Unjustifiable lack of justification

[tompe]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

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however i also think that perhaps it's important to stop considering justification the only valid way of presenting text, and consider instead that it is one option of several, equally valid.

It was pretty good on the Cybook when they accepted individual lines that was not justified. What they have now is much more disturbing to read.

Ragged right could also be disturbing if it is done badly. You have to look at the whole paragraph and choose suitable hyphenation to do it really good.

[Hadrien]

In my case, I really need both justification and hyphenation.

Without justification, it feels like I'm reading a screen not a book.
But if it's fully justified without hyphenation, you get some very ugly results.

I agree that the previous firmware on the Cybook, that avoided full justification when it would be ugly, looked a lot better than the current one.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

however i also think that perhaps it's important to stop considering justification the only valid way of presenting text, and consider instead that it is one option of several, equally valid.

Sorry, I don't follow you. Could you elaborate?

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, I don't follow you. Could you elaborate?

left alignement is a perfectly acceptable way of presenting text. in fact sometimes it is the best way of presenting a certain text. full justification is not the be-all end-all of text layout, even for novels.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

left alignement is a perfectly acceptable way of presenting text. in fact sometimes it is the best way of presenting a certain text. full justification is not the be-all end-all of text layout, even for novels.

Certainly, I agree with you. The overwhelming majority of books are printed with full justification, however, so perhaps it is a feature which people rather "expect" to be present in a reader?

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

left alignement is a perfectly acceptable way of presenting text. in fact sometimes it is the best way of presenting a certain text. full justification is not the be-all end-all of text layout, even for novels.

It's all about choice: the user should be able to select between ragged right and justified text, and the ability to turn hyphenation on or off.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Certainly, I agree with you. The overwhelming majority of books are printed with full justification, however, so perhaps it is a feature which people rather "expect" to be present in a reader?

well, the vast majority of books are printed on paper, too... it's just another convention, which people are used to. i think that people expect it now but maybe the convention will evolve. i think it's nice to propose it for people who prefer that, however i don't think that *not* proposing it is necessarily catastrophic ; there are many conditions which can make a convention irrelevant or obsolete.

Originally Posted by Hadrien

It's all about choice: the user should be able to select between ragged right and justified text, and the ability to turn hyphenation on or off.

absolutely !

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Certainly, I agree with you. The overwhelming majority of books are printed with full justification, however, so perhaps it is a feature which people rather "expect" to be present in a reader?

And it seems that they are content with the sloppy, ill done full justification that they are currently getting unlike paper books. Well at least some of them.

Dale

[richardigp]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The CyBook gives one the choice (unless the book "hard codes" it) of left or full justification, and for most situations I find myself that full justification looks a lot better. The only time it really looks "wrong" is when one has a very large font size and/or very few words on a line.

The Sony Reader is a little "odd" in that for LRF/LRX files one only has full justification available, while for ePub files one only has left justification!

That's because the Sony device uses the ADE rendering engine for ePUB.

[Jellby]

Hmm... these readers that do not support justification... do they really not support it or is it just a fixed default?

I mean, if the CSS stylesheet in an ePUB file sets the paragraph to be "text-align: justify", does it work? If this is the case, at least with non-DRM files there is the possibility of modifying the styles in the file...

[Alfy]

No, it does not work, the CSS is just ignored for justification, and that is the problem. Implementation of full justification is optionnal according to the standard, and Adobe has made the choice of not including it. Just plain laziness, if you ask me.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Hmm... these readers that do not support justification... do they really not support it or is it just a fixed default?

I mean, if the CSS stylesheet in an ePUB file sets the paragraph to be "text-align: justify", does it work? If this is the case, at least with non-DRM files there is the possibility of modifying the styles in the file...

No it doesn't work in DE if you set text-align to justify.

In general, content producers should avoid forcing a text-align if it's not center or right, and let the user/reading system decide.

[alehel]

I just had a look at the kindle and I must admit I do prefear the text when its using full justification. For some reason I just felt it looked cleaner, and I've been reading epub files with left justification for several months now.

[alehel]

Now that I have loads of epub files I've been thinking about buying the Sony 505 but this topic got me wondering. Is this only a problem with DE or does the 505 also lack justification?

[EDIT]Never mind, I just reread the very first post [/EDIT]