Quote:
Originally Posted by roger64
So, the use of px for the display of margins should just be a matter of choice not a "dark side" crusade...
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As we all know, there's a pretty big dfference between writing for the web, and writing for tablets/devices. While it may well not be "dark side" for the web, using px for margins for eReaders does have the issue that Turtle mentioned, not resizing along with the font, which can have some pretty damn unattractive results. In your poetry, you've used it for space-between stanzas...I just wonder how that will look if the font is sized quite differently, either up or down.
But...you change ePUBs to PDFs, to "perfectly" suit your device, so you seem to be making choices that are quite different than what everyone else is doing, for eReaders. Honestly, I find trying to read PDFS on a device incredibly tedious.
I'm surprised that you don't, but, whatever floats your boat.
Nonetheless, anytime you use px in an environment over which you have limited control--and over which others do have the ability to exert some control--I think you're running a risk that the resulting appearance, or even functionality, of the book could have some unfortunate unintended consequences.
Sure, for some things--like the ubiquitous search for
The One Drop Cap To Rule Them All--the job can be made far easier by the use of measurements in px, but...when I think about that (the Drop, I mean), while we can write mq's today, that will address pretty much every device, and thus make the px measurements not so potentially problematic, what happens when a new device is introduced, by Amazon, or the Fire is adjusted to a new size, shape, aspect ratio, screensize, etc.? Or the same for any line of devices? What happens if the Yadda-yadda Reader comes out with a 600ppi screen? Yes, yes, I know, that's fantastic, in the traditional meaning of the word, and useless, as well, due to limitations in the human eye, but I
cannot be the only person here who remembers all too well what happened to books with internal images and fleurons, when all the Kindles went from 72ppi to 330ppi, right? And 200-300px wide images, that were half-screen-width, on a K2 or KK, were
suddenly less than an inch wide? And fleurons looked like
specks?
I freely admit that it's been years since I personally tried using px measurements, in any book I was working on. So, I don't have a bunch of examples immediately to hand, or to brain. I don't think it's as simple as, "it's a bunch of CSS jockeys arguing, and there's no dark side."
And lastly, I don't think that this discussion is that far OT. We're talking about poetry--which is invariably a PITA (no? What's your solution for line-length line-wrapping, due to font sizing, when the poet has created his poetry centered? How do you distinquish between the poet's intentional new lines, and those caused by lack of horizontal space? I know it sounds stupid--but there
isn't a solution. You'd think that would be the easiest layout, right, in so many ways?
Phlllbbbfffftttttt.) Anytime you deal with poetry that is anything other than typical stanzas, left-aligned, you run into these types of issues, and most of us have (stupidly) taken on some visual poetry at some point in time. Px and Poetry seem to go together, in the realm of trying to address the myriad issues, so I don't feel that this is an OT discussion, given the realms of headaches that poetry inflicts upon those folks trying to make it work in the digital world.
JMHO, since I can't bring a bunch of examples to the party. For
now.
Hitch