Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: vinnmun on <04-06-11/0205:26>
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anyone having any good success with an e-reader when it comes to the shadowrun PDFs you download? I've loaded them onto my kindle 3 and have has only sparse luck with a couple of them.
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you should state, that the PDF are not in Copyright violation!
for example the Quick start ons you can have for free
it's forbidden to trade or indulge the use of pirated content.
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you should state, that the PDF are not in Copyright violation!
for example the Quick start ons you can have for free
it's forbidden to trade or indulge the use of pirated content.
You can legally buy eBook/PDF copies of the books, which is what I'm presuming he did.
As for the original question, sorry I don't personally own a Kindle. Hopefully somebody with more experience with eBooks will be along to help.
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With only a few exceptions, I prefer Dead Tree Format for a variety of reasons. Economy is the major one: Printing is done in either Canada or the US, with the rare book in England. Most likely from local paper, from locally lumbered trees (Although I'll be really happy when Hemp Paper comes out!). Warehoused in local areas, possibly multiple places. Shipped by Canadian/US companies. Sold in bookstores that are local.
Ebooks just don't have that kind of personal reach, despite being quite nice and easy to have when you have an e-reader or laptop.
That said, I get impatient sometimes and will get a PDF RPG Book, and probably get the Dead Tree Format when I have spare cash later on.
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While I prefer dead trees for casual browsing, when GMing I find it much more useful to have everything on my iPad.
The PDFs that BattleShop sells work in iBooks on iPhone & iPad... I don't know about DriveThruRPG, I hear they have some kind of DRM on their PDFs. As far as I know, the Kindle (and any other eReader) can handle PDFs as well. Honestly, it would save me a lot of hassle if Catalyst actually sold real eBooks on iTunes.
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Kindle and the Nook Color both work but are slow cause of the page rendering. You can load Drivethru PDFs onto the Nook Color ( I have one) but each page is slow cause of the graphics and the fact that its in good quality color. However my black & white pdfs are a bit faster. If you really want to read them as PDFs either you have to get a Pad based reader such as the IPAD or some other android based tablet. Or relax with the Nook or kindle.
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I used a Nook Color for quite some time, a third party app ezPDF reader really speeds up rendering time. (The Nook has to be rooted)
I just recently bought the ViewSonic G-Tablet and after flashing a custom ROM on it the dual core chip just flies through the biggest PDF file so you can scroll pretty smooth.
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Thnx for the responses. Yah I have heard the bigger screen ones or tablet size ones are the better readers for the pdfs.
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If you just need to have the resources handy, you can just load all your PDFs into an iPhone (iBooks) or Android phone (Adobe Reader). They won't make for the greatest reading experience, but they do the job.
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Printing is done in either Canada or the US, with the rare book in England.
More and more its being done in China. Wasn't SR4A Limited done in China?
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All of the color printing is done in China, all of the black and white printing is done stateside (for SR) because the price difference isn't worth the extra hassle bringing the books in from overseas.
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Printing is done in either Canada or the US, with the rare book in England.
More and more its being done in China.
And when I see books like those, a little piece inside of me dies...
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For some reason, I often find that the "stock" Shadowrun PDFs I get from Battleshop or DriveThruRPG open pages slowly, but if I re-process them through Acrobat Professional for Reduced File Size the resulting file opens pages almost instantly.
I can't see any notable page degradation after reprocessing.
-k
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I have a Nook Color which for me is the best way to go. Though I'm sure that the iPad would be nice too. I've had some trouble with coloring on the newer materials, but the older stuff (1e-3e) is more or less perfecto.
Still prefer the feel and ease of access that books offer, but they get damn heavy when carrying all of those Core SR4 books.
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Pdf's from DriveThruRPG work just fine on iPad2. I downloaded War and Way of the Adept just a few days ago. I use kdan's PDFReader to open them rather than iBooks, since it allows me add my own notes and bookmarks to the files.
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Just got a new PDF format read OS for my NookColor and now I can read all of my PDF formatted material. WHEEEE!!!
Only problem with readers is the battery life and that you don't get the satisfying page turning a deadtree gives you.
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Pdf's from DriveThruRPG work just fine on iPad2. I downloaded War and Way of the Adept just a few days ago. I use kdan's PDFReader to open them rather than iBooks, since it allows me add my own notes and bookmarks to the files.
Really? That's good to know. I've been using iBooks on my iPad and its very useful for games or just being able to do some research on the bus to/from work. All my DriveThruRPG books on call anytime. I will have to look at kdab's PDFReader, because I find iBooks a bit tiresome when scrolling through something large like the core rules. Eg going from the gear section to the, say, combat section on shotguns, then blasting through barriers, then to magic... and so on. If I could bookmark a section so it was easier to get back to...
