PDF publishing: ready for prime time?

The Toronto Star announced today that they will be the first North American newspaper to begin publishing portions of the paper in PDF and offering this as a free download.

For the last several years I have championed PDF as a wonderfully versatile publishing format and have delivered numerous presentations on the benefits I see in utilizing rich media PDF (if you don't know what this means, you can download samples from gxo.com). Now I would like to ask whether anyone out there has any views on the commercial potential for PDF publishing, and rich PDF in particular. From my standpoint, I feel like Adobe has put PDF on the back burner while they sort out integrating it with Flash (i.e. the Apollo project), but I still see this format as being more than just something for forms and the rather lame generation of digital magazines that have appeared over the last year or two.

Has anyone else produced books or articles in rich PDF? Does anyone know of publications that are really selling PDF editions or selling ads in digital versions? How about books in rich PDF?

(closing in on #50)

RG, I'm not sure what you mean by "devices one uses to view the PDF". All PDF requires is Adobe Reader.

I agree that reading ink on paper is far superior to reading on screen. That's a physiological fact: reflective light is easier on the eyes than transmissive, and high resolution type beats low resolution screen text any day. Besides, it's a lot more comfortable to curl up and read than stare at a screen. In fact there a whole list of advantages that ink on paper has over monitors or handheld devices.

But as K1P1 observes, sometimes it's a matter of convenience. What I am especially keen on is leveraging the capability to add live web links, video clips, virtual reality, animations, music, voiceovers, and other rich media elements to provide extra dimensions to a PDF. That's what rich PDF is all about.

No argument here about preferring print to the screen for what you might call "serious" reading. I think we all made that point.

And yes, PDF has been around for years...fifteen, to be exact. It was announced at a 1991 Seybold conference, and started life under the name "Camelot", then changed to "Carousel". And it's been ten years since PDF 1.2, which added prepress support.

I absolutely hate what Zinio has done with digital magazines using its proprietary PDF reader. Defeats the whole idea of an open file format.

But what continues to make me a bit depressed is that none of you have acknowledged the subject I actually raised, which was rich PDF...although quite honestly, I'm not trying to criticize anyone for not picking up on the topic. Unfortunately, I understand all too well...most people don't realize how much can be done with the PDF 1.5 spec (in truth, multimedia has been supported in PDF since v1.1). I've been trying to raise awareness of rich PDF for the last three years, but without much success.

And to be entirely fair, this is a writers' forum, so I suppose I shouldn't expect there to be a lot of awareness. I was just raising the subject in the off-chance it might stimulate a discussion. As far as digital publishing goes, I think it's worth looking at other ways to supplement the written word with added content or reader benefits.

Say, Med, I really wasn't trying to get into a brouhaha about PDF. I just raised the subject of rich PDF in case there was anybody else who had any experience or opinions about its usefulness as a publishing format.

However, in response to your remark about "checking around"...

I looked at the Take Control, and although I saw a pretty good list of Mac-oriented books, I couldn't see where there was any use or reference to rich PDF publishing. I must have missed something.

As far as PDF being limited and not supporting all QuickTime features, what features doesn't it support?

I think a more important drawback is the weak support for Flash. My personal frustration comes from the fact that ever since Adobe bought Macromedia, rich PDF development and the tools to create the kind of rich PDF pages I like (i.e. through InDesign) seems to be at a standstill while they work on Apollo and try to unify the PDF and Flash platforms.

As far as being "too tied to print media"...this is actually one of the key advantages of building on PDF. PDF is now the standard for prepress and final page output in the printing and publishing industry. Doesn't it seem logical to expand page creation for the screen using the file format that's now so commonly used to go to press? It's what publishers are using anyway, and as I'm sure you know, PDF is what every single digital magazine service provider asks for and starts from, whether for downloadable editions or online.

And yes, I'm sure HyperCard could do lots of things. So could Macromedia Director. I wasn't trying to present PDF as the greatest thing since...well, HyperCard.

The point is, Adobe Reader comes already pre-installed on almost every computer being sold today. It's free. There are somthing like 750,000 copies of Reader floating around, and PDF is an open standard in use all over the world by governments, corporations and publishers everywhere. Why not leverage the fact that it's a de facto standard file format that everyone recognizes?

As for me jumping to conclusions...well, I've been publishing in rich PDF since 2004, and I like the potential I see. The problem isn't so much with the format itself as it is with acceptance, awareness, and especially as far as commercial publishing goes, a corresponding lack of support or interest from advertisers and ad agencies.

Oh my goodness...I just noticed I'm about to hit the big 5-0.

Should I expect fireworks, or a girl jumping out of a cake, or what?