The discussion is good, however, and the visual presentation.
DiapDealer is right; device manufacturers will never care as there is no money in doing it right. Better to use this sort of thing as a type of review, to point people toward the finest apps/readers -- those that honor the various format conventions the best. Those that allow both the original intent of the ebook designer and also allow overrides for the reader's preferences. (Assuming the book is designed robustly and effectively.)
Look at web browsers: none display the same result, even if they've grown more similar over time as people complained about the obvious problems. It's the nature of the beast when you have reflowable, resizeable, re-fontable documents and individual interpretations of the standards by coders.
In the end, the best device will likely need to be an open-hardware, open-source project. Done the right way because the people making it are just compelled to have it be right. Scratching that sort of itch is not the sort of itch most manufacturers ever feel. Open standards help everyone, which is why the best you can hope for from corporations is "embrace and extend", but usually get "divert and deligitimize" or "pretend and propagandize". Hello, Apple!
I like FBReader, an it is absolutely the best at FB2 files, totally under the reader's control -- as the format has always intended. (It was a marvel on my old Nokia 770!) But it stinks at ePub, and probably stinks at every other format that it supports. Unfortunately, it is hard to get well-formed FB2 files for FBReader so you end up with crappy ePub display as the primary experience of using it. If I was experienced with coding, I'd take the source and strip out everything that wasn't for FB2 files and fork it.
A device that used dedicated apps per format is probably the ideal, at least from my Linux philosophy's perspective. I know that most people just want to dump all their variously formatted ebook files into a single program and have everything look great, but that's a forlorn hope. Responding to that desire is also why we get FBReader bolting on ePub display to their previously simple and effective app. (Aside: is there a name for mediocrity resulting from ignorant but popular opinion? Hello, Apple!)
Bit of digression, but I think my overall point is this: find what is great and promote it -- the mediocre will never be raised to the good, never mind to the excellent. There is too much money in selling the mediocre to the ignorant.
|