Does iBooks support pdf files?

I have a lot of pdf that I want to view and I wish I book could support that !!!

Just forget about using ibook for this, there are lots of apps available for viewing pdf, just search this forum, plus you can view anything you send by email.

An ePub book is basically a set of XHTML 1.1 web files, with a bunch of XML files supporting them, wrapped in a zip package. XHTML 1.1 must be written correctly (if you ever write web pages that way, you may know what I mean). To be honest, I doubt that many of the ePub creators get it right (just like most web site creation tools do not produce valid web pages). Especially from a PDF. I would be utterly amazed if that worked well.

Check whether your ePub is actually done correctly. I bet it is not. See http://bookworm.oreilly.com/publishers/ebook-testing/

Good Reader works really well. The developer are smart people who understand what reading is all about-- and provide a full range of customization. PDFs work great in it.

They also have superb built-in help in the app. They provide nearly seamless transfer from desktop to i-device. It's actually the easiest I've used. A window on your desktop opens for the server connection and you simply drag a PDF or other file to it. Voila! It appears on your iPhone, IPT, etc. (There are other ways to connect and transfer, too!)

They also have something that no other PDF reader I know of has-- reflow! Usually PDF files are hard to read-- tiny font and when you pinch zoom to make it big enough to read, all the text goes off the screen. You end up having to scroll back and forth. With their reflow feature, the text gets bigger but wraps to stay within the screen borders! Incredible!

I do not have a regular use for this app, but bought it any way because I think the developers of such an incredible app at such a cheap price ($1) should be supported. Who knows what other wonders they will come up with! (And, no I have no connection with the developers.)

In regards to iTunes crashing, drag the ePub file to your library and not onto your iPad in iTunes. That did the trick for me.

I too would also like to see iBooks being able to natively support PDF files without having to go through some sort of converter. The converter worked well for the most part but did mess up some of the formatting in my PDF. The converter I used was Calibre.

I agree, Good Reader is the way to go! I just downloaded the Lite version(free) and it works amazingly well. I download and use knitting patterns in PDF format. Now I don't have to print them out.

The app is easy to use with my iDisk (which is where I store the pdfs) but I believe you can retrieve this type of file from other locations also, haven't tried yet. There is ample help included with the app and I'm sure it will handle most user's needs very well. I recommend it.

I read hundreds of ebooks in PDF format and would love to be able to add those to the ibooks reader. I tried to find information prior to my purchase...but no information was forthcoming even when I asked on the iPad question groups.

I did purchase an iPad and have found that I now can't read the majority of my books in the designed program...it ***** but I'm one of those people who seek work arounds and live with what is available...and hope for extras.

My work around has been to purchase Good Reader for a cheep 99cents and I'm very happy with the results. It's not exactly what I was hoping from the device...but it works and Good Reader does more than I was expecting. I can also get to my Google Documents and now download PDF's from the web. Before they were just opening in a browser window with no save option. Now that is one more feature that should be updated soon. PDF's should be savable from a webpage or link...just like you can on the computer.

As an owner of a book review and news company I'm very much looking forward to some iPad advancements and enhancements that I can report to our readership. I must say our free magazine is just awesome on the iPad and that was the thing that sealed the deal when I was doing an iPad trial on Saturday.

Tammie King
Night Owl Reviews
http://www.NightOwlReviews.com

I read hundreds of ebooks in PDF format and would love to be able to add those to the ibooks reader. I tried to find information prior to my purchase...but no information was forthcoming even when I asked on the iPad question groups.

That's unfortunate, since Apple said from day one (Jan. 27) that iBooks would use ePub and never once implied that any other format would be involved with that app.

As an owner of a book review and news company I'm very much looking forward to some iPad advancements and enhancements that I can report to our readership.

To tell Apple all that (it's just other users in these forums), make sure you post it here where they will read it:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

Thanks for the link Tom.

Yep - with computers it's always hard to know what will and won't be available since they keep a lot hidden until release. Even the Apple store people couldn't answer my question about PDF's as of a few hours ago. They basically said at this point that Google is our best friend for getting information.

The Penguin Group...one of the top 5 NYC publishers has said that ePub is not the way of the future for them...it's too restrictive and doesn't take advantage of all the cool things the iPad can do...like touch style books for kids...like a learning tool - touch the book screen and the cow makes a sound or drawing a square with a finger....or forums to go along with books...the envelope can be pushed a lot further for books than text and the iPad has the potential to be the device to make books so much more...integrating video into a book for example. Epub is great for flowing text based books...but not for graphic intensive and layout intensive books or magazines.

But I'm excited by all the possibilities that are just around the corner. We now have the base device and just need to wait for all the really cool stuff to start coming available.

Here are some good examples:

iPad iMagineering - Penguin Books - DK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QCAPv-IKuU

Penguin CEO John Makinson - Talks about re-evaluating the concept of what a book is and how ePub doesn't allow for the iPad's cool new stuff. That they are heading in a different direction. More animation and user input - Great discussion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw5wLaBqdV0

Can someone post a link to the Google Reader app that everyone is talking about? The only Google Reader I know of is the RSS reader, and that has nothing to do with PDF's.

I've searched the App Store and can't find any Google Reader there either.

confused

The app is GoodReader.

Thanks! Well don't I feel stoopid >.<

How do you convert pdf to ePub?
Everything I have tried has given very poor results.

You'll probably want to use Calibre if you REALLY want to convert to ePub.

I'd recommend just keeping it as a PDF though and reading it in GoodReader. Best $0.99 you'll ever spend in the app store. Especially considering how much time it takes to fiddle with a few PDFs to make them look nice in ePub. To heck with that.

Yes, iBooks does support PDFs. It must be a new addition to iTunes. Newly added PDFs will be imported with a media type of "Book", you will need to select existing PDFs and set the media type under its options.
That said, you don't get the full experience of an ebook as the layout is fixed. So if its text only, I would recommend converting it to an epub, but its create for manuals, with lots of pictures.