52 replies to this topic

[Gagis]

RickySpanish, on 19 November 2019 - 04:57 PM, said:

Any chance of a pdf though? I don't own an e-anything.

https://calibre-ebook.com/ for the best desktop application. Plenty of options for Android and iOS too. Your web browser might be able to handle it too, since EPUB is just HTML5, the same stuff internet is made of.

PDF is made for printing documents on paper. It makes text on paper not look like ****. Trying to read a PDF on a monitor is ****.

EPUB is made for reading things on a monitor. It makes text on a monitor not look like ****. Trying to print an EPUB on paper is ****.

Learn the difference.

You need specific applications to open a PDF too. The applications that can open an EPUB file are probably lighter and smaller than that.

[orcrist86]

2 things.

1st: this is rad
2nd: everyone has ereader software if they have a google account or Amazon account. Its fine

[Renzor the Red]

Good idea for building hype and bringing in another audience.

And EPUB and MOBI's are the modern ways of reading e-books. Use Calibre or Google Books or Kindle or just about anything, PDF guy. Always with the b**tching and moaning by some people here.

[50 50]

Edge seemed to read it just fine.

An intriguing little story to kick it off.
I do enjoy Randall's writing and he's done a great job with the mech stories we have had in the past.

[LordNothing]

Renzor the Red, on 19 November 2019 - 05:48 PM, said:

Good idea for building hype and bringing in another audience.

And EPUB and MOBI's are the modern ways of reading e-books. Use Calibre or Google Books or Kindle or just about anything, PDF guy. Always with the b**tching and moaning by some people here.

its ok, these people probably don't read. i have a huge ebook library and most of it is epub (a few other formats which calibre also supports). pdf is for documents. i have a few books on pdf and they are really poorly formatted and it doesn't scale well for different monitors or window sizes.

Edited by LordNothing, 19 November 2019 - 06:34 PM.

[RickySpanish]

Gagis, on 19 November 2019 - 05:25 PM, said:

https://calibre-ebook.com/ for the best desktop application. Plenty of options for Android and iOS too. Your web browser might be able to handle it too, since EPUB is just HTML5, the same stuff internet is made of.

PDF is made for printing documents on paper. It makes text on paper not look like ****. Trying to read a PDF on a monitor is ****.

EPUB is made for reading things on a monitor. It makes text on a monitor not look like ****. Trying to print an EPUB on paper is ****.

Learn the difference.

You need specific applications to open a PDF too. The applications that can open an EPUB file are probably lighter and smaller than that.

Renzor the Red, on 19 November 2019 - 05:48 PM, said:

Good idea for building hype and bringing in another audience.

And EPUB and MOBI's are the modern ways of reading e-books. Use Calibre or Google Books or Kindle or just about anything, PDF guy. Always with the b**tching and moaning by some people here.

LordNothing, on 19 November 2019 - 06:33 PM, said:

its ok, these people probably don't read. i have a huge ebook library and most of it is epub (a few other formats which calibre also supports). pdf is for documents. i have a few books on pdf and they are really poorly formatted and it doesn't scale well for different monitors or window sizes.

I don't read e-books you gigantic plebs, because I have a huge collection of actual books instead. I asked for a pdf because I browse the web on my phone and it has a pdf reader. Pdfs are not exactly hard to export, I have no idea what Gagis is crying about since basically every document online ever is in a pdf format.

Edited by RickySpanish, 19 November 2019 - 07:19 PM.

[C337Skymaster]

Gagis, on 19 November 2019 - 02:52 PM, said:

.epub is just HTML formatted for easy reading from screens. It's not magic. Your web browser can probably open it, though it renders better on Calibre on PC or one of a multitude of applications for your tablets or phones.

PDF is optimized for printing, and is really bad for reading from screens. Don't even ask for it. Learn to expect better.

Really? Cuz I select "Open with Firefox" and it just opens a new tab to bring the save/open dialogue box back up. PDFs I can open with Adobe...

Edited by C337Skymaster, 19 November 2019 - 08:10 PM.

[Trystan Thorne]

Give ebup and mobi a try guys.
I used to be same, used to pdf and thinking ebooks are annoying.

