Just larking around

[mcbishop]

By way of experiment, I have made my paper 'Legio V Alaudae and the crested lark' available on Scribd for any who may not possess it and wish to read it. I would be interested in everybody's comments on the form (not the content) of this type of online presentation of what is essentially a flash-titivated PDF file. It strikes me that for online reading it wins over the embedded Acrobat Reader through sheer size, but that for printing out you still have to download the file and do it the old way.

If it is thought a success, others (some quite large) may follow.

Mike Bishop

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Interesting. Both pages scroll, though, if you use the wheel. I have to click on the slider to isolate the page of the article. Not a major issue though. Seems good to me!

[jvrjenivs]

I'm used to print articles I want to read, as I found it better to read long papers from prints and therefor prefer the 'normal adobe' version. (also the res. generally is also better on 'normal' pdf files.)

[Tarbicus]

Excellent. Searchable text as well, which is a great bonus. My only niggle was the vertical height to make room for ads at the bottom, but then I noticed the full-screen option (duh). I can see the benefit in making it less likely to be 'redistributed' and a more attractive interface to published work.

[Narukami]

I like it.

Look forward to more.

Thanks!

:wink:

Narukami

[mcbishop]

Excellent. Searchable text as well, which is a great bonus. My only niggle was the vertical height to make room for ads at the bottom, but then I noticed the full-screen option (duh). I can see the benefit in making it less likely to be 'redistributed' and a more attractive interface to published work.

Well you can still download the PDF and a text version - the only control on redistribution is the licence (you can fiddle around with the DRM junk in Acrobat but that defeats the whole point of making the information accessible). The text is only searchable because I re-typeset the whole of volume 1 of JRMES so I could put it on the web (later volumes exist in Postscript or PDF so it is much easier).

The key advantage of Scribd as I see it is for online reference (i.e. looking up information) rather than reading big chunks in the bath - because it only downloads what it needs it is much more economical than the Adobe Reader plugin, which grabs the whole file, even if you only want to refer to one page. No problem in the age of broadband? Tell that to all the people still on dialup in the UK because they have no viable broadband.

Note that you can also embed the viewing window in web pages and I shall be experimenting with that soon, once I have finished wrestling with Google Earth API for one of my other projects.

Keep the feedback coming.

Mike Bishop

[Ioannes_Ahenobarbus]

Simple to use, easy to see, and a delight to read! Laudes for you!