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According to my research the nook and the kindle e-readers both can diplay pdf files. Now I want to put all my codexes in pdf format on them and my brb, as well as my army lists (print on army builder, then scan as pdf) the question is has anybody used either for this purpose and if so is it legible enough with the small screens. basically if nobnody has I'll try it, a kindle is just over a hundred bucks atm , but if somebody has used or even better compared pdf diplay on the devices I'd love to know your experience with it, if the nook or nook oclor work better or look better it's be worth the exrta money as I wanna stop lugging codexes and ruleboks with me

I've got a 7inch MiGear in colour, and it's not bad

It has a button for landscape/portrait, not auto... but ok

refresh rate is ok too

I've seen someone use a 10inch Kindle... very good

and a 10inch iPad... fantastic

but you pay more for that of course

memory is next question... mine is only 2gig but I have extra cards as required for more Codex

you play with what you pay for

mik

Considering I've been doing the same thing on a 4" smart phone they'd look awesome on a Nook color.

Woudlbe even better if you coudl DL the pdf version legally from GW. If they were reduced price i woudl seriously consider buy all the codices on PDF. As it is, for £20 a pop i will only buy the ones i use.

I'm glad the kindle looked good. I wouldn't get an ipad because i wouldn't buy a apple product on priciple (shouldn't have to jailbreak for full functionality) I am partial to E-readers because of the contrast and low blacklight. they are very pleasant to read

I need to go play with a nook color to see if it'll be as pleasant to look at and since i now know it will look good and legible on it its a matter of finding otu which ereader to get

*add* you can scan in codexes you own (or download) at least in the us. if you own the origional matrial you can make a copy of your own book, dvd, cd whatever as long as it is for your own consumption. I donn't plan on haivng all the codexes but i have ork, brb, space marines and black templar so i can scan/load all i want and be compeltely on the correct side of the law

There's the issue, of course, that there aren't many legal ways to get the books as PDFs short of scanning your own.

I did some research a while back and some of the eReaders 'converted' PDFs to be in the reader's preferred format, so you essentially get the text ripped out, but not much of the layout. This might not work well for Codexes.

Newer ones may have fixed this and iOS, Android, and some other devices can run a 'true' PDF reader.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

G00fySmiley wrote:I'm glad the kindle looked good. I wouldn't get an ipad because i wouldn't buy a apple product on priciple (shouldn't have to jailbreak for full functionality) I am partial to E-readers because of the contrast and low blacklight. they are very pleasant to read

People are jailbreaking Kindles and Nooks to add features as well...

Makes me wonder why GW dont make other codices available for DL in a chopped down format like the AOBR rulebook.

Just the unit entries and special rules, no fluff, no artwork. Charge a few quid for the DL. I'd take them.

true people (esp peopel like myself) will jailbreak it anyway for kicks. heck i have a throwbox at home where i can play some games from my home pc on my palm pre but thats more for fun.

i want the ereader to read and if i only got the text from the codex I would be prefectly happy with it even if it isn't a true pdf format as long as i can scroll through pages quickly and get the txt I'll be happy

I just bought a Nook Color myself and it is a rather neat little device. Much like an Ipad or Iphone, you can zoom in by putting two fingers on the screen together and pull them apart to zoom in on the spot. It also auto rotates the screen in most cases when turned. That said. I do plan to jailbreak mine so that I can use normal android apps on my nook (the nook store for apps is very sparse, angry birds a few other adult themed apps/games and then 75% kids stuff like bernstein bears)

G00fySmiley wrote:

*add* you can scan in codexes you own (or download) at least in the us. if you own the origional matrial you can make a copy of your own book, dvd, cd whatever as long as it is for your own consumption. I donn't plan on haivng all the codexes but i have ork, brb, space marines and black templar so i can scan/load all i want and be compeltely on the correct side of the law

We are encountering people who counterfeit our miniatures and products more and more frequently. Counterfeiting is a crime in most countries worldwide. In addition to the other penalties, you can go to prison for counterfeiting. The same is true of peer-to-peer file sharing - if you have not paid for the material and you download it using peer-to-peer software, you are engaging in illegal activity. The same is true even if you already own a copy of the relevant Codex or Army Book. Please remember that Games Workshop does not produce its rule books or codices in electronic format - if you ever see any such material in electronic format, it is likely to be the product of criminal or infringing activity.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?categoryId=&pIndex=2&aId=3900002&multiPageMode=true&start=3

^ yes howeve rin the US if you own the txt you may scan your own purchased tet for personal use federal law > games workshop

*add soarce*

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

and the big one in fukll

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/z?cp105:hr796:

Vandil wrote:Considering I've been doing the same thing on a 4" smart phone they'd look awesome on a Nook color.