Pdf is great for documents, but ebooks are really handy for novels.
Makes reading them much easier as it gives you more flexibility.
Loads of good apps for Android and iOS.
And many options for PC. You can either use the already mentioned Calibre, a Firefox plugin, think Edge does it natively.
Or some better pdf readers than Adobe actually. Think Foxit does ebooks too.
I really can't suggest Adobe reader to anyone these days, too cumbersome, not feature rich.

Just a friendly suggestion here.

[Vellron2005]

RickySpanish, on 19 November 2019 - 07:17 PM, said:

I don't read e-books you gigantic plebs, because I have a huge collection of actual books instead. I asked for a pdf because I browse the web on my phone and it has a pdf reader. Pdfs are not exactly hard to export, I have no idea what Gagis is crying about since basically every document online ever is in a pdf format.

Agreed.

Also, I'm just saying.. I don't want to have to install any additional software when a simple PDF is readable on just about any device you can imagine these days..

I don't mind that they went with the formats they did, I do mind that they didn't think of simplicity of a PDF.

PDF is the most common format for reading anything. Rulebooks for boardgames and tabletop RPGs are sold as PDFs. Nobody uses a Kindle. Hell, I live in Croatia, and I've never even seen a Kindle-like device here. Everybody just has a cellphone or a tablet or most commonly, a PC/Laptop and we all read stuff as PDF.

Not using PDF is just sloppy thinking - something PGI is making it's staple.

And it is this sloppiness that annoys me.

Edited by Vellron2005, 20 November 2019 - 01:25 AM.

[50 50]

@vellron2005
I downloaded the epub file at lunch today and figured I would see if I got prompted to install an app to run it.
MS Edge just went "Yep, I can read that" and off I went.
Had a good old read while I ate at my PC.
See if it works for you.

[Vellron2005]

50 50, on 20 November 2019 - 01:40 AM, said:

@vellron2005
I downloaded the epub file at lunch today and figured I would see if I got prompted to install an app to run it.
MS Edge just went "Yep, I can read that" and off I went.
Had a good old read while I ate at my PC.
See if it works for you.

MS Edge is a terrible browser, and I wouldn't use it even if it worked on my computer.
For some reason, I have issues with Win10 in general (have to use 32bit instead of 64 bit with 8Gb ram installed while only using 4Gb), so both Edge and Explorer are completely unusable, Firefox is somewhat useable and Crome and Brave are working normally..

Might try to read it in Brave..

But still.. PDFs are something that they should have included..

P.S. Brave will not open it..

Edited by Vellron2005, 20 November 2019 - 01:58 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Vellron2005, on 20 November 2019 - 01:55 AM, said:

MS Edge is a terrible browser, and I wouldn't use it even if it worked on my computer.
For some reason, I have issues with Win10 in general (have to use 32bit instead of 64 bit with 8Gb ram installed while only using 4Gb), so both Edge and Explorer are completely unusable, Firefox is somewhat useable and Crome and Brave are working normally..

Might try to read it in Brave..

But still.. PDFs are something that they should have included..

P.S. Brave will not open it..

Look, I'm with you on the PDF front but you're blowing this out of proportion, just put the link through a converter:

https://www.onlineco...com/epub-to-pdf
>Source: From a URL
>Enter URL of the file to convert: https://static.mw5me...id-Generic.epub
>Convert
Click the "Download Now" link once it's done converting for you. Voilà.

I'd post my own converted PDF but I'm pretty sure some one would bring the legal voodoo.

[Nesutizale]

About the PDF stuff. I read a lot of PDFs oon screen and you can do it. Problem is its (mostly) less compfortable then the E-Book format as those allow for changeing fonts, adjust font sizes and a lot of other stuff so you can have the best reading experiance for you instead of what would be best for print.
Alot of people asking for PDF most likely comes from the fact that they allready have a PDF reader installed while not everyone has an E-Book reader installed or is familiar with the advantages or how to use it.
For example I have a reader installed but never used it while I constantly handle PDF files. So I first had to fimiliarize me with the E-Book reader. For some people that is allready a hurdle as they don't want to bother with "just another reader" for other it isn't.

Anyway I installed kindle and calibrie and while I like kindles interface more for PC the calibrie interface seams to have more options to work with. Have to test both on my phone next. I found out that black background with white text is something I actualy like to my surpise.

Also....release the next shortstory please.
I found it kinda nostalgic in the writing style, espacialy the glosar in the back brought back memories of the Grey Death novels.
Its also refreshing to read something that is not about the gloriouse MechWarriors. Another perspective on a familiar topic is a nice thing.

PS: Are those novels canon?

Edited by Nesutizale, 20 November 2019 - 05:47 AM.

[Ravage26]

Can someone remind me the closed beta start date? Too lazy to find it myself. Thanks!

[RickySpanish]

VonBruinwald, on 20 November 2019 - 02:32 AM, said:

Look, I'm with you on the PDF front but you're blowing this out of proportion, just put the link through a converter:

https://www.onlineco...com/epub-to-pdf
>Source: From a URL
>Enter URL of the file to convert: https://static.mw5me...id-Generic.epub
>Convert
Click the "Download Now" link once it's done converting for you. Voilà.

I'd post my own converted PDF but I'm pretty sure some one would bring the legal voodoo.

Perfect, cheers! Holy smokes, 45 pages. That's bang for yer c-bills.

Edited by RickySpanish, 20 November 2019 - 12:55 PM.

[LordNothing]

RickySpanish, on 19 November 2019 - 07:17 PM, said:

I don't read e-books you gigantic plebs, because I have a huge collection of actual books instead. I asked for a pdf because I browse the web on my phone and it has a pdf reader. Pdfs are not exactly hard to export, I have no idea what Gagis is crying about since basically every document online ever is in a pdf format.

keyword document. a book is not a document, its a publication. and i cant imagine it be difficult to get an epub reader for your phone.

[jss78]

Format issue aside (PGI, I wonder how easy it'd be to have these available in PDF also?) I think the novella series tying the game with the fictional universe is a wonderful idea.

LordNothing, on 19 November 2019 - 06:33 PM, said:

its ok, these people probably don't read. i have a huge ebook library and most of it is epub (a few other formats which calibre also supports). pdf is for documents. i have a few books on pdf and they are really poorly formatted and it doesn't scale well for different monitors or window sizes.

Dude. Ever heard of these?



Honestly the vast majority of people I know don't have ebook readers. The circles I move in, about a half of these are PhD's and verifiably are able to read.

Edited by jss78, 20 November 2019 - 03:16 PM.

[LordNothing]

jss78, on 20 November 2019 - 03:06 PM, said:

Format issue aside (PGI, I wonder how easy it'd be to have these available in PDF also?) I think the novella series tying the game with the fictional universe is a wonderful idea.



Dude. Ever heard of these?



Honestly the vast majority of people I know don't have ebook readers. The circles I move in, about a half of these are PhD's and verifiably are able to read.

paper books take up more space than i have, and if my entire book collection was in that format it would weigh in excess of half a ton. since you have never made the leap into electronic formats and know nothing about them, take it from someone that does. pdf is an antiquated format for printed documents and while it works out great with tax forms and parts datasheets it is ill equipped for containing large volumes of readable material. likewise the software that displays pdf lacks features that avid readers need to be able to stare it screens for the same amount of time you would stare at printed books. with the multitudes of free software out there, for almost every device thinkable, to display ebooks in their proper formats i dont really see what the problem is. maybe pgi will issue their ebook in dead tree format sometime "soon".

also that paragraph is a fine example of what you get when you read books in pdf format.

Edited by LordNothing, 20 November 2019 - 04:55 PM.

[JadeTornado]

"Hype train" is questionable, because veterans of the series have already bought or refunded MW5, so what's the target audience? Who could ever read this if he never heard of BT?

[Akillius]

I'd also like to see downloadable PDFs.
But to go with the collection of 19 BattleTech PDF manuals I purchased during HBS's BT kickstarter. (bagels anyone?)
And with the Michael Stackpole novellas and HBS beta testing manuals which are all in PDF format.
Plus I've no interest in reading PGI's MW5M e-series for at least a year.

Can I convert them?
Sure & probably easier then most since I have the experience with a dozen+ ebook formats over the decades.
Will I convert them... Nope!

And still after all these years I prefer the old paper format since I do my best reading during software updates or when steam is down which it was (briefly) earlier tonight.