PDFs and how they work.

[_toommm_]

Anything sold by Huawei for a start.

And people who aren't neck deep in the Google / Apple ecosystem - no Google wallet on this Samsung phone. Three options for pdf viewing though.

You can use Google Pay on a Samsung phone though - Samsung Pay is merely an additonal option.

 

[cjmillsnun]

SouthStand, sorry that's complete rubbish. Presumably your quote is from Adobe.

PDFs are for printing. They are not great for viewing documents on the web. neither are they great for phones. It's simply too computationally expensive for rendering something as simple as a QR code, which needs to pop up in less than a second.

Also, a PDF is fixed at the moment of creation to display well at a fixed size (normally A4). They do not reflow to fit a phone screen. You can only display the original format zoomed to fit, and your phone will likely have a different screen ratio to a sheet of paper.

Have you actually tried Google Wallet or .pkpass?

Sorry you are wrong. Apple have used PDF as their display format (part of Quartz) in MacOS since OSX Cheetah and iOS since the first iPhone.

 

[Geezertronic]

When I order tickets via my works travel site, I get the TrainFares tickets emailed to my work email account and tickets attached as PDFs. Using my works mobile phone (iPhone 6) I can then view them from the mail app that is configured to my works email address and bring up the PDFs (without any additional software installed) and present them to the Train Manager or Gate Staff as required.

Nice and easy, and didn't require any additional configuration or additional applications to be installed.

 

[AM9]

So you don't want to be in the Google ecosystem but you use pre-installed Google Drive to view PDFs?!

Also, as I said at the beginning of this thread I've used PDF tickets, .pkpass tickets, and Google Wallet tickets many times. It's very clear to me that the 3rd option is the easiest to use. It's the only one that appears on your lockscreen for a start.

I wonder how many people on this thread are using e-tickets daily, or could buy a ticket in less than 1 minute standing at the station using their preferred procedure.

It doesn't matter how many use their mobile daily, this discussion has digressed to the very unlikely situation where reading a pdf on a bog standard smartphone is so difficult for one person. Maybe there is another person somewhere so that makes two, but I doubt a TOC is desperate enoght to capture profit from that probably very small number of people with difficulties when others don't report an issue, to change.

 

[tornado]

I never said that reading a PDF was difficult. I have Adobe Reader installed on my Android device and can read PDFs just fine.

I was pointing out that the entire e-ticket process is much quicker without involving PDFs. I know this from personal experience as I buy e-tickets daily.

And as for desperate TOCs, Avanti's App caters very nicely to my needs, so clearly they think similarly to myself on this topic.

 

[D365]

I never said that reading a PDF was difficult. I have Adobe Reader installed on my Android device and can read PDFs just fine.

I was pointing out that the entire e-ticket process is much quicker without involving PDFs. I know this from personal experience as I buy e-tickets daily.

And as for desperate TOCs, Avanti's App caters very nicely to my needs, so clearly they think similarly to myself on this topic.

Again, I am very surprised that you have a modern smartphone that doesn’t come with native PDF support.

I have absolutely no issue with e-tickets being issued in both wallet and PDF format. So I’m still not sure what the outcome of this discussion was meant to be.

 

[tornado]

The discussion arose as someone had been fined for not being able to show their e ticket when they "thought they had received the email".

I pointed out that google/apple pay+wallet is less prone to user error, and would be easier to explain to a non-tech literate person.

Even setting up email on your phone is not as trivial as some have claimed. A non-gmail address will often need pop3/imap server details. I don't think the average person can manage that. A suprising number of people only access their email through web interfaces.

The best e-ticketing method is one that the broadest range of users can cope with in the fewest steps.

 

[D365]

The discussion arose as someone had been fined for not being able to show their e ticket when they "thought they had received the email".

I pointed out that google/apple pay+wallet is less prone to user error, and would be easier to explain to a non-tech literate person.

Even setting up email on your phone is not as trivial as some have claimed. A non-gmail address will often need pop3/imap server details. I don't think the average person can manage that. A suprising number of people only access their email through web interfaces.

The best e-ticketing method is one that the broadest range of users can cope with in the fewest steps.

I’ve often been reminded by guards that your e-ticket should be ”ready to present” before boarding the train. Whether this is by downloading the wallet pass or saving the PDF to my phone.

Given that you need an email address to sign in to a TOC’s app, I’d be surprised if an average e-ticket user didn’t have a way of accessing emails on their smartphone.

But anyway… this is a discussion about the relative merits of each method? Fair enough.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Why is this even that complicated? It doesn't have to be an either / or question! I use The Trainline app a fair bit for short distance etickets (no booking free for on the day eticket purchases plus a friendly UI and the ability to show your Railcard directly from the app) and they show the eticket in the app, email me PDFs and I think have a button in the app to let me add it to the Google Pay wallet (I can't remember 100% for the last one on Android, but they defo do Apple Pay wallet on iPhones) which mean I can choose how I want to use the eticket. Isn't that the best option?

As for PDF's themselves - it is worth saying that they can be very useful if you are buying tickets for other people or to be able to have as a backup (PDF readers are more reliable than ToC apps in my experience, and having a PDF also potentially means it is easier to have the same ticket on a secondary device like a tablet or even a printed bit of paper incase your main device breaks or runs out of battery etc).