PDFs and Kindles
Category: Digital Publishing
I'm working on a couple of projects that involve more than a passing familiarity with XML - I don't need to write actual code but I do need to explain things to people and really understand the capabilities (and business potential) of XML documents.
So I figured, why not put the Kindle to the test? I went onto the Kindle store and downloaded a sample chapter of XML Demystified. But that was the only title that seemed to fit my requirements - I needed more.
I went to O'Reilly's website and found XML In a Nutshell - much more what I was looking for. It was available as a PDF! So I bought it and downloaded it.
Amazon doesn't state explicitly that the Kindle supports PDFs. But I thought I would give it a whirl anyway - I emailed it to my Kindle account, and it appeared on my Kindle in about 10 minutes (it was a big file). It doesn't look perfect. The conversion from PDF to mobi is less than dreamy. The table of contents is a little mucked up - not that it matters, because the Kindle doesn't use page numbers anyway. But the text itself...is just fine. It's good enough. It'll work on the subway - I can read it during downtimes. It will, in a nutshell, do. At least until O'Reilly releases it in mobi format (not everything is available that way).
So I figured, why not put the Kindle to the test? I went onto the Kindle store and downloaded a sample chapter of XML Demystified. But that was the only title that seemed to fit my requirements - I needed more.
I went to O'Reilly's website and found XML In a Nutshell - much more what I was looking for. It was available as a PDF! So I bought it and downloaded it.
Amazon doesn't state explicitly that the Kindle supports PDFs. But I thought I would give it a whirl anyway - I emailed it to my Kindle account, and it appeared on my Kindle in about 10 minutes (it was a big file). It doesn't look perfect. The conversion from PDF to mobi is less than dreamy. The table of contents is a little mucked up - not that it matters, because the Kindle doesn't use page numbers anyway. But the text itself...is just fine. It's good enough. It'll work on the subway - I can read it during downtimes. It will, in a nutshell, do. At least until O'Reilly releases it in mobi format (not everything is available that way).
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