I've also found printing a bit easier with pdf books. That way I can share with my players the parts of the sourcebook that I want to and not the whole thing... As I've set my campaign in 2050, I don't want to give too much away on bugs and AIs yet...
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iBooks has bookmarks. From Apple:
iBooks will automatically remember where you left off each time you close a book or return to your Home screen. Tap the bookmark icon in the upper-right corner to bookmark a specific page. Wirelessly sync your Bookmarks, Highlights, and Notes with your other devices using your iTunes Store account by tapping Settings > iBooks > Sync Bookmarks > ON.
(Bold by me.)
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iBooks has bookmarks. From Apple:
iBooks will automatically remember where you left off each time you close a book or return to your Home screen. Tap the bookmark icon in the upper-right corner to bookmark a specific page. Wirelessly sync your Bookmarks, Highlights, and Notes with your other devices using your iTunes Store account by tapping Settings > iBooks > Sync Bookmarks > ON.
(Bold by me.)
Tried the above and works great. Will make the next game much easier to run. Thanks!
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My pleasure.
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Just got my iPad 2 and the iBooks app works with the SR pdfs like a charm.
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The Shadowrun pdfs from DriveThruRPG work fine on iPad, iPad2 and my iPhone 3GS using iBooks. They also work find on the Sony Reader, as far as I can tell. Kindle, not so much. I think it might be the layering in the books themselves.
If you print and distill the files, the resulting pdfs will not have as many issues and should be readable in Kindles and other pdf readers.
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I use a Nook Color.
At first I was very disappointed with how it handled PDF files, very limited functionality on the stock PDF reader, no way to save your place if you closed it. No search or table of contents meant you had to know what page to jump to. Not very good for looking up a rule.
However, since the Nook software update it can now download and run andriod apps. I bought the ezPDF Reader app for a dollar. It's much faster, returns you to the page you were on when reopened, fully working linked table of contents, search feature, highlighting/copying text, and allows bookmarks. Now I love using my shadowrun PDFs on the Nook. For a dollar, it's one of the smartest things you can get on the Nook.
There is a drawback to the application though. It can only read PDF files that are on a microSD card, not the device memory. So to use it you need to go get a microSD card, but the price on those have dropped significantly and it's not a bad idea to enhance your storage capabilities anyhow.
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For some reason, I often find that the "stock" Shadowrun PDFs I get from Battleshop or DriveThruRPG open pages slowly, but if I re-process them through Acrobat Professional for Reduced File Size the resulting file opens pages almost instantly.
I can't see any notable page degradation after reprocessing.
I have Acrobat Pro X; if I try to save as a reduced-size or optimized PDF, it balks: "You do not have sufficient permissions to perform this task. Please change the security settings from the Document Properties dialog and retry." Am I missing something? I would definitely like to optimize the PDFs.
(Ideally, I would also remove the double-wide cover at the start of the SR4A rulebook PDF. Acrobat handles it OK, but other PDF readers tend to get all confused about the document scale because of that page. It's nice that they gave us the single-page version of it, but it's useless and inconvenient to have it in the same doc with the readable text.)
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For some reason, I often find that the "stock" Shadowrun PDFs I get from Battleshop or DriveThruRPG open pages slowly, but if I re-process them through Acrobat Professional for Reduced File Size the resulting file opens pages almost instantly.
I can't see any notable page degradation after reprocessing.
I have Acrobat Pro X; if I try to save as a reduced-size or optimized PDF, it balks: "You do not have sufficient permissions to perform this task. Please change the security settings from the Document Properties dialog and retry." Am I missing something? I would definitely like to optimize the PDFs.
(Ideally, I would also remove the double-wide cover at the start of the SR4A rulebook PDF. Acrobat handles it OK, but other PDF readers tend to get all confused about the document scale because of that page. It's nice that they gave us the single-page version of it, but it's useless and inconvenient to have it in the same doc with the readable text.)
The PDFs have been secured to prevent piracy and such on them. The side effect is that you won't be able to optimize them or change any of the display settings of the books.
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Read FastJack's (No, the other one) comments about DRM and how he feels about it.
Be careful, if he's around, you might get punched in the junk. :P
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Read FastJack's (No, the other one) comments about DRM and how he feels about it.
Be careful, if he's around, you might get punched in the junk. :P
Ironically, we (the fictional FJ and myself) agree wholeheartedly on that subject...
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Including the birth of your daughter and the best head you've ever had?
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Thanks, FJ. I see now that some of the Shadowrun PDFs have DRM/protection & some don't. Acrobat Pro X works fine on the ones that aren't protected. Also, I see why the optimizer helps without noticeably affecting quality: It's still keeping all of the images plenty sharp enough for screen reading (150+ dpi).