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Comment by silkodyssey | Hacker News Reader

There's a single PDF on the page but there's a request to not link directly to it.

Don't ask me why but I hate pdfs. That's why I am on a crusade to have all free ebooks in one single html file, whenever possible.

Keep fighting the good fight, bro.

I get while you don't like pdf, but I'm not sure I understand why you want to use HTML files. HTML is for web layout, not publishing. I would much rather have an open format like DjVu[1][2] catch on -- it's like PDF, but has better compression and is an open format.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu

[2] http://djvu.org/

HTML is universal and can be edited with any simple notepad. It can look good if you know how to style it. Also sending them over the wire is easier than zipping/unzipping folders with tons of imgs/resources.

I've got some books and have put them in one html file, they look good enough for reading on my laptop, netbook, ipad, etc. So portability and universality are key.

Here, have a look at some of my private collection, most of Sherlock Holmes from gutenberg project:

http://georgenava.appspot.com/ebooks

And here, a format I've been working on, based on HTML, for ebook publishing (view source)

http://georgenava.appspot.com/myfirstbook

I know purists will burn me at the stake but I don't care, I like simplicity and that drives my life.

Beware only webkit browsers (chrome,safari) understand my format.

* btw, the only thing browsers like firefox and IE must implement to facilitate one single html file is this:

  .myimg{content:url("data:image/png;base64,abcdef...")}

A way to embed images and resources as data URIs. That's the only trick.

I've had a couple multiple-meg HTML pages on my disk, largely documentation. So, no images, simple HTML & CSS, etc. Every browser I've tried works longer than Preview for opening the file vs a basic PDF. Searching also typically takes longer, and pauses the application while it searches. As much as I wholly agree that I'd love HTML resources instead of PDFs, it seems browsers aren't made for things this large, and getting proper display for all the code & examples & math notation is not easy.

Admittedly, Preview only does a subset of PDF capabilities, and it's one of the fastest I've encountered, so it's not a wholly fair comparison.

HTML5 + CSS3 makes it easier, because fonts can be embedded, and there's a LOT more control over many things, and I know of no normal way to do anything like pagination. And many PDF viewers have interfaces optimized for reading, where browsers have interfaces optimized for navigation. I hope it's the future, but it's not the present.

Yes, I had the entire GNU documentation in single html and it's horrible.

Your first reason is why I prefer to use LaTeX and distribute .tex files along with .pdfs. I think the syntax of TeX is nicer than HTML and since I'm not a good or fast designer I don't have to worry about designing things nicely, adjusting for different browsers, etc. I do like your idea of embedding base64-encoded data for the browser to read, though.

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