Question about the rules

[GeneYas]

In the rules, it states "no PDF's because it is a proprietary standard". While PDF was created by Adobe, my understanding was that Adobe published the specs and released it as an open standard. The wikipedia lists it as an open standard.  I create PDF's with CutePDF Writer  ( http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp ) quite a bit. I use it and Irfanview. Irfanview has a plugin to make multipage tifs that can be printed as pdf's with cutewriter or with the PDF plugin, Irfanview can create multipage PDF's from any image format it reads (the list is long). Either way, Adobe software is not needed to create PDF. OpenOffice also allows the export of their files  as PDF. I believe they all use Ghostscript as their engine. Users could upload their files to Googledocs and share them by way of the Google reader or download them here and use acrobat reader. Perhaps I'm just thinking out loud. I'd think the Google reader (or purchased equivalent if it exists) could be incorporated into an i-frame with the DCM masthead on top. Having Google host the files (or just the hot ones) would allow branding of the content while saving on bandwidth. Just curious what others think.

Gene

[Captain DJ]

For me it's more that you can't edit a pdf file easily. You upload it and people who download it can edit it,  take images out of it etc easily and adapt it to how they organise their comic collection.

RAR/ZIP/CBR/CBZ files etc can be downloaded, converted to rar/zip files, unzipped, pages added to them, pages deleted etc etc. Just much more easier.

Also in past PDF files tended to be lower quality than cbr/cbz comics.

[Snard]

For me it's more that you can't edit a pdf file easily. You upload it and people who download it can edit it,  take images out of it etc easily and adapt it to how they organise their comic collection.

RAR/ZIP/CBR/CBZ files etc can be downloaded, converted to rar/zip files, unzipped, pages added to them, pages deleted etc etc. Just much more easier.

Also in past PDF files tended to be lower quality than cbr/cbz comics.

I am of the same opinion; I prefer individual files inside an archive. However, it might be better to say "PDFs are discouraged; RAR/ZIP/CBR/CBZ containing .JPG files are the preferred format", in the case where someone has located a public domain PDF version of a comic, and an archive version doesn't exist.

My 2 cents.

[GeneYas]

All valid. Irfanview can however open a pdf with the plugins and extract the pages. Image conversion back and forth obviously degrades image quality. Everyone should hopefully be keeping a set of master files (best quality/resolution) to work with.

Gene