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JustinThought · 05-04-2017, 06:22 AM

Wow, I just found this thread, and it's really interesting to see the wide differences of opinions people are expressing.

I'm kinda weighing in with Jon on this one. Yeah, when I'm reading a book, I'm reading the words; but the layout can enhance (or detract from) the reading experience. Otherwise, we could all just get by with plain ASCII text displayed on the screen--no paragraph breaks, no indents, no emphasis with italics. You get my drift, I think.

One person I'm surprised hasn't joined in on the discussion is Granny Grump. (I think I have her name right.) If you look at any of the books she has created and made available here, you can see that she has spent a lot of time and skull-sweat carefully designing the layout to enhance the reading experience; and frankly, she has given us some real masterpieces. But, as Jon said, many of the reading apps (I can't speak to the e-readers, since I only use Android equipment) turn those masterpieces into generic blah!

Look at paper books. There are many different ways to handle chapter headings, section breaks, captions, etc. Did they do this because that happened to be the type they had available at the time? Prob'ly not. I would guess they were designing the books to look a way that they liked, and they thought the reader would like as well. Well, in the e-publishing world, the same is true; and when the e-reader or the app destroys that design, it's disrespectful to the book designer.

Moon+ Reader, which happens to be my preferred reading app because of the many different options available, is one of the worst I've found at ignoring the book design. Gitden Reader is the app I've found that displays the design in the truest fashion.

But, as others have said, if my purpose is to read the book, I'm gonna go with the reader that I makes that particular experience the most gratifying, i.e. getting the words transferred from the page into my brain, and to heck with the formatting.

Oh, and when the next e-book positives/negatives discussion gets started, I'm going to have to remember this as well.

E-book positives: ebooks created an army of armchair e-typographers.

Two cents.

05-04-2017, 06:22 AM	#40
JustinThought Groupie Posts: 171 Karma: 3517858 Join Date: May 2016 Location: Monterrey, Mexico Device: Samsung Tab-3 7"	Wow, I just found this thread, and it's really interesting to see the wide differences of opinions people are expressing. I'm kinda weighing in with Jon on this one. Yeah, when I'm reading a book, I'm reading the words; but the layout can enhance (or detract from) the reading experience. Otherwise, we could all just get by with plain ASCII text displayed on the screen--no paragraph breaks, no indents, no emphasis with italics. You get my drift, I think. One person I'm surprised hasn't joined in on the discussion is Granny Grump. (I think I have her name right.) If you look at any of the books she has created and made available here, you can see that she has spent a lot of time and skull-sweat carefully designing the layout to enhance the reading experience; and frankly, she has given us some real masterpieces. But, as Jon said, many of the reading apps (I can't speak to the e-readers, since I only use Android equipment) turn those masterpieces into generic blah! Look at paper books. There are many different ways to handle chapter headings, section breaks, captions, etc. Did they do this because that happened to be the type they had available at the time? Prob'ly not. I would guess they were designing the books to look a way that they liked, and they thought the reader would like as well. Well, in the e-publishing world, the same is true; and when the e-reader or the app destroys that design, it's disrespectful to the book designer. Moon+ Reader, which happens to be my preferred reading app because of the many different options available, is one of the worst I've found at ignoring the book design. Gitden Reader is the app I've found that displays the design in the truest fashion. But, as others have said, if my purpose is to read the book, I'm gonna go with the reader that I makes that particular experience the most gratifying, i.e. getting the words transferred from the page into my brain, and to heck with the formatting. Oh, and when the next e-book positives/negatives discussion gets started, I'm going to have to remember this as well. E-book positives: ebooks created an army of armchair e-typographers. Two cents. Last edited by JustinThought; 05-04-2017 at 06:31 AM.