To PDF or Not to PDF

[Nescio]

5 hours ago, balduin said:

Yes, you can search in PDFs and yes Google is able to index them, but the reason why google can do this so well is because they spend some efforts and resources to make tools and algorithms which are able recognize objects in images and extract text from PDFs.

It depends on how a pdf is made. You seem to be talking about Google Books or some similar project, where physical objects are scanned and afterwards the digital images are gradually analysed and converted into text. However, these image-not-text pdfs are a tiny minority. Most pdfs are made from text files, contain text strings, and are thus searchable. And yes, if you can select a text string and copy it, it will still be a text string when you paste it.

5 hours ago, balduin said:

However, I think the content which is mostly about the historical Kushites would make a great wikibook.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but a wikibook is little more than a collection of wiki-pages, and has thus the same limitations. Of course, it is not forbidden to make one, but its usefulness would be more limited than a proper pdf (preferably typeset with (Xe)LaTeX )

The great advantage of a pdf is that, unlike other formats, it preserves and display the contents exactly as defined by its author. It doesn't matter what hardware, operating system, pdf-viewer, installed fonts, etc. you use, the pdf will always look the same everywhere. Also, it's printable; devices, software, ink, and paper may vary, but the printed content is always identical, as intended.

[balduin]

@stanislas69 You wrote your LAN Tutorial.pdf in Word and than exported it to PDF. You basically did what I described, first write it as text document and then convert it to PDF.

Here is a copy and paste of your bullet point list:







Some 0 A.D. knowledge (how to set up a game, choose match, etc).
A working LAN network, with a DHCP router. (Using a switch requires more settings).
Very few knowledge about windows (Where to find the run command Windows key + R).
0 A.D. installed on each machine you want to play with.
The same mods on both side.
Some patience.

You can see that the bullet points are images.

Here is the same example in Markdown:

# Prerequisites

- Some 0 A.D. knowledge (how to set up a game, choose match, etc).
- A working LAN network, with a DHCP router. (Using a switch requires more settings).
- Very few knowledge about windows (Where to find the run command Windows key + R).
- 0 A.D. installed on each machine you want to play with.
- The same mods on both side.
- Some patience.

and I attached the example.md file and the pandoc generated pdf as well.

In addition, if you write it in markdown you can put it in a repository and have all the benefits of source control. That is not something everybody is familiar with, but if you are you don't want to miss it.

 

example.md

example.pdf

[Stan`]

You can also import pdf in Word Also I know how markdown work, as I write readme regularly, and even wrote a few papers in LaTeX, but that doesn't make it easier to use and in the end it's up to Sundiata

[balduin]

@stanislas69 Yes, if you have Word, which I don't have and I don't want to have.

[Nescio]

1 minute ago, balduin said:

@stanislas69 Yes, if you have Word, which I don't have and I don't want to have.

Yes, I can't agree agree more. MS Word is a horrible program that does all kinds of things unasked for and makes typesetting text unnecessarily complicated. Better use any simple text editor than a word-processor.

[Stan`]

My point was just that no it is not hard to copy and paste text from PDFs

and as @Loki1950 would say: Enjoy the choice

[Stan`]

Split because it's really irrelevant to the kushites

[Nescio]

17 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

Split because it's really irrelevant to the kushites

To start with, I think it's weird to split in the middle of a discussion. Furthermore, I don't understand the "vs" dichotomy: it is possible to use md to generate a pdf. Also, this artificial topic is probably in the wrong subforum. Finally, although somewhat off-topic, it was relevant to other posts in the previous thread, starting from https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21602-the-kingdom-of-kush-a-proper-introduction-illustrated/&page=32&tab=comments#comment-353551 until https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21602-the-kingdom-of-kush-a-proper-introduction-illustrated/&page=33&tab=comments#comment-354006

 

[Stan`]

2 minutes ago, Nescio said:

To start with, I think it's weird to split in the middle of a discussion. 

Indeed, But it was hard to split it properly ^^

2 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Furthermore, I don't understand the "vs" dichotomy: it is possible to use md to generate a pdf.

Right, you're free to suggest a better title.

[Nescio]

6 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

Indeed, But it was hard to split it properly ^^

Why was it necessary to split it then?

[Stan`]

Because it was starting to be about word being a nice piece of software and all wordprocessors being worse than text editors which wasn't really productive.

[Nescio]

5 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

Because it was starting to be about word being a nice piece of software and all wordprocessors being worse than text editors which wasn't really productive.

Then split it from there. I'm not claiming every reply was productive (nor is this why split? discussion ), however, these expelled posts were part of a wider "to pdf or not to pdf", started by Sundiata earlier, and I think a discussion on how to present the material is relevant to the topic it is about.

[Sundiata]

I endorse splitting this discussion  

So, what exactly are the disadvantages of writing in word and exporting to pdf, for a simple country boy like me? 

which text editor exactly would you recommend (that works flawlessly with mac)?

Edited May 13, 2018 by Sundiata

[Lion.Kanzen]

PDF Photoshop with editable feature.

PDF for Illustrator (packed all fonts and images) ideal for offset printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_printing

PDF for office so you can open this in adobe illustrator or adobe indesign 

 

[Nescio]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

I endorse splitting this discussion

To clarify, I have no objections to moving the discussion into a dedicated thread per se. What I don't appreciate is the arbitrary cut-off point. If posts x+1 to x+10 form a sequence, it wouldn't make sense to make a split starting at x+7, it's better to keep it together. 

would have been a better starting point.

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

So, what exactly are the disadvantages of writing in word and exporting to pdf, for a simple country boy like me?

If you have Word, know how to use it, are comfortable with it, and have no desire for anything more efficient (four ifs that do not apply to me but do for many), then write your text in Word and export it as pdf.

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

which text editor exactly would you recommend (that works flawlessly with mac)?

Any text editor will do. Although I don't have a Mac, I'm sure OS X has at least one text editor pre-installed.

57 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

PDF Photoshop with editable feature.

PDF for Illustrator (packed all fonts and images) ideal for offset printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_printing

PDF for office so you can open this in adobe illustrator or adobe indesign 

 

No idea how those work, but Adobe software tends to be expensive, complicated, graphical, and not necessarily better than free and open source alternatives.

[Nescio]

3 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

Right, you're free to suggest a better title.

"On PDF" would be more appropiate, or if you're more poetical inclined, "To PDF or Not to PDF". Better suggestions are welcome, of course :)

[isItTennant]

Don't know if there are that much things to argue about. I have no specific opinion on is pdf good or not, but nevertheless it's still the most convenient extension to use as we speak of documents, forms and something - it has a strict outlook that is shown the same way form any device, unlike other text files, as well as thanks to OCR its content is indexable. And there is a dozen of pdf editing tools, I prefer this one edit-pdf.pdffiller.com yet I suggest not to trust to the free ones because they're nothing but the annotators in the vast cases