DRMed PDF and .epub on Sony Reader in January?
Come January, owners of the new Sony PRS-505 will be able to read DRMed best-sellers and other books in PDF and .epub formats, not just BBeB, via Adobe Digital Editions.
At least that’s true if the most optimistic interpretation of a Gizmodo report applies. Repeat. If.
“The new Sony Reader will get PDF support in January,” was how Gizmodo summed up a statement from Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics.
Sonyology in action
Funny—doesn’t the Reader already offer PDF support? It’s just missing the ability to read encrypted PDF from the major publishers and other houses that insist on “protection”?
So we’ve put on our Sonyology hat and decided, along with TadW at MobileRead, that Sony just might be talking about Adobe Digital Editions.
If that happens, I’m guessing that the Reader firmware upgrade would most likely come with glories mentioned in the first paragraph.
Soldiers, corporate types, housewives among Reader users
The same Gizmodo article reported: “The Reader is finding an audience among the military, among companies who want to load up manuals for employees, and among housewives. Educational publishers are still slow to see its value: ‘They are probably a little old fashioned—probably not the right thing to say—but they are a little slow to adapt,’ says Glasgow, adding that he thinks they will get on track. Sony welcomes the Amazon reader and any other competition as “publicity for the category.”
Oh, please. The Reader is a great little niche device for enjoying novels and the like, but if Sony thinks it’s going to hit gold in the K-12 market with the current model, it had better give up. The Reader lacks the ability to look up words even though, commendably, it now lets you go to specific page numbers.
Also, some would say the screen is a bit too small (even though at six inches it’s bigger than a typical PDA’s). What’s more, the screen is just black and white, and many educators demand color. The kid in me, too, would like that.
Hey, I’m rooting for Sony to succeed, wildly. As a high school counselor might say, it’s just a matter of realistic expectations. The 505 will do fine in the local community college but isn’t exactly Harvard bound. Perhaps the next model or the one after?
What I’d especially cherish in the firmware upgrade: The ability to see more fonts and in more sizes—ideally via import of TrueType fonts. I’m especially eager to be able to see heavier letters, which would increase the perceived contrast of the unit. Hey, Sony, as a PRRS-505 owner, I hope you’ll listen.
Detail: Nope, no known family relationship with the Wilson Rothman who wrote the Gizmodo piece.
Technorati Tags: Sony Reader PRS-505 , Sony Reader , PRS-505 , Stan Glassgow
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:40 am
David, now that you’ve had your Sony unit for a while, I have a PDF question that may be germane. I’m interested in reading unencrypted PDF files, and I know the reader does this. My question is, how well? Example: I just finished an E. Phillips Oppenheim novel called A Lost Leader. I downloaded it in Mobipocket format from Munsey’s and read it on my Palm TX. But I also downloaded the PDF, which included the original illustrations, from the Google Book site. I’d be curious to know how a PDF like that one would appear on the Sony device. Do you have any thoughts based on your experience? It would be great fun to read such a book with original illustrations intact.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Hi, Paul. Not sure if the Reader is the best machine for your purposes since it’s black and white. From what I know, Google’s PDF’s don’t display well on it, but I need to try something up to date. Perhaps others will have an immediate answer. Thanks. David
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Black and white is fine — the original illustrations in the novel were such. I have to say, though, that without search capability, I’m still not really in the market for the Sony. But having seen the display, I’m impressed that things are getting better. More font choices are, as you’ve pointed out, a major matter.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Well, Paul,fingers crossed that the Kindle will appear and have a nice little keyboard for easy searching. Meanwhile I hope that Sony and Adobe, apparently the source of the forthcoming software, will listen to us the matter of font choices! Thanks. David
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
My understanding is that in order officially support epub, you have to support embedded fonts in OpenType format at least. If that is the case, ADE running on the Sony reader will have to support OpenType fonts. I am not sure whether ADE or even the IDPF specs for epub readers enables the user to change the font used by the author/publisher of the document. This would be something like telling a web browser to ignore the font choices in the CSS of the web page and display it in another font choice. Some web pages, and I assume some epub files, will not explicitly declare fonts for the document and in this case the user will see it in a user chosen font.
