Quote:
Originally Posted by dmaul1114
I think what you're missing is that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
The experts may make a book that's better on the eyes for mass market, but that doesn't mean someone like Jon doesn't have his own preferences on how his books should look, what font he prefers to read etc. So customization is better for such people--it's not a matter of which is better in some aggregate sense, but just what is better to his eyes.
So I get his point. I just think it's irrelevant in the mainstream. Mainstream readers and e-book formats aren't going to have that kind of legal customization built in as publishers want to make their materials look a certain way. As with any kind of customization/hacking, people like Jon will just have to find a reader and software that allows them to do what they want with their books as it will never be something explicitly built in.
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Overall, I feel this way too. I understand the need for individual preferences for changing fonts, margins, line-spacing, etc. I also believe the ability for a format to be reflowable on any device is a great thing such as is the case with epub. Physical books doesn't have this flexibility. The fact that they don't shouldn't mean that ebooks shouldn't have this flexibility if it's indeed possible to do.
Generally, I don't necessarily embrace the notion that a particular typesetting that a publisher provides will satisfy all and I will argue that it won't. However, in the same way that I can view a magazine and it's visual appeal (e.g. Zinio formatted magazines) is the same way I want to view my reading material.
If all one reads are novels, then epub is more than adequate. But if we want to evolve past novels, we need something better than epub and, today, that's pdf. I'm not blindly loyal to pdf but it's the best that we have today. If a new format comes out or a current format evolves into something that rivals the benefits of epub and pdf, I will be the first in line to support it.