PDF Compatability with iOS devices

[WILL]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to canvas some of you to try to figure something out I've ran into recently.

After getting my iPod Touch, purchased second hand, I've been trying to get Pascal Gamer Magazine put on it to see if it works well on the iPod/iPhone considering it's size. I'm sad to say that each time I try to open it with iBooks or many of the other PDF reader apps available, it closes the app before it's finished opening the file.

I thought perhaps it was a file size problem so I tried another ebook, but it opened just fine so that's out. Perhaps it's the dpi. Is there a limit to how high I can have it? The actual release that I offer on my site is 300dpi, which could be making memory requirements a bit big so I tried lowering it to 200 dpi and I still got the same premature closing problem. So I'm thinking maybe I just have to reduce it a good bit more to perhaps 72 dpi?

What do you guys thing? Anyone try viewing Pascal Gamer Magazine on their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch?

[WILL]

Well surprise, surprise... 72 dpi worked. Though... I think it might be a little small and it is sort of still taking a bit of time to process the text images from the PDF file. Suggestions?

Oh and in case you are all wondering it's a 2nd Generation iPod Touch so it is a little bit slower then the current models, but I doubt that has a huge factor as other ebooks seem to load decent enough on it. I'm just looking to optimize the PDF files for easier usage.

[code_glitch]

What program are using to make the PDF files? There is usually an option to 'compress images' or something like it. I remember having to do that on my EEE 701 2gb surf. It had a 7" screen and an 800mhz celeron m core. Just enough to run XP; forget e-mauals... Those were the good days. Mind you, I should think the capabilities of a moder ipod touch similar to it so that might be your best bet...

[WILL]

Well I'm using Scribus as my desktop publishing software. It generates the PDF files. I can set the max image resolution dpi and the EPS graphics dpi for vector-based fonts seperately. I also have the option to choose the PDF format version as well. Pascal Gamer is usually a PDF 1.4 format (Acrobat 5 and up) but I can set it to PDF 1.5 in the latest version of Scribus.

Something else that seems like it might be an issue, is the actual size of the page it's self. After reducing the dpi for both to 72, it would finally load the pages so I can see them, but the text remained blurry for quite some time, even as I zoomed in as well. I'm thinking that there is even more 'waste' going on how it's generated and I'm wondering how I might be able to reduce it more.

Would reducing the page size help at all maybe? Default is 8.5x11, but on a small screen that is a bit crazy so maybe if I can figure out how I can reduce the page size upon PDF generation that'd help further. Or if there is another tool out there anyone knows of?

[chronozphere]

I think that making the PDFs smaller should help fixing these kind of issues. In general it's a good idea to have a download of ~10MB instead of > 40MB.

I showed PGD Mag to some of my friends but most of them were annoyed by the sheer size of the PDF. Most books (with ~500pages) are about 10MB in size so I think you can definitely improve this. Don't use high-res advertisement images for example. Cutting down 50% of the pixels shouldnt harm anyone. :)

[WILL]

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Reduce the image size and make it easier to download. It also adds value to the printed copies as they will have a much nicer resolution when printed. I am able to resample all the images to 72 dpi, which I've tried and it does work, but I still have an issue where it takes forever to clear up the text as it decodes.

There is also another option in Scribus to use zip or jpeg compression. I would thing that the jpeg compression would be faster maybe. I might try that.