[DNSB]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I also have a hard time understanding why a publisher, Barnes and Noble for example, would intend a book to have/display spaces between each and every line several times the height of the characters.

As far as I know, Barnes and Noble isn't a publisher other than their Classics series however I also have a hard time understanding why some publishers love overly complex and sloppily implemented layouts. Some ereaders will override the styling built into the book -- as example, again using Barnes and Noble, there were the presets on a Nook Simple Touch while Kobo evidently made the decision to display the book the way it was intended to be displayed with minimal capability to override styling.

One nasty side effect for some ebooks is that those sloppy, complex styles tend to have issues when using devices with different renderers or even different display resolutions.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I don't pretend to understand how renderers work. I have the impression due to people saying it is the Adobe engine responsible for rendering epubs, that it is (the renderer) somewhat independent. But others seem to indicate that reader manufacturers/developers have quite a bit of control. Perhaps you could explain which is right if you have time.

As far as I know -- and I have not done any hands-on work with the Adobe RMSDK -- it does allow control over quite a few optional components. After all, SDK is software development kit. There is a certification process that must be gone through before you can sell a device, application, etc. that uses the RMSDK. The process includes testing base functionality, optional components, navigation, etc.

Just checked and I still have a bookmark for the Reader Mobile 9 certification but I can't seem to find one for the new Reader Mobile 10. Here's the link: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe...on_Process.pdf. Check around page 9 for the optional components such as PDF reflow.

When I originally read the certification document, the requirement for display capture made me wonder if that's why Kobo has the screenshots capability to allow sending images of the screen for the certification process.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

And yes I have seen some ugly books, many of which are not displayed well by any reader/app/program. Even some books available on overdrive leave a lot to be desired. Generally I can fix them and I am not overly fussy.

Pretty much if the book can be fixed, this suggests that it is an issue with the book's styling and not an issue with the Kobo. GIGO.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

But I have seen many more that display just fine on other readers, programs, apps. In fact they closely mimic a paper book. Why have there not been big protests from publishers when these books are displayed with normal spacing, consistent margins etc. if they were intended to be displayed with the big gaps and other peculiarities?

You've already paid for the book? Generally, I test an iffy book on ADE 1.7.2 as my way if deciding if the problem is with the ereader or the ebook. I'd say about 80% of the issues I want to fix are ebook problems.

Unlike traditional book design where there are centuries of previous art -- probably, black art -- which has yielded rules that allow designing a book with cohesive format, style, layout, etc. into an attractive package, some ebook publishers seem to have hired high school students with no experience in book design to handle their ebooks creation needs.

One recent horrible example for my wife was an ebook she purchased which clocked in at 23MB. 500KB of text, 50KB of miscellaneous files and 2.3MB of images, the remainder was fonts. On her PC's screen, the book looked like a fine example of the old Macintosh ransom note letters. Her ereader looked worse since some of the text was specified with absolute sizing (chapter headings at 50px) while other text was specified in % and em which allowed scaling to the display and resizing using the font size slider. OTOH, the embedded fonts worked.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I am obviously missing the big picture

One small publishing house I grumbled at informed me that they check their ebooks on a Kindle and did not really care what they looked like on any other device. It does take some care to generate an ebook with simple styling that looks good on multiple devices but it is doable. But as I was informed, "80% of our sales are through Amazon" with the unstated corollary that they do not worry about the other 20%.

Eschew the absolute, embrace the relative!

Regards,
David