I just thought it was interesting that the Dungeon edition of Maure Castle was not a single PDF per se but more than a few in a zip file, several no more than 1 page. Is there a particular reason for this. I was curious about this, that's all.
Chief Technical Officer
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I just thought it was interesting that the Dungeon edition of Maure Castle was not a single PDF per se but more than a few in a zip file, several no more than 1 page. Is there a particular reason for this. I was curious about this, that's all.
Our electronic back issues all contain separate PDFs for each section of the magazine (a section might be a single feature, column, full-page cartoon, etc.). We decided on this approach for four reasons:
1. It's easier for us. This is how our editorial department delivers their work to our prepress department, so one InDesign file (or, in the horrible before-time, one Quark file) becomes one PDF.
2. We think it's easier for most readers. While having it all in one file might be better for somebody who purchased it to read it cover-to-cover, odds are good that most of you are just interested in one particular section at any given time. So, you don't have to wade through huge file to get at what you need, and your computer doesn't have to worry about how best to fit several dozen graphically intense pages into memory.
3. We don't always have the rights to reproduce all of the content in a given issue; also, we generally remove the ads. This means that if we ran the whole thing together, you might go directly from page 17 to page 20, which might be confusing; even worse, pagination on spreads would get messed up (for example, left-hand pages would sometimes move to become right-hand pages), so many layouts would be severely broken.
4. It gives us flexibility to package those articles in different ways in the future.
How do you feel about it?
-Vic.
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Sorry for not responding sooner, I've been a tad busy (that work & sleep thing, y'know)...also I got lost in the message boards had to figure out how to find my original post. :)
All in all, those are very good reasons for handling the PDF like that. Those who purchase pdf's of Dragon or Dungeon utilize them differently than those who get CPU Magazine pdf's (of which I have an online subscription). In their case they have both small and large versions of their magazines in pdf format (small = 5 MB approx. and large = upwards of 13 MB). I'm fine with how theirs is done, and it has searchable text, etc., but the reality is that I'm less likely to print portions of CPU than I would with a Dragon or Dungeon pdf. In your case, since time = $ this is good enough.