Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I have a Sony and a Kindle. The Kindle has (to my eyes, at least) a nicer font, but the actual appearance of the screens on the two devices is identical.
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You are right about the Sony's default font, it's pretty anemic.
Check out this EPUB that I created by embedding a custom font in one of feedbooks public domain titles.
Through the Looking Glass (NimbusMod1.2).epub
It's a well known fact, that with decent fonts, the Sony looks much better.
Not everybody wants to hack their reader, or has free access to the necessary fonts, so here is a test document that anyone can try out with no modifications to their Sony reader, to see just how much better the Sony looks when a decent typeface is used.
So that you can compare, the first section "About Carroll" (the first 3 pages) is in Sony's default font, and the remainder of the story from page 4 to the end are in a custom font.
To create this test document, I used one of feedbooks free public domain titles - Lewis Carroll's, Through the Looking Glass.
I altered a few lines of the CSS and embeded the font right into the EPUB, so folks can see what the Sony would have looked like if Sony had only taken the time to select a decent font.
The font I used, NimbusMod, is one I created by custom editing the freely available Nimbus Roman style font that is freely distributed with Linux.
Originally Nimbus was almost as anemic as the Sony default font, but after changing kerning, font weights, and a lot of hand editing character outlines to optimize it for eInk, I think it's looking pretty good.
The goal was to create a font with clear clean outlines, modeled after the semi-bold, slightly condensed, Times serif fonts used in printing paperback books.
Compared to the Sony font, NimbusMod has a heavier font weight optimized for eInk display to improve contrast, and is less dense (characters per page wise), for greater readability.
Amazing what a half-way decent font can do for the Sony, isn't it???
NimbusMod will retain readability down to ridiculously small font sizes. To check this out, jump to page 82 in the above EPUB and then set the Sony's font size to XS.
Feedbooks has used a custom CSS setting to typeset this "other-suggested-reading" section one font size smaller than normal - so XS which would be eXtra-Small anyway, now becomes
almost microscopic.
I don't think you would want to read a whole book at that font size
but it does show the readability range of the font I created.
The question you have to as yourself, is - If I can come up with something like this in a day or two - why hasn't Sony done a better job with basic typography and fonts AFTER SIX OR SEVEN YEARS?
Sad, really sad.
