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Good points, Jack. On typography, what Apple has done is to build into the OS the capability to see the ligatures that are available in the font you are using. These ligatures are then automatically used in place of the appropriate letter pairs or triples found in the raw text. Of course they manage spacing/layout adjustments automatically as well. And provide a set of controls for the user to choose between (at least) no ligatures, common ligatures, fancy ligatures, and "go-berserk" ligatures. The point here is that the ligature support can be built into the software rather than being hard-coded in the source. The "advanced typography support" in Mac OS 10.5 also does a dandy job of automatic kerning (rather better than TeX, for example). Not so good at auto-hyphenation, however.
The other layout stuff that I mentioned seems to me to be stuff that needs a compromise between what the book designer wanted and what the device can reasonably do (and also what the USER wants to see!). Certainly it makes no sense to do multi-column on a tiny-screen device -- most of the time. Not sure what the right solution is, but it would be cool if ePub (say) was expressive enough for a book designer to specify their preferred layout, and for large-screen devices (or printing to paper!) to be able to re-create something quite close.
As far as resolution goes, hmmmm.... My observation is that with normal eyesight on standard office paper (or equivalent) and with text output it is trivial to distinguish 300 and 600 DPI from each other and from 1200 DPI output. Beyond 1200DPI, the differences get much more subtle. I'm told by some of the experts here on campus that 3KDPI represents roughly the limit of human perception in the absence of a loupe or magnifying glass. That's "limit" in the sense that there's no point in ratcheting up to finer dot-pitch 'cause almost no one will be able to tell the difference -- even trained professionals with excellent eye-sight. (I don't actually know this last from my own studies, so take it as hearsay.)
For my particular needs, I don't care about color. I don't care (much) about grey-scale levels. But I want my reader to have the cleanest sharpest text I can get! After all, I spend a lot of time looking at it.
I rather curious, though. When would you prefer "barely adequate" resolution?
Xenophon
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