Urged on by the compliment of being called clever (thank you Natasha), and the question of whether the display was capable of such a feat (thank you Jack), I took my experiment to the next step. From within Firefox I did a print to my pdfcreator printer and tried the result on my reader. Attached are the results. (Excuse the less than sharp images but even my camera seems to have some difficulty focusing on the screen - and the zoom and proximity means a tiny depth of field.) From left-to-right:
- p1-epub-plain shows an epub with no background, medium font.
- p2-epub-pale shows the same epub with a very very pale background, also medium font in case you were wondering.
- p3-pdf-pale shows the result of the same pale background epub printed (on the computer) to pdf.
- p4-pdf-dark shows the result of the same epub printed to pdf but using the original (darker) background image.
I think the last shows promise ... although perhaps some level between the pale and the dark would be best.
I think the images demonstrate that the reader screen is capable of showing a page background, so any shortfall from epub must be in the viewer software (or standard) I should think. It is nice to see that it's not a hardware limitation.
As to whether a "paper" background will aid focus/reading in any way ... the proof will be in the reading. Maybe my next book I will try to prepare the full text using pdf.
(One thing I like about pdf is the ability to specify a font size in between the too-small "small" and the too-large "medium" available by default, but of course the downside is not being able to change it without reproducing the pdf).