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Originally Posted by vivaldirules[I
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> 1. get rid of that ugly legalese at the top of the file.
> 2. make the title-page and front-matter look nice.
> 3. hotlink the table of contents. make one if necessary.
> 4. make all the headers big, bold, and distinctive, and
> 5. start chapters on a new page, maybe even a recto.
> 6. get rid of the empty lines between paragraphs, and
> 7. use book-style indents on each paragraph instead.
> 8. use full justification. or at least half-ragged.
> 9. use a reasonable line-width. full-screen is too wide.
> 10. white-space is free in an e-book, so use it liberally.
> 11. make block-quotes distinctive, for remix purposes.
> 12. links are great, but spare us the ugly blue underlines.
> 13. is an unlucky number.
> 14. don't put pagenumbers inside the text/paragraphs.
> 15. turn pg-ascii underscored text into _real_ italics.
> 16. pictures (even doodad thingees) enliven the text.
> 17. navigation aids among chapters are quite useful.
> 18. footnotes should have links going _both_ ways.
> 19. if it works better that way, turn a table on its side.
> 20. resize tables and images so they fit on one screen.
> 21. give your readers the luxury of generous leading!
> 22. block-quotes should be indented on the left and right.
> 23. create running heads and/or footers on each page.
> 24. (leaving some space for you...)
> 25. (leaving some space for you...)
> 26. show where we are in the book (page 39 of 208).
> 27. make the framework of the document _obvious_.
> 28. what the heck, just for the fun of it, make an index!
> 29. make the typesize big enough to be read easily!
> 30. get rid of that ugly legalese at the bottom of the file.
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At point 1.
I do agree that that legalese is ugly.
I do not think, however that we should remove it entirely.
I suggest moving it to the end of the file and placing a line like this "for licence see bottom of file" instead.
At point 4.
I personally do not like fancy headers. When I format book for myself I remove all fancy formating from headers.
at point 8.
This is again a matter of personal preference. Fully justified text does *look* better. When it comes to hours and hours of continuous reading many people find those "ragged" left justified paragraphs easier to read.
point 23.
Here again I have to politely disagree with you
point 24.
set page margins as small as possible. We have paid a lot of money to have the screen as big as possible. So why do we want to waste 20% of the screen real estate by margins. Wide margins make sense in a printed books. Reader, however, has "built in margin" around the screen. This is the issue that bothers me the most when I see e-book from the connect store
point 25.
Use sans serif font. Just like with fully justified text the serif font looks better in a printed books. In a low resolution display (and anything below 300dpi *is* low) the sans-serif font is much more readable.
point 30.
see point 1.
If you want to use Microsoft Word for formating the documents, beware. Microsoft products use symbols (like left and right quotes) that are not according to standards. This is most notable when you use standards compliant browser (like Firefox) to view html page that was generated using MS Word. Or, if you have text with fancy curly quotes and you upload it an an rtf file to the reader. Plain, simple, basic quote " does not look as nice as typographical one, but it will display correctly on any reading device.