Texterity Digital Document Format

[md_doc]

Here is an example of a digital document format which could be considered an alternative to PDF (even though you can create a PDF from this site).

http://mags.acm.org/communications/200801/

There are a variety of examples from this page.

http://www.texterity.com/

I was curious if this type of presentation format was becoming an industry standard. I was also curious if this was a custom implementation by this company or is there an open source example of this.

By reading more on the Texterity site, it says they use a combination of HTML, JavaScript, XML and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics).

If anyone has any more information on this, it would be appreciated.

[ryanhellyer]

I don't think there is anything new with what they're doing there and it's not really an alternative to PDF either. PDF's are designed for printing purposes, but the example you gave above didn't print properly at all for me. It simply acted as a regular webpage, which is essentially what it is, it just has some extra Javascript to present much of the content.

I don't think this will ever become an industry standard. I can't see much there that couldn't be achieved almost as well with good old HTML and CSS. If you wanted the extra graphical effects they've achieved I would have been inclined to use Flash rather than the Javascript methods they've used as I think it may run a little faster that way.

It is an interesting way to present large amounts of textual data though. But I'll definitely be sticking to using HTML/CSS for the web and PDF's for printing purposes.