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Some kind of position indicator that everyone can agree upon seems like a good idea, but be careful of fixed pages. They don't render well on all differnt readers.
So universal position standards, check.
I'm not sure about "high" resolution. One man's high is another man's mediocre. In some cases, I want "barely adequate" rather than "high".
The same may go for fancy typography, columnization, and figure placement. Each device will have to be able to interpret the ebook for its own best use. My 2.8" cell phone and my 17" LCD monitor have vastly different characteristics. I don't want 2 columns on the cell phone.
So, universal standards for how the same book is rendered on different sized and resolution screens, check.
Certainly automatic hyphenation and ligatures are a good area to improve. Printers have managed them for centuries, and some ebooks attempt them. Without standards for them, though, they become a boat-anchor for readabiltiy. Try reading a heavily hard-ligatured book on a device which doesn't understand them (shudder).
Standards for hyphenation and ligatures, check.
Note that none of the above require inventions, so much as common sense in hardware and software design.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
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