DjVu vs. PDF for website.

[aimeeandbeatles]

Hello all.

On the first version of my website, I used PDF files for people who wanted to save the files on their hard drives. For version 2, I'm somewhat considering using DjVu instead. I first discovered the format when I stumbled across a newspaper archive using that.

If you don't know what DjVu is, it's a format for page layouts, similiar to PDFs.

EDIT: Here's a few links on the subject, for people who are lurking:
http://djvu.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu

It has a few advantages:

1. The main one is the compression. PDF files can be huge! However, I was very impressed with the size of the DJVU files.

Now, for disadvantages ...

1. I had difficulties finding a free encoder. I think DjVuLibre can do it, but I haven't tried it yet and from the website I'm not sure. As well, if it's command-line I can't do it as I suck at command-line
2. DjVu isn't too common and I imagine some people wouldn't like to download another reader. Remember the purpose of my site -- not a lot of these people are technical.
3. A lot of the files are PDFs already. That would be a lot of encoding!

So, thoughts? Right now the disadvantages seem to outweigh the advantages. But if someone can tip the scales I might look into it further.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Update: I downloaded the DjVuLibre. It was in command line and I went Oh crap until I googled and found a third-party GUI (though it only converts PDFs).

I tried it out on a few files. Some of them the compression was very good, other ones so-so... I've not noticed any patterns on when it happens or not. It managed to artifact up one of my newspaper scans pretty awful -- if it wasn't for the content I'd post screebshots.

 

[Synobun]

I'd say stick to .pdf for the simple fact that most people (including me) don't know what DjVu is and won't bother downloading a different reader. Most of the time if I need to download something to get something else, I just close the page and forget about it or find another way.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That was my main concern. I think Ill stick to PDF.