After much sweat today, I beat the Mobipocket Creator software into making some final tweaks to the MobiPocket version of Neptune Crossing. Then I lit into the PDF version, which seems to be a popular format, although in my opinion it has little to recommend it for viewing on a PDA or other handheld. That’s especially true here. I have a nice, pretty PDF display for viewing on a computer or for printing. And I hope that’s how most people who choose PDF would do it.
What I didn’t master was getting a file that’ll reflow the text onto a small screen. First my wife was doing the conversions for me on her Mac, and they looked good but were pretty fat files. Then I tried Adobe’s free online conversion, and that gave a much smaller file, same appearance. But neither did the tagging needed for text reflow on a PDA, and I don’t know how to do it. (And if this is all so much gibberish to you, more power to you!)
I think that’s it for Neptune Crossing! On to Strange Attractors!
“I have not yet spoken of the esthetic appeal of strange attractors. These systems of curves, these clouds of points, suggest sometimes fireworks or galaxies… A realm lies here to be explored and harmonies to be discovered.” —David Ruel
Andrew Timson
You’re right, PDF does have little to recommend it on a handheld. That said, sometime this weekend I’ll take a crack at getting a version that’ll reflow and not be much bigger; it’s an interesting technical exercise, if nothing else. 🙂
Also: your “Books by…” list left off your Battlestar Galactica novelization.
Jeffrey A. Carver
Dang, I meant to put in BSG. (Sigh.) Not worth redoing all those conversions for, though. But I guess I should start a list of corrections to make, in case more come to light. Then I could do a batch of them.
Do you know how to tag for PDF reflowing text? After posting that, I tried using Framemaker, which I have left on my machine from an old job. It claimed to be tagging for a PDA, but when I viewed the result on my PC, the reflow button was greyed out. (Which is really weird, because on a PC the tagging supposedly isn’t even needed.)
I wonder if Open Office can do it.