>Much earlier this year (or late last, can't quite remember) there was some
>correspondence on the problems engendered by ejournals, in particular
>their printing implications relating to PDF files.
>
>We have been planning (for rather too long!) a study on the impact of
>electronic journals on campus printing resources.
This is not directly answering the question, but I attended a conference
recently about another e-journal project in chemistry where they had
been offering HTML and PDF options to readers for a 6
month period. During this time, twice as many HTML requests for
articles were made as were for PDF. Wht was not clear was what
proportion of HTML requests were followed by a PDF, and vice
versa.
Other interesting facts were that the PDF were on average 3
times larger than the HTML collection, that using a modem,
access times were 2 as fast for HTML, but that using a fast link,
the PDF was actually faster to retrieve! This is due to the stateless
HTTP protocol used for HTML collections requiring numerous
transactions, which become the bottleneck on fast links.
Changing the subject entirely, I note that there is a distinct attempt
to replace HTTP with e.g. WebNFS. Sun (who originate
WebNFS) claim it can improve HTTP response times by up to
a factor of 10!
Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY;
[log in to unmask]; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804.
URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ (Eudora Pro 3.0)
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