Quote:
Originally Posted by simonroyle
...Thinking about it... I've started having nightmares about it :-) Joking aside I want to put out the best "product" possible. Frankly it is *almost* useless talking to publishers about this because they just don't know. And as I am sure you are aware there are hundreds of people willing to take my money but when I look at their product - I think I can do better.
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Don't specify the alignment; let the device decide.
iBooks will *force* justification by default. But you can ignore iBooks anyway - users can use a different app if they need to. (And heavy readers _should_ be using a different app, because books bought from iBooks are iPad/iPod-only)
Stanza will also forcibly apply a user setting (not sure what the default is), so it will ignore what the ebook formatting says
Specifying justification will enable justification on the Sony 900, but it doesn't do hyphenation, so you it's not a great idea. Older Sony models don't support justification at all, so they won't care either way :-). Conversely, specifying left-justify (ragged) _will_ have an effect on the Kindle, where justification is enabled by default (again, without hyphenation). But justification has always been the default on the Kindle, and many books specify justification anyway, so Kindle users should be used to it by now. Also, the MobiPocket documentation for "content developers" says that you should not specify an alignment for body text. (MobiPocket is the format used on the Kindle).
If you let the device decide, you will make users of FBReader happy (as well as the various less well known devices that use FBReader). FBReader lets users choose their alignment - but _only_ if the book doesn't specify it. (This the same reason the MobiPocket guidelines say that you shouldn't specify an alignment).