I have a nook color, but haven't made any pdfs of my codex/army books... I bet it would be fantastic, though.

I really want an army builder on it (I'm looking at you, iBodger and Army Builder...) but there is none currently that I know of...

The app store just opened a month or so ago for it, so there's still time to correct that

My plan with army builder is to just make them then cature the image and pdf it

I have the normal kindle and have tried various PDFs on it including GW's specialist games and the legal PDF codexes like Witchhunters, it's really too small and hard to zoom in on the text.

THe larger Kindle DX would work better but is twice the cost.

Really unless GW reformats the books for ereaders I would only use them on large screen devices.

I loaded a pdf of the ork codex onto my kindle, way to slow to update or turn pages for practical use in game.

Short of an iPad, I'd go for a Nook Color, e-ink is pretty poor for the kind of formating that GW does...

(this speaking a) as a B&N employee, b) and a iPad owner, who's frothing at GW's file naming and formating.. they didn't even take the .qxf off some of the file names)

I've never understood why they don't include codes to redeem a PDF download of a codex with each physical copy you buy, or just sell them directly in the store. They sell digital downloads of the black library, yes? Surely they must know this is an untapped revenue stream.

Sure, people who p2p are gonna p2p. But, you know, some people won't. You'd be taking something that currently is making you zero dollars, and you'd be getting back an amount greater then zero dollars. It seems like a slam dunk.

An additional consideration is that, generally speaking, the people who p2p the codexes are generally using them to play the game (or testing a new army). Which means, chances are, they are generally buying (or will be buying) some miniatures. There's a good argument to be made for just giving the damn things away for free.

A couple people in our group use Ipads, they are fantastic. Anything smaller though and you start to loose the point (being able to read fast).

Army lists though, all options are great as you can design them to fit any size.

I create little look up lists with links so that you can see the basic stats and then link to the detailed stuff (but we write a lot of our own rules... so it makes it a little easier as they are on hand)

G00fySmiley wrote:^ yes howeve rin the US if you own the txt you may scan your own purchased tet for personal use federal law > games workshop

*add soarce*

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

and the big one in fukll

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/z?cp105:hr796:

Not quite... Owning a physical text doesn't give you rights to an electronic version any more than owning an analog recording gives you rights to a digital version, especially if you can purchase electronic versions. But if you wish to go fight a landmark court case over it, go for it.

nkelsch wrote:
We are encountering people who counterfeit our miniatures and products more and more frequently.

Are you using the "we" as the the royal "we", the editorial "we", the author's "we", or the patronizing "we"? Just curious. Also, and this is a hypothetical scenario, what course of punishment would you inflict on one who infringes...oh let's say on a scale of light spanking to crucifixion?

Edit: for politeness.

AesSedai wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
We are encountering people who counterfeit our miniatures and products more and more frequently.

Are you using the "we" as the the royal "we", the editorial "we", the author's "we", or the patronizing "we"? Just curious. Also, and this is a hypothetical scenario, what course of punishment would you inflict on a one who infringes...oh let's say on a scale of light spanking to crucifixion?

Quote from GW's website. The copyright owner who has the right to determine how his copyrights are used and reproduced. They do not give permission to reproduce them electronically and making a 'fair use' argument seems pretty thin. Claiming it is for a 'backup' and then using it all day long as your primary version doesn't wash, especially for in-print books where a 'backup' can be replaced via an insurance claim with a replacement book. You only own the book, not all versions of the book or rights to the ideas within the book. Owning a comic book doesn't entitle you to the trade paperback or the digital version of the same book. There are very few recognized print into digital exceptions out there so unless you are blind and getting the book scanned for screenreaders or a student doing a research paper on GW materials, it falls under 'illegal, probably won't get caught.'

Ouze wrote:I've never understood why they don't include codes to redeem a PDF download of a codex with each physical copy you buy, or just sell them directly in the store. They sell digital downloads of the black library, yes? Surely they must know this is an untapped revenue stream.

