Quote:
Originally Posted by radius
On a technical level I don't think there are major problems with your "hack", though it is quite inelegant.
But...
I personally only go in to change specific items that annoy me (like too small line spacing, too small font size for regular text, mega-large margins etc) because I want to preserve as much of the existing formatting as possible. I want to believe that the "type-setting" of each book had some thought put into it to match the subject and mood etc. I don't want the responsibility of being the one who decides that, and I don't want ever book I read to look the same.
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I also tend to edit books for wide margins -- do I need to waste 2.5cm on each side of the screen leaving a 2.68cm column for displaying text (Kobo Aura One) as measured by my em ruler? Is double spacing lines necessary? Are those ugly drop-caps really needed? Do I need to waste 2/3 of the screen to display the chapter number? Do I find the basic layout aesthetically disgusting?
As for some thought in the "type-setting" of each book? I tend more to the belief that if it was common to have someone who had some experience in typography and page layout involved, I'd be editing a lot fewer books. This is especially noted with the books that are generated in a word processor and then converted to an ebook--rather often using calibre. Who has fonts such as Times New Roman, Calibri or Arial Dark on their ereader? For the most part, they are reflowable ebooks that are never going to be printed yet they are laid out as if a fixed page was desirable. Then there are the ebooks that use a mass of media queries which don't work too well on most ereaders using RMSDK based renderers leading to such odd looking items such as having both a swoosh and a "* * *" for scene breaks. Then we have the dear folks who love to specify everything in absolute units.
Yes, I will admit that quite a few of ebooks I edit for my personal use tend to have consistent page layout and typography (sounds ever so much better than boring
). For me, it's the words that matter though it was fun figuring out how to display spiral text for one ebook.