Quote:
Originally Posted by dmikov
Which part of "...that suits their need" you didn't understand?
Blu-Ray suits my needs, HD-Radio does not. Did you had a point of any sort?
Reflowable formats suit my needs for e-books, Pdf only to send report to the boss. Sorry, but I think you snapping at people because they don't need what you do. Adapt. I bet hand writers also complained about a printing press. And narrators about hand writers 
BTW. Few centuries tradition very often means absolutely nothing. Horse cariages and sail boats come to mind. |
OH
MY
GOD!!!
I couldn't care less what these people or any other people think they want.
Despite the 20,000+ downloads of my only eBook offering this year (PDF and other formats), it is in no way significant to my business model--in fact I do it quite entirely for the public good.
So I don't need to adapt, because...
1) eBooks are at best tangential to what I do.
2) my eBook is (and my future eBooks will be) available in multiple formats.
3) PDFs (both mine and other people's) are downloaded like hotcakes--PDF *IS*, despite the general unavailability of eBook-reader-sized PDFs, the most popular eBook format. Hell, this is borne out even by surveys that Mobileread members sporadically try to taint in favour of ePub.
The reason I am snapping at people is because they are talking out of their ass. Merely liking books doesn't make you competent to comment on bookmaking, much as merely liking cars doesn't make you competent to comment about car-restoration. This thread is a testament to legions that are convinced they are right on a topic they clearly haven't the slightest clue about.
Instead of thinking about horse carriages and sailboats, think about basic design principles. Cars still have windows, and some are open to the air... just like carriages were. Boats likewise retain