Sure, people who p2p are gonna p2p. But, you know, some people won't. You'd be taking something that currently is making you zero dollars, and you'd be getting back an amount greater then zero dollars. It seems like a slam dunk.

An additional consideration is that, generally speaking, the people who p2p the codexes are generally using them to play the game (or testing a new army). Which means, chances are, they are generally buying (or will be buying) some miniatures. There's a good argument to be made for just giving the damn things away for free.

Don't go putting forward a thoughtful common sense based idea for this kind of thing. You know GW doesn't work like that

I know I invoked it myself, but I think we (speaking collectively, not royally )should try to keep this thread about performance of devices as PDF readers, not about the legality of said.

Also keep in mind that GW's disclaimers are their opinion, not the actual law.

I read PDFs on my iPod Touch using the built-in iBooks app (although GoodReader is often recommended. It's passable, although the small screen size is of course an issue. The PDFs I use are (legal) versions of Heavy Gear Blitz and other games from Drive Through RPG and they work well as the newer books are created straight from the inDesign files, not scans of printed books. The two-column layout is legible. I wouldn't want to depend on it during a game, but if I knew the game and needed it for a spot-rule it'd be great.

Offering PDFs is definitely a good idea nowadays. It helps give people an honest option over stealing the stuff, and a reasonable publisher can add value to the PDF by making sure it's searchable, good-quality, reasonable file size, and add features like layers (makes printing easier), links, etc.

nkelsch wrote:

G00fySmiley wrote:^ yes howeve rin the US if you own the txt you may scan your own purchased tet for personal use federal law > games workshop

*add soarce*

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

and the big one in fukll

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/z?cp105:hr796:

Not quite... Owning a physical text doesn't give you rights to an electronic version any more than owning an analog recording gives you rights to a digital version, especially if you can purchase electronic versions. But if you wish to go fight a landmark court case over it, go for it.

actually it has benn fought many times and implicetly says in the digital millenium copyright act you may make a digital copy of any physical medium owned... thats the majopr idea of the whole act, thanks for playing but you lose try reading any of the provided links for sources

and to quote your own GW quote why do you thinkg they didn't say blatently that is IS an illegal copy

"he same is true even if you already own a copy of the relevant Codex or Army Book. Please remember that Games Workshop does not produce its rule books or codices in electronic format - if you ever see any such material in electronic format, it is likely to be the product of criminal or infringing activity. "

don't you think they wanted to say it IS a illegal copy but thanks to our congress actually ruling in favor of the consumer for digital convertions of physical media they had to write it this way.

if you own a CD you can legally convert it to mp3, wmv, or any other format you want. if you own a painting you cna take a picture of it or scan it and have digital copy of it. same for all print media books, instruction manuals you name it. the law is pretty simple if you own the physical media you are compeltely in your rights to make your wn digital copy of it .

It's just a shame that a lot of countries don't follow the DMCA. In the UK, it's currently illegal to rip music from CDs. They just don't bother prosecuting because it would be a massive waste of time and effort.

On topic: I agree with Makaleth, anything smaller than an iPad might take just as much time zooming in as grabbing the paper copy.

nkelsch wrote:The same is true even if you already own a copy of the relevant Codex or Army Book[/color]. Please remember that Games Workshop does not produce its rule books or codices in electronic format - if you ever see any such material in electronic format, it is likely to be the product of criminal or infringing activity.

Except their entire Specilist Games range, and quite a number of Apocolypse Datasheets, which I just finished loading (and renaming in -english- rather than serial numbers and default names the doomsday device datasheet came across as "untitled" all the liber apocolyptica files were " format 1" )on my iPad..

It's just a shame that a lot of countries don't follow the DMCA

Some folks will disagree with you there, the prohibitions on jailbreaking tech can be quite vexing at times to folks who want to put them to alternate uses...

G00fySmiley wrote:
actually it has benn fought many times and implicetly says in the digital millenium copyright act you may make a digital copy of any physical medium owned... thats the majopr idea of the whole act, thanks for playing but you lose try reading any of the provided links for sources

Actually that is not what it says... You are arguing the 'fair use' aspect of DMCA which has a very limited and specific exceptions. As many court cases have shown, ignorance of the law or misinterpreting 'fair use' doesn't protect you... so as long as you are willing to accept the risks, then game on.

