do have i this right? 6 inch screen?

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Learn something new every day. If I understand you correctly something like the PRS-900 in landscape mode may be well suited to the reading needs of some of our Chinese friends.

The problem is that the cognitive disparity between a single-screen with 2 panes and a folding book or rolling scroll is a bit too large to easily be overcome. Further, the viewing quality of E-Ink is too low to adequately display Chinese characters with a line length suitable for Chinese books to peoples' general liking. Not too long ago, I did an informal survey in Taipei on the street with my PRS-505 and a bunch of pre-made books of various font sizes, font types, vertical and horizontal orientation of the screen, each with horizontal and vertical orientation of the text. Basically I was just collecting opinions about what method of display on the screen is visually most suitable. Interestingly, even people who were strongly in favor of vertically-typeset Chinese in general said horizontal typesetting worked better for the ebook screen, and almost nobody found the landscape-oriented arrangement with vertical text to be the ideal mode of display.

It is clear you are versed in the art of typesetting. The one area where the ebook far exceeds the printed book for quality of reading is in its ability to change font size. I read 82 books last year. The year before maybe 8. The difference is the increased comfort I have experienced with flexible fonts in a standard book size package. For me, not having to wear my reading glasses far surpasses any gain from a beautifully formatted book with a 8pt font.

Large print editions are available but they are usually large books as well.

Thanks for your input

&

Changing font size is a benefit for some people, but for others, it represents nothing but a significant drop in quality. While it is possible to reflow text with a relatively minimal reduction in typographic quality (TeX can do this on the fly, as can Adobe's Paragraph Composer in InDesign, and while not perfect, they're very usable and tweakable--InDesign's hyphenation dialog box is pretty sweet actually), text rendering is still incredibly crude in ebook reader devices. In the future that may change, but today almost all reflowable ebooks look like they were created by a five-year-old child with Frontpage Express. Some even come complete with Comic Sans as the body text. These are supposed to be professionally finished products.

I'm not even that much of a snob. I don't demand the most expensive aged cakes of pu'er tea brewed with special water in a hundred-year-old yixing zisha pot when I can enjoy a nice modern wulong in a porcelain gaiwan just as much for 1/30th the price. However, if someone brings me a glass of cat urine, I won't be especially satisfied. That's basically how I feel about ebooks too.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I've been reading on my 3.4" Loox for so long, the 5" Mini does look huge. And don't even mention the humongous 7" of my JE-100...

For several years, I did my ebook reading from a 2.4"x2.4", 160x160 pixel PDA display. I read hundreds of novels that way.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

For several years, I did my ebook reading from a 2.4"x2.4", 160x160 pixel PDA display. I read hundreds of novels that way.

Oef, that's small! I started on the ebookman, don't know the screensize, but it was 200x240 resolution... Then I moved on to the PDAs. The first with a 3.4" 320x200 screen, but moved on to my current 3.4" 640x480 screen. I know I wouldn't go below that resolution anymore! (at least on the PDA's).

[RobbK]

Guys stop feeding the troll, it is obvious EXO is only here to stir the pot.