Thursday, November 26, 2009

Let me print it

Here's a gripe I have with pdfs. I don't mind they can't be edited, that's fine and while i like to be able to copy and paste turning that feature off is okay but when I can't print the pdf because printing is disabled I'm not going to buy the product.
If it's a pdf preview of a print only title, that makes some sense but it had best be free or almost free if that is the case. If it's a pdf only title it's never going to be purchased by me if the print option is turned off. I like to use my gaming materials at the game table and don't fiddle with electronics there. I also love the ability to scribble the heck all over a printed pdf, I've actually bought pdfs of print books I have so I can in fact scribble all over them as I play and not ruin the nice bound original copy. But no printing , no scribbling, no printing no use at the table top and if I'm not going to be able to use it at the table top I'm not going to buy it.

7 comments:

  1. Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool luddite, I was unaware that purchased pdfs were print disabled. This has altered my thinking on purchasing same.

    I guess that in the minds of those who decide these things, they picture the DM with his books at one side, DM's screen in front and laptop/PC sitting beside the action.

    My PC is in a wholly different room, upstairs in fact, and I'm happy to have it thus. Apart from the convenience of it being there when we need to roll a new character up on the Dragonsfoot 1e character generator, I can't see any reason for it being at the gaming table.

    So yes, I'm with you on that, JD.

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  2. They aren't all print disabled I picked up a dozen today (most were $1.00) and none of them had their functionality crippled by being print disabled.
    I've got a phone that I can read pdfs on and two computers in the next room over from where we game but it really is just a pain to juggle electronics, notes, notebooks and rulebooks all at the same time. And I can't scribble notes on a locked pdf like I can on a printout.

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  3. I agree, that's why I never put in any of those crippling features to PDFs I sell.

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  4. some pdf readers CAN print regardless of the print function being disabled...

    PREVIEW in OSX
    The FREE FOXIT pdf reader
    OPENOFFICE...
    among others....

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  5. Yeah - it is a bummer, I'd be hard-pressed to purchase a PDF that print-disables, nor would I produce such abominations! The PDF preview for print case you give above is about the only situation I can see justification - otherwise, it is just a data file, and there are far better formats available for that!

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  6. There are tools that remove fair use restrictions such as those. At least I've used one to make read-only PDFs editable.

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  7. That would tick me off. Luckily I haven't run onto that problem yet.

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