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Originally Posted by anamardoll
Well, first off, we didn't ALL read paper books without complaint and without choices; exhibit A would be the Large Print runs of books which are highly necessary for many people. And then some folks just plain didn't buy certain books with crappy fonts because they were crappy.
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Fair enough, I personally never thought about the margins and fonts of the book I was reading, I was interested in content, and because I had no choice put it out of my mine, I guess.
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Second off, margin size is NOT the same issue as font size. with a publisher-set margin size, you could very well end up with a tiny little river of text with mountains of white space on either side, depending on the size of your eReader. I have a 5" screen and some of the publisher margins are killer and very distracting.
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Understood, that is why I pick the margin size I prefer and do not use the publishers default.
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Third off, the reason people demand choices from eBooks that they didn't demand from paper books is because it's simple enough technology to implement. With paper books, it was pretty impossible to have custom font/margins, but with eBooks, it's incredibly easy, so why shouldn't we ask for them?
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You should ask, just do not be surprised that you are ignored in favor of the majority of users who do not need or, more importantly would not appreciate the precision of control that you would, that is all. As I said it is human nature to ask.
I am in the software business and I certainly understand that there is no technical limitation in providing a text box to type in the point size of the font you want, or a drop down with 25 choices. The issue I was addressing is that when creating software for the mass market, usability is more important to the acceptance of the software then ultimate flexibility, many users get very rattled by too many choices they do not understand, and the end result is they feel like they have no choices.
The NST has the following options:
7 font sizes
6 font choices
3 line spacing options
and 3 page margin options
All displayed graphically so the user can see the choice they are making before making it. I think they made a really good balance between usability and configuration options.
I get a bit geeky about this subject sorry. I just really think the NST has done far more right then wrong in this area.