This is a very good point.
I feel that eBooks should always be done in a way that allows user choice of the base font, font size and even justification for most of the text.
Many designers like to specify things far too tightly for my liking.
On the other hand, there are some formatting things that Mobipocket doesn't handle. Drop caps, for example, or decorated capitals. In-line illustrations are also a bit hit & miss.
We're really just at the very start of the eBook era. Current eBook readers are like the personal computers of the late 70s and early 80s - still very much in development, with many different specifications and formats, and still with lots of improvement in store. If they follow the pattern of personal computers, we should see a standard or two emerge from the crowd over the next five years.
I fully expect that by 2020 we'll have inexpensive (costing less than ten new hardbacks), robust full-colour eBook readers of many sizes, which will read epub format eBooks...
...which will almost certainly be able to read (non-DRM) Mobipocket books as well. (Dragging myself back on-topic at the last minute.)
Paul
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
One thing I like about Mobi is that fact that so much of the "presentation" is down to the viewer. On the Gen3 I have a free choice of what font and at what size to read my book, and whether to display the text left or fully justified. On other versions of the Mobi viewer I can additionally change such things as the margin size. I am a great believer in having the minimum amount of markup within the book itself - except in cases where it's absolutely required - and allowed the reader to make his or her own choice of all the display parameters.
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