Quote:
Originally Posted by rowanmoor
That is odd. I was looking at this on my Voyage last night and there was a big difference for me. I was comparing a sideloaded mobi with a new kfx, both using Bookerly and trying different font sizes as well so see the differneces. It was particularly noticeable on words with a capital W (eg Wow and even When, What etc). It was also obvious on the Yo and Ye pairs as well as some other places in the middle of words. I only have one device, so couldn't compare old vs new firmware though.
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Okay, I have been really looking forward to this update for a long time, I used to check Mobileread every morning to check whether my devices had been updated. To find out that one of they key features of this new engine, the "kerning" and/or character spacing is actually NON-EXISTENT, is pretty disappointing. And also, it makes me kind of mad. I'm pretty surprised that nobody in the community has noticed this! For me, Amazon has just lost my loyalty!
Here's what I did- I opened up an enhanced book on the Kindle app on my Galaxy tab - the Android kindle app hasn't been updated with the new typesetting engine and so therefore it was just the standard version. Used the biggest font size, in Cecelia. All was as expected.
I opened up the same enhanced book (REVIVAL by STEPHEN KING in case you wanna know) on an iPad with a version of the Kindle app that had been updated with the new typesetting features. I looked at the same exact sentence/word at HUGE font sizes and saw 0 difference in the way capital W's are displayed. In WHEN for example, both word size and character placement in each example were identical. (I did note however that there were more words per line on my iPad and then I realised that the new typesetting engine improves sizing between words.)
Had a look at Yo, Ye pairs as well - same thing. Absolutely no difference between devices.
So after waiting so long for this update and not even getting some of the features I was promised, I ended up selling my Voyage and buying myself a new Samsung Galaxy S Tab 8.4 -the difference between the 300ppi vs the 359 ppi display is absolutey huge - the text on a tablet vs an ereader is pretty much incomporable - reading books on a tablet is about a thousand times better than reading anything on an ereader. As such, I'm pretty much dropping out of the ereading game permanently.
I'm pretty upset about how this typesetting engine rolled out - but I'd recommend you all do yourselves a favour and get rid of all your ereaders and just get a tablet with a high resolution: I'm pretty pleased I'm no longer boxed inside by Amazon's shitty Voyage walled garden with its two toned screen and purple hued text and fail typesetting updates.
Anywho, rant over. Thanks Amazon for making my final foray with e-reading a disappointing and dishonest experience and waking me up to the magical world of reading on a tablet.
Update: I just saw this image on Google (attached) so using that image as an example I will try the comparison again but I'm fairly confident Amazon have failed to utilize this feature. Will update soon