These font changes can be undesirable in some cases, e.g., when the font choices carry a meaning in a technical document. For example, in a mathematical document, a script L means something completely different than a regular L in the same document. The use of fonts in a SVG embedded in an epub file can pose similar problems.
November 3rd, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Thanks, Ahmed. Let’s hope that at least the publishers of books with simple layouts will construct them to allow easy variants in fonts, etc. Meanwhile, in case Jon Noring is turning in, I’d welcome his thoughts on .epub’s current flexibility in this regard. David
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
You don’t have to embed fonts in an epub. The spec just says that if you want to embed a font, it must be an OpenType font. I imagine that the IDPF picked OpenType because it is more of an open standard than either Type 1 or TrueType are.
If you use a stylesheet in an epub (you don’t have to), then the behaviour is the same as a web browser. If the reading device has the specified font, it will be used. If not, a substitute font will be used.
The real problem that I see with this is that the epub spec leaves the font display issue on the reader totally open. If I don’t like the font specified in the epub, can I change it to one I do like? What about using a smaller or larger font size? Digital Editions does give you a range of sizes you can use (four, if I remember correctly). Reader devices and software are free to handle these issues any way they want, or not handle them at all.
Maybe the IDPF didn’t think that they should include this in the spec, or maybe they left it for a later version. In the mean time, we can either live with the choices that the stylesheet specifies and that the reader allows us to override, or we can unzip the epub and manually change the stylesheet.
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Joseph raises some important usability issues. I hope the IDPF is listening and that members such as Adobe can respond. Thanks. David
November 10th, 2007 at 9:27 am
What about unDRMed PDF or epub files? I have for example
books from projects like gutenberg one, will them be readable
without idiotic conversions to DRM formats???
December 12th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Regarding how well the reader supports PDF:
This depends a lot on what page size the PDF was formatted for. My guess is that eBook type digital editions will be formatted for small screen, or at least have text reflow. These should read very well. I think eBooks on the reader look great, and even photos and complex illustrations look pretty good. I’ve never been a huge fan of color printing, so greyscale is mostly OK for me. The only problems are with color fonts and highlighting. A light red font or green highlighter behind black text are easy to see on a color screen, but the low-contrast grey they get translated into can be very hard to read.
Sadly, I don’t care that much about reading eBooks on the 505. I spend a lot more time and eye strain reading technical manuals and scientific papers, and I’d rather read them on the 505 then print them. These types of paper do not, in general, work well with the 505. There are two major problems.
The first is screen size. Most scientific journals format for 8.5×11″, and use a small font too. Even in landscape mode, the 505 screen isn’t good enough to represent these papers without causing major eye strain. The resolution also isn’t good enough, and some line graphs and such can be lost or distorted.
Sony could fix this problem for many types of publication by providing pan-and-zoom or re-paginating features. Most journal articles are written in two columns, so it is possible to represent one 8.5×11 page with four views (top of the left column, bottom of the left column, top of the right column ….) and get a nice image. I can actually do this currently by running a python script on my desktop that duplicates the pdf pages and sets the crop boxes appropriately for the 505 screen. You can also do it with the built in image viewing mode on the 505 if you export a PDF page as an image. Sony could easily add this sort of viewing feature in a firmware upgrade.
The second problem is page rendering speed. The 505 is not nearly as fast at page turning as my Palm TX, but for eBook content it is fast enough to provide a seamless reading experience. For complex scientific pdfs, though, a page turn can take a long time. 5-10 seconds is pretty normal, and I have tried a few documents that took several minutes (during which the reader interface is locked up), and two or three PDFs that crashed the reader outright. I can see how a firmware update might speed up PDF rendering.
I suspect Sony could please a number of folks, and sell a number of 505s by offering digital editions support, but if I had a say in their selection of new features, I’d want faster rendering and pan-and-zoom for viewing of un-encrypted PDF much more than I’d want digital editions.