MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Can We Talk? About E-Readers?

JSWolf · 07-08-2016, 04:44 AM

I don't mind authors/publishers doing things their way. It's just that when their way is not good that it becomes a problem.

A common problem is the use of way way way too much top space for a chapter header. I've seen it as bad as 14% of the screen space wasted. Also, there is no reason to make the main font small. Just let it be the default size. And there there indents at 5%, margins at 1.2em all around, and overly large line-height.

Then we also get left justified text and instead of embedding a font when needed to display letters/characters that are not in the default font for some reading programs, we get graphics used instead so they do not match the text well enough and they do not size with the text.

Then we have the embedded fonts that don't work with eInk because they are too light. A great example of that is the book, The martian. It used some free fonts that were way too light for comfortable reading.

One thing I would like is to be able to mark the different elements to allow the reading software to be able to customize how each looks. This would give the user the ability to have things as he/she wants.

I know that if using defaults (font size, margins, line-height, etc.) with my H2O, I can customize the font, margins, line-height, and justification to how I want.

07-08-2016, 04:44 AM	#26
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 80,055 Karma: 147977995 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	I don't mind authors/publishers doing things their way. It's just that when their way is not good that it becomes a problem. A common problem is the use of way way way too much top space for a chapter header. I've seen it as bad as 14% of the screen space wasted. Also, there is no reason to make the main font small. Just let it be the default size. And there there indents at 5%, margins at 1.2em all around, and overly large line-height. Then we also get left justified text and instead of embedding a font when needed to display letters/characters that are not in the default font for some reading programs, we get graphics used instead so they do not match the text well enough and they do not size with the text. Then we have the embedded fonts that don't work with eInk because they are too light. A great example of that is the book, The martian. It used some free fonts that were way too light for comfortable reading. One thing I would like is to be able to mark the different elements to allow the reading software to be able to customize how each looks. This would give the user the ability to have things as he/she wants. I know that if using defaults (font size, margins, line-height, etc.) with my H2O, I can customize the font, margins, line-height, and justification to how I want.