Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Get the smallest cell phone screen you can find hat you can view your layout on. That will show you that all that excess spacing is not a good idea. Also, try large font sizes to see how it looks. You don't know how people will set things so you have to test all different things to see what works best.
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Yes, all of this is consistent with what I wrote....
... and yet!
Ebook producers must make certain assumptions. You write "you don't know how people will set things
so you have to test all different things" [emphasis added]. This is impossible right? And impractical. You don't test user setting assuming a 2.5" x 4" screen with font size set to 1500%, do you? I mean, if you have to test ALL different things...
But clearly that's not what's literally meant here. What's meant by it is: you have to test it against an idealized range and accept that SOME outlier cases will result in undesired rendering of your formatting. My question is/was what is that idealized range? For example, I assume that most people will have their font setting larger on a dedicated ereader than on a phone because they are usually held at different distances from one's face. This is an assumption, not an empirically tested observation, but it is part of what goes into creating the boundaries around what constitutes the aforementioned "idealized range". Likewise, I assume that for an ereader, there is a range of font sizes on an approximately 6.5" screen in which formatting will look great, a range of font sizes in which it'll look fine, a range in which it'll look crummy, and a range of at which it will become unreadable... (usually it's around 9pt-11pt, 12-15, 16-20, and greater than 20)...
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Separately, you mentioned that "an ebook should have no margins". I'm assuming that you meant left/right margins (since 0em top/bottom would make headings run directly into the body text). But even under that assumption, how do you deal with blockquotes? Don't they need margins to offset them from the rest of the text??