Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
HTML and CSS can achieve amazing things, but no reflow format can achieve the standard of quality that something purposefully (and rigidly) typeset can. Literally impossible, since no software automation on its own can get typesetting right for anything complex enough to be worth typesetting.
Jon, your suggestion about dumping PDFs into ePubs (given that Sonist was talking about properly generated eBook device targeted ones) is analogous to people dumping HTML to plaintext. I don't begrudge you wanting readable eBooks today, but the zeal with which you pledge to effectively degrade the quality of your own eBooks in perpetuity for the benefit of font resizing is odd.
Not to mention font resizing is a dubious feature when put in that term. I'm fairly certain the issue for the majority of people is not font resizing, but wanting a *specific* font size to be used by the eBook. Something trivial to address in ways that don't bestow the subjective benefit of text reflowing along with the very objective quality degradation that cannot help but bring.
Typographic quality is difficult to quantitatively discern when you are not familiar with typography, but very easy to recognise when you are seeing something typographically well done alongside something that isn't. And the reason for that is has to do with the fact that good typography makes for good readability. Even if you are not fuming about the poor quality of your reflow eBooks, you would have a more pleasant reading experience with something professionally made for the display size that you have and with the font size that you prefer.
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I understand where you're coming from, I like a well laid-out book as much as anybody else, but might we not see well laid-out and typographically sound documents within the near future? CSS3 and HTML5 are around the corner, bringing many advanced features. Why not opt for a format that can be accessed by the most people at the same time - across web browsers with plugins, e-readers, smartphones, tablets etc in the future. A format that will retain its core meaning as XHTML, that might at any time be extracted/converted/upgraded as the technology matures.
The problem might be that once a PDF is produced then that's all she wrote. Extraction and manipulation from that point on is either non-existent or too much bother to contemplate. But with ePub as a standard, we might very soon see many applications that can take these files and manipulate them at levels we haven't even conceived of yet.
Again, I'm just wondering out loud.