Quote:
Originally Posted by Tanzaku
No, we're still fussing with the template and will have some more samples with the various suggestions from this thread. What font size are you comfortable with? The draft PDF was as 9-point font for the basic text.
BTW, another option we are looking at is using a font with a larger x-height. (The x-height is essentially the size of the lower half of the letter -- for example the full height of the letter "e" but only the part of the letter "t" below the cross.) Fonts with a larger x-height are easier to read at the same font size. Examples: New Century Schoolbook is an example of a font with a large x-height. Palatino is an example of a font with a smaller x-height. Hence, New Century Schoolbook at 9-points is actually easier to read than Palatino at 10-points. One of the worst reading fonts is Times and Times New Roman -- unfortunately a very commonly used font for simple PDFs because it is one of the default fonts in the PDF reader. Too bad!
Anyway, thanks for prodding me about your question.  Hope this helps! |
I have found New Century Schoolbook to be the easiest font to read. The large x-height as well as the open glyphs allow quick identification of the word shapes. My reading speed increases when NCS is used. Likewise, Baskerville or even New Baskerville will decrease my reading speed and produce a headache after about 15 minutes of reading. TNR is a condensed font by all standards except its own. It was designed to fit the most characters on a printed page at a given size as possible.
The current Sony Reader practice of making oblique fonts on the fly (along with bold and bold-oblique) is a trade-off between processor power, storage requirements (for the extra fonts), and the IO requirements of the hardware system design. I have made several books in BookDesigner (for my use alone) implementing full font families and the results (while a bit slower on page turns and bit larger in size) are very rewarding.