Which Format; Html or PDF for E-zine?
gw...@2xtreme.net
I want to produce a nice free but size efficient E-Magazine. I have
tested PDF which looks great (appearance is ideal), but its file size
will limit pages and images etc. for reasonable download or email
distribution.
The other alternative is Html documents. I have tested on page which
even with color photos was ideal as far as file size is concerned. But
making page links, naming pages, making sure everything works is
technically more tedious than in PDF format.
I have made one web page with Cyberstudio Personal Edition, which works.
Do I make the E-Magazine just like a web page, and that is emailed? Are
there any special provisons, technical matters that I must address? I
also have Canvas 7.0 and have read some about making web pages and
intranet documents, stuff about relative and absolute directories etc.
I do not know much about html. I also have Pagemaker which I can also
produce html documents if I remember correctly.
Maybe it would be easier to make a long vertical document (one page) in
vertical format that is scrolled down for viewing? Excuse my ignorance,
but this is new areas of endeavor, and I would apreciate any
suggestions?
I also downloaded Pegasus, free email program that allows large email
address books called distribution lists, but I don't know how to
efficiently set it up so that subscriptions and unsubscribe will go to
the right mail folder (or is that done by hand?). James
Simon Slavin
"gw...@2xtreme.net" <gw...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
> I want to produce a nice free but size efficient E-Magazine. I have
> tested PDF which looks great (appearance is ideal), but its file size
> will limit pages and images etc. for reasonable download or email
> distribution.
That's what I'd expect.
> The other alternative is Html documents. I have tested on page which
> even with color photos was ideal as far as file size is concerned. But
> making page links, naming pages, making sure everything works is
> technically more tedious than in PDF format.
Depends on how you do it.
> I have made one web page with Cyberstudio Personal Edition, which works.
And there may lie your problem. I've never used that program but I
can tell you that some HTML editors are complete crap and generate
tons of gibberish that doesn't do what you wanted in the first place.
But lets return to the initial question: .PDF versus .HTML.
They are designed for completely different things.
.PDF files present an image to the user. The image will look
/exactly/ the way you designed it. If the use of a particular
font for each part of your document, and making sure that
there's exactly 1.5 millimeters between the bottom line and
the page number is important to you, you need .PDF. If it's
very important that a certain passage should appear on page 14
then you need .PDF.
.HTML files present information to the user. It's up to the
user to customise how the information looks. If your users
may be colourblind, then you can present the information in
exactly the same way and the user can customise the colour of
their links. If your user may prefer a certain font or font
size then you don't care: you just sent them the text and
they can pick the font. If being able to click on a link and
getting to the related text is important to you, then .HTML
should be your preferred format.
To put it another way, if your e-zine is really just an
electronic version of a printed magazine, then use .PDF. If
your e-zine is really designed to be read on a computer, then
use .HTML.
.HTML editors vary. The one I use most is FileMaker Home Page
(free demo copy available from www.filemaker.com). This suits
the kind of thing I do (web pages for my department) but may
not be ideal for you.
> Do I make the E-Magazine just like a web page, and that is emailed? Are
> there any special provisons, technical matters that I must address? I
> also have Canvas 7.0 and have read some about making web pages and
> intranet documents, stuff about relative and absolute directories etc.
> I do not know much about html. I also have Pagemaker which I can also
> produce html documents if I remember correctly.
You're putting the cart before the horse. The programs you've
named, although they can be used to edit .HTML, are not ideally
suited to it. Canvas is a drawing package. Pagemaker is a
page-layout package. Hell, I can use AppleWorks to write web
pages which look far better and handle links far better than the
ones they produce and AppleWorks is just a cheap integrated
package.
If you've decided to explore .HTML, get an .HTML editor, don't
try to use something not really designed for it.
Web pages are just web pages. If you want to see examples, you
have the entire WWW to choose from. Browse ! The fact that you
may be distributing via email instead of HTTP is irrelevent: the
pages will look identical, they'll just load faster.
However, email is a very inefficient way of distributing such
data. I think you would do better with a password-protected
web site. Your email would contain just the password to this
month's edition and maybe a table of contents.
> Maybe it would be easier to make a long vertical document (one page) in
> vertical format that is scrolled down for viewing? Excuse my ignorance,
> but this is new areas of endeavor, and I would apreciate any
> suggestions?
One long document is not really appropriate for HTML. You'd have
a long wait at the beginning as the browser lays out the page
and your users would lose their way amoung the links.
> I also downloaded Pegasus, free email program that allows large email
> address books called distribution lists, but I don't know how to
> efficiently set it up so that subscriptions and unsubscribe will go to
> the right mail folder (or is that done by hand?).
You don't really need anything special to send one email to multiple
addresses. If you need subscription handled automatically and
don't want to run the risk of spamming people (because someone else
subscribed them to the list) then you should look into mailing-list
management programs which handle the subscription process for you.
Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | _Microsoft_ is going to write the software
No junk email please. | that spies on me? I feel better already.
| -- John D. Goulden