of the book and they write about, say, equipment, the word is hyperlinked and can be clicked on to take you to that section. They intend to update that soon so that there will also be hyperlinks that take you to relevant blog entries, designers notes, etc.

Above and beyond it being a really nice RPG, the pdf is worth buying (ony about £6) just to look at their layout, etc.

 

[apoc527]

The way that SJ Games builds in a complete navigation/bookmarking system is great.

 

[Da Boss]

Is there any way to have an option to have the format not in columns as I find cosntantly having to scroll up and down really annoying - but that might just be me.

 

[Poi]

That would require resetting the entire pdf, so I very much doubt it would happen.

 

[Spence]

For myself, I want a PDF of everything I have in hardcopy.

PDF's so I can read at lunch or on break. Hardcopy for at the house and building adventures.

 

[Gale]

In the practical life I'm using the the Adobe acrobat and the Foxit readers which help us to read the PDF file easily. The main thing which i want to see in the PDFs is that it should be fast and user friendly and we find anything or copy text easily from the PDF file.

 

[strega]

We produce a lot of books on PDF via Drivethru (and we are starting to move into other venues of digital publishing, such as the Kindle and Nook).

So, now seems the right time to ask - what would you like to see in the digital versions of our books that might not be possible in the printed versions? What clever or interesting features have you seen that you would like to appear in, say, Traveller or Legend? Bookmarks are the obvious feature, and we are currently working to put those in all of our PDFs that do not yet feature them, but what else would you like to see?

All comments welcomed!

I'd like to see the pdfs done in Tagged format which usually is done for screen readers for people unable to read text. A tagged PDF can tell the display device to show the pdf in a different format according to the type of device.

Example: A PDF is printed left column line one, right column line one etc which makes it hard to read on a screen which is smaller than a page. A Tagged pdf would reflow the pdf on a small screen into a single column format and would replace images with a text alternate description. This allows for print versions to display on big screens and in print outs but on small screens display as text only in a single column for easy reading.

It requires the Tagged PDF to use jumps to Tagged locations rather than to page no XX and a professional approach to layout and pre-press setup of the file.