Kiseido Digital Bookshelf

[tundra]

Does anyone know if Kiseido plans to add more volumes to their digital bookshelf series? There hasn't been a new volume in several years - in fact, so far only volume one has been released, with five out-of-print titles. I was very much looking forward to a second and even a third volume.

I know Kiseido is publishing some books as SmartGo books. But for those of us who don't have equipment for such things, the original bookshelf series would be nice, with pdf files that you could print out and study away from the computer. (Or am I being dense, and a SmartGo book can be viewed and printed out with an ordinary computer?)

[judicata]

Does anyone know if [url=http://www.kiseido.com/] (Or am I being dense, and a SmartGo book can be viewed and printed out with an ordinary computer?)

You're definitely not being dense--you can only view SmartGo books in the app. Sorry I can't respond to your primary question, though.

[tundra]

Does anyone know if [url=http://www.kiseido.com/] (Or am I being dense, and a SmartGo book can be viewed and printed out with an ordinary computer?)

You're definitely not being dense--you can only view SmartGo books in the app. Sorry I can't respond to your primary question, though.

Thanks for the reply, judicata. I sent Kiseido an email a few days ago, but have had no reply. Even if they do reply, I suspect it would be only to say that they have no plans at present to continue the series.

Actually, I wonder if the problem is piracy. It's probably all too easy for one person to buy the dvd, share the books with friends, who share them with other friends, and so on, until eventually they get uploaded somewhere. If that's what has been happening, I can't really blame Kiseido if they decide to abandon the pdf format. Too bad, as I really liked it.

[averell]

Actually, I wonder if the problem is piracy. It's probably all too easy for one person to buy the dvd, share the books with friends, who share them with other friends, and so on, until eventually they get uploaded somewhere. If that's what has been happening, I can't really blame Kiseido if they decide to abandon the pdf format. Too bad, as I really liked it.

If you take Enclosure Josekis for example, one pirated copy is OCRd crisp clear text, and the file size is 4mb. The digital bookshelf version is a whopping 80+mb of image scans, with some DRM added on top. I estimate the development costs for kiseido at about $100 for the student they paid to do the scanning. If they abandon it, that's because a shitty product doesn't sell, not because of pirates who exist regardless of that.

[kusto]

that is true. i would buy them if they were on smartgo though.

[oren]

If you take Enclosure Josekis for example, one pirated copy is OCRd crisp clear text, and the file size is 4mb. The digital bookshelf version is a whopping 80+mb of image scans, with some DRM added on top. I estimate the development costs for kiseido at about $100 for the student they paid to do the scanning. If they abandon it, that's because a shitty product doesn't sell, not because of pirates who exist regardless of that.

What DRM exists? I have the digital bookshelf edition, and I've never seen any DRM. One reason I purchased it was to support that format.

[averell]

Most PDF readers will display SECURED or something similar too when some kind of DRM is active.

[RBerenguel]

I'd bet that opening that file in Preview (Mac OS) and "print to PDF" cleans all this. Just in case you want to annotate that file, of course...

[averell]

I'd bet that opening that file in Preview (Mac OS) and "print to PDF" cleans all this. Just in case you want to annotate that file, of course...

Printing is not restricted, i can just print to file directly in any reader. Circumvention of this DRM is beside the point though. In the best possibly case it is a minor annoyance to me, and makes the pirated copy even more superior.

[RBerenguel]

Yes, forgot that Print-to-file got a lot better after I gave up using Windows. But indeed, DRM is usually just a "minor annoyance" to the savvy Of course, the 20x size ratio between the "good one" and the pirated (OCRd) version is quite heavy

[oren]

Yeah, I usually consider DRM to be something that prevents me from opening the file anywhere else or on any platform I want. If DRM just sits there doing nothing, it's not much of a DRM.

Why would I even care about getting rid of it?

Anyway, I have no problem with the format. I could always OCR the PDF myself if I want, but it works fine. I've also seen some pretty bad OCR jobs, and I'm happy with the original. I read all the books in this series and would love to see more.

[RBerenguel]

Reading a 80MB scanned PDF is a pain in an iPad, for example... Pages are just "too big" in detail and take long to load (there are some PDF reading apps better at that, but in any case they are slow). Reducing that to 4mb of OCR is a huge improvement.

[oren]

Reading a 80MB scanned PDF is a pain in an iPad, for example... Pages are just "too big" in detail and take long to load (there are some PDF reading apps better at that, but in any case they are slow). Reducing that to 4mb of OCR is a huge improvement.

Ok, I've actually been reading it on my Nook. Adobe Reader handles the size pretty well, and I don't need to do any extra work. To each their own though.

[RBerenguel]

Then the Nook must be much better than a Kindle (the gray... My gf's Kindle can't handle such a big file with any kind of speed. I usually process such big files a little to reduce size (happens a lot when converting Djvu to PDF)

[hyperpape]

You'll have to compose videos. I've found that people's subjective impressions of things being too slow can vary wildly.