Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
You are like a guy riling against the widescreen movie format, because your cheap B&W TV watch can't display it properly....
The lowest common denominator may not be good enough for everyone.
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The screen size that's comfortable for me to carry in my purse is not "lowest common denominator." Small size is more important to me than good typography; that's why I read ebooks on a Clié with eReader program for a couple of years before I got my PRS-505. I switched because of battery life issues--not eye strain, not format preferences, not because I wanted a larger screen.
The 6" e-ink reader dominates the market; obviously, a lot of people like it. It's also clear that a lot of people would like a letter-sized reader--but that doesn't mean the 5" or 6" readers are "cheap early prototypes;" they're a very comfortable and useful size.
They're not a comfortable size for *printed books.* If you want to convince people that PDFs are the best ebook format, start by convincing publishers to release their PDF ebooks formatted for 6" reader screens. After people have read dozens of novels that worked well on the hardware they have, and compare those to epub & mobi books of the same content, they'll be more convinced that typography is important.
Right now, the choice is mostly between "good typography at a size that involves eyestrain" and "default computer typography at a size I can read."
(While you're at it, convince ebook reader manufacturers that 300 dpi really would be much better. Because a lot of the features of good typography are lost when the serifs are blurry.)
The tech to support PDF as the best ebook format is almost here. (It's waiting on better DPI support.) However, the market support for it is nonexistant... publishers often don't put title & author metadata in their PDFs; I don't think you can effectively argue that they'll format them to fit different screens. Or to fit ANY screens... right now, no commercial PDFs fit properly on any of the available ebook screens.