Many people believe buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform. Some people believe ethically this is fair and square hence why they have no issue with the PDFs. While they may believe it is ethical, it isn't necessarily legal. DMCA doesn't make everything 'licensed-based' the way people seem to want it to work.

Also downloading the ebook was not akin to ripping a CD, for that to work, the user would have to scan and OCR the book himself. How many people with PDFs of their codexes actually did this? Who cut the spines off, scanned every page, did the OCR and did a true scan of their physical property? My guess is none of you. You torrented an existing PDF or epublication. That act is illegal. The difference was in the sweat-equity, the customer was paying for the new edition through time and effort. This is why owning a physical book doesn't entitle you to an electronic version of the book on any media or platform yourself. You can't argue 'fair use' if you downloaded the PDF, and even if you did scan it yourself, have a fun time arguing 'fair use'.

GW isn't going to sue anyone for scanning a codex and putting it on their kindle. How will they even know unless you go to GW HQ and show it to everyone there? If you scan your codex and then start putting it all over the interwebs for people to get free, then it's a problem. For your own use? Who cares. You paid for the book, you can scan it, burn it, use it for toilet paper or 1001 other handy things.

That said, you would probably have to scan each page as one big image instead of trying to get the text to show up as normal text, which would mean bigger files. But you could probably just scan the pages that have the actual rules on them and leave the fluffy pages out.

I'd think it would be a great idea for an e-reader but I wouldn't want to do it with an iPad since they're so expensive and I'd be scared of it breaking or someone running off with it when I go to the nurgle room.

Exactly my thoughts. if you want it for quick access you dont need all the fluff or artwork. If you just had the Unit Entries, Special Rules and armoury pages that would cut the SM codex down to, what 20 pages, if that.

nkelsch wrote:

G00fySmiley wrote:
actually it has benn fought many times and implicetly says in the digital millenium copyright act you may make a digital copy of any physical medium owned... thats the majopr idea of the whole act, thanks for playing but you lose try reading any of the provided links for sources

Actually that is not what it says... You are arguing the 'fair use' aspect of DMCA which has a very limited and specific exceptions. As many court cases have shown, ignorance of the law or misinterpreting 'fair use' doesn't protect you... so as long as you are willing to accept the risks, then game on.

Many people believe buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform. Some people believe ethically this is fair and square hence why they have no issue with the PDFs. While they may believe it is ethical, it isn't necessarily legal. DMCA doesn't make everything 'licensed-based' the way people seem to want it to work.

Also downloading the ebook was not akin to ripping a CD, for that to work, the user would have to scan and OCR the book himself. How many people with PDFs of their codexes actually did this? Who cut the spines off, scanned every page, did the OCR and did a true scan of their physical property? My guess is none of you. You torrented an existing PDF or epublication. That act is illegal. The difference was in the sweat-equity, the customer was paying for the new edition through time and effort. This is why owning a physical book doesn't entitle you to an electronic version of the book on any media or platform yourself. You can't argue 'fair use' if you downloaded the PDF, and even if you did scan it yourself, have a fun time arguing 'fair use'.

Actually, that is exactly what he said. I highlighted the relevant portion of his quote above. If you own it, you can copy it as much as you want for your own personal use. A Codex is easy enough to scan. You don't have to cut off the spine and scan every page, I don't want a "true e-book" experience. I am perfectly fine with opening my codex to a page and scanning it that way.

nkelsch wrote:Also downloading the ebook was not akin to ripping a CD, for that to work, the user would have to scan and OCR the book himself. How many people with PDFs of their codexes actually did this? Who cut the spines off, scanned every page, did the OCR and did a true scan of their physical property? My guess is none of you. You torrented an existing PDF or epublication. That act is illegal. The difference was in the sweat-equity, the customer was paying for the new edition through time and effort. This is why owning a physical book doesn't entitle you to an electronic version of the book on any media or platform yourself. You can't argue 'fair use' if you downloaded the PDF, and even if you did scan it yourself, have a fun time arguing 'fair use'.

Unless you have some proof that any book I own was torrented and that I broke a law, or that any of us broke a law and did not scan our own books, I think you should cut down on your rhetoric.