Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Perhaps an illustration will show what I mean, Ahi. Attached is a photograph of my CyBook Gen3 (very slightly blurred, I'm afraid - the light is rather poor in my room, but it's good enough, I think). I'm sure that to a typographer, there are all sorts of things wrong with it, but all I need for a novel (which is what I use my Gen3 for reading) there are only a few basic features I need: centred titles, indented paragraphs, and reasonable justification, and the Mobi file format gives me all that. A 6" screen is just too small for "complex" formats, and Mobi is "good enough" for my needs.
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I see what you mean, and I was assuming something around these lines even unseen.
It's not terrible, but it does look distinctly and immediately like something typeset by a computer in real-time. In other words: worse than a paper book that could be purchased for far less than what an eBook device costs. I don't think that will fly with the average person.
And yes, 6" is probably too small for more complex typography; but 8" is probably not, and 10" is pretty much fine for any general book, textbook, or magazine, so long as it is thoughtfully prepared for that size.
Not to mention that if a format--whether it's ePub's descendant, or ADE--can encapsulate multiple PDF files, you could have both font resizing and pristine typography. This suggestion of mine doesn't seem to be taken seriously, but it's true. It is trivial to create additional PDF versions for slightly different display and different font sizes--the only problem is with the user interface that does not presently give a way to make use of this in a way that isn't a drag to the user.
My 8 PDFs of "The Art of War" cover a pretty decent range at about 3 MB in size (with 8 copies of the cover, 7 of which would not be there to take up space in a consolidated format)... it's entirely feasible, and it is a far more meritorious way to offer a choice of font sizes than by taking the the easy and low quality way out and stick to device-managed reflow of text.
What is wrong with that idea? Particularly since future eBook devices are bound to standardize their display sizes at something between 8" and 10", down the road reducing the number of different display sizes that need to be supported. (With the caveat that random-sized cell phone displays are not eBook devices, even if eBook software is usable with them.)
- Ahi