[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have never heard (or read of) anyone complaining that a pBook needs paragraph spaces. A pBook (most of the time) uses indents instead of paragraph spaces.

Well now you can say you HAVE READ it, because I linked you to multiple sources which state paragraph spacing is a perfectly valid style of typography.

Feel free to read lots of typography books/sources as well.

Hitch recommended this book to me, "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst. It is highly regarded in the typography world as one of the top "must have" books.

In typography, you typically settle on a text indent OR paragraph spacing, you don't really mix both because that would be "redundant" (although you could). (Bringhurst explained the idea/history behind it way better than I ever could).

The Style Guides that I linked to on APH + British Dyslexia Association were dedicated towards certain reading accessibility issues (APH publishes many books for the reading impaired (Large Print Editions, etc. etc.), the British Dyslexia Association is dedicated towards readers with Dyslexia).

I assume they did all of their research and found that THOSE layouts (larger line-height, space between paragraphs, left aligned, etc. etc.) are MORE READABLE for their market. Perhaps these styles are not to YOUR specific liking, and perhaps not as BEAUTIFUL as a normal book... but more READABLE.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But these people who do prefer to mangle the formatting of their eBooks, did they ever complain about pBooks needing all this excess space?

I would talk to the people who purchase Large Print Editions, alternative printings, etc. etc. Feel free to go read up on DAISY's website + a lot of the other Web Design/Accessibility stuff + contacting/reading a lot of the information on these alternate publishers' sites.

And if you can't find anyone else complaining about the layout of physical books, then I can step up and be your first example (now you can say you have HEARD OF it as well). Nice to meet you!

Originally Posted by JSWolf

1.5em between lines with a 1.25em paragraph space is going to interfere with reading. You'll be focused on the poorly formatted book more so then the words. I have seen a number of eBooks these days formatted with a .3em line space and a 1.2em indent. personally, I'd remove the .3em paragraph space, but even so, .3em is not unreadable.

For example, here is a journal I am currently working on digitizing.

Here is a snapshot from the original PDF:



(My personal preference/what I use)

p {
	margin-top: 0;
	margin-bottom: 0;
	line-height: 1.2em;
	text-align: justify;
	text-indent: 2em;
}

p {
	margin-top: .3em;
	margin-bottom: 0;
	line-height: 1.2em;
	text-align: justify;
	text-indent: 1.2em;
}

p {
	margin-top: 1em;
	margin-bottom: 0;
	line-height: 1.5em;
	text-align: justify;
	text-indent: 0;
}

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I will defend people's right to hypocritically mangle their eBooks if they want just as it's my right to point out how wrong it is.

But it is not necessarily MANGLED/WRONG, just DIFFERENT. "JSWolf's Design" is not the only way to do design on the block.

Some CSS errors are MUCH more egregious than others (forcing font sizes in px, forcing black text, etc. etc.). But having differing line-heights, text-indents, and paragraph spacing is not bad at all.

I would place it extremely low on my "must be destroyed" list. (#1 for me is probably the death of JPG (for artificial images)).