Hi Philippe - not to intrude, but I don't believe this is the right place
to discuss the benefits and drawbacks to mobile PDFs. I would instead
comment on the relevant Phabricator tickets so that the technical teams can
see your feedback.

best,
Joe

--
*Joe Sutherland* (he/him or they/them)
Community Advocate
Wikimedia Foundation
joesutherland.rocks

On 16 November 2017 at 12:16, Philippe Verdy <[email protected]> wrote:

> Anyway, for those users that want an accessible application for offline
> reading on their mobiles, I still think that the Mediawiki reader will be
> more convenient, will use much less storage, will be free of undesired
> plugins, will save battery.
>
> PDFs on mobiles are only suitable on large tablets (not smartphones: even
> at 5 inches it's unusable), and even on tablets, there's too frequently
> limited storage forcing them to be connected to a cloud: why not simply
> connecting them to the real online wiki website, using their builtin
> browser, without any additional app?
>
> For smartphones (generally not more than 5 inches) or small tablets (with
> less than 10 inch screen width) the Wiki reader app will alway be a winner:
> it should work better to offer transparent downloading and caching for
> offline reading, and it will be usable: fontsizes adjustable, page layout
> better adapted. The wiki reader app will generally be much smaller to
> install and safer than any existing PDF reader app.
>
> 2017-11-16 20:59 GMT+01:00 Chris Koerner <[email protected]>:
>
>> Thanks all for the thoughtful discussion and the translation assistance.
>> More are obviously welcome.
>>
>> Yours,
>> Chris Koerner
>> Community Liaison
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 7:21 AM, Philippe Verdy <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> PDF format is not necessarily available on all mobiles. PDF readers tend
>>> to use themselves too much space and requires frequent updates, or
>>> frequently contain too many ads (some of them even require to have an
>>> Internet connection before using them, as they want to share what you
>>> download and extensive profiling data for who is reading documents that
>>> these apps actually did not create, and then insert targetted ads related
>>> to the PDF contents.
>>> If one wants really mobility (i.e. offline reading) there are better
>>> formats that are less intrusive, and whose readers are both safer, with
>>> much less unnecessariy plugins such as online form editors or cloud
>>> printing or reshares on social networks.
>>>
>>> "ebooks" formats (or core HTML, not requiring active scripts and online
>>> APIs, or even TXT) are usually better suited for mobility: they have the
>>> advantage of being suitable for all screen sizes (not the case of PDFs
>>> whose page layout is static, and that requires constant zooming, and
>>> horizontal panning to read them on most smartphones: a PDF is only suitable
>>> on smartphones for a single page (letter or A4 max). Even MS Office .doc[x]
>>> are easier to use on smartphones (there's a free viewer for it, and it's
>>> really small, faster and much more secure than most PDF readers, including
>>> the Reader made by Adobe, and which is still not workiong correctly on many
>>> smartphones as they require excessive privileges or frequently depend on
>>> tricky/unsupported/unstable APIs of the mobile OS, or are supproted only on
>>> the most recent versions of these OSes; Adobe Reader for smartphones is
>>> also too frequently targetted by third party apps that want to modify its
>>> behavior by adding their own hooks that Adobe Reader uses without any
>>> question)!
>>>
>>> I don't have any PDF reader on my smartphone. I have only the old one
>>> that was preinstalled but that I have blocked completely (againsst all
>>> updates and all its autostarted services). If I need a PDF, I'll download
>>> and read it on my PC, or I'll save it to Google Drive and Google will
>>> render it and allow me to view it without activating many services and
>>> third-party plugins. This is rare: I do that only to view some billing or
>>> purchase order, but I won't store any PDF on my smartphone.
>>>
>>> MediaWiki should better support the exports as eBooks formats, but the
>>> PDF format is the worst one for mobiles, including in terms of
>>> accessibility.
>>>
>>>
>>> 2017-11-16 13:10 GMT+01:00 Sylvain Chiron <[email protected]>:
>>>
>>>> From my point of view, ‘PDF’ is an important piece of the title which
>>>> should really appear in the translation, but you might know what you’re
>>>> doing. ‘Print to PDF’ can actually be translated like ‘output as pdf’
>>>> (or even ‘get as pdf’ here) which is the best for French.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Sylvain Chiron
>>>> Translator for French
>>>>
>>>> Le 16/11/2017 à 00:04, Anoop Rao a écrit :
>>>> > Done Kannada language
>>>> >
>>>> > I have changed title ( *New print to pdf feature for mobile web
>>>> > readers* ) in translation as (new print feature for mobile web
>>>> readers)
>>>> > thinking it would be suitable, since when translated your title might
>>>> > also mean :: new/secondary print version to PDF feature for mobile web
>>>> > readers ::
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > On 16-Nov-2017 3:55 am, "Chris Koerner" <[email protected]
>>>> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >     Hello,
>>>> >     The Readers team at the foundation has created an easier way to
>>>> >     download pdfs of articles from a mobile device. We would like to
>>>> >     tell people about this. Offline PDFs are helpful when Internet
>>>> >     access is not consistent. Please help translate this message.
>>>> >
>>>> >     https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:CKoerner_(WMF)/Mobile_PDF
>>>> >     <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:CKoerner_(WMF)/Mobile_PDF>
>>>> >
>>>> >     Thank you for your help!
>>>> >
>>>> >     Yours,
>>>> >     Chris Koerner
>>>> >     Community Liaison
>>>> >     Wikimedia Foundation
>>>> >
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>>>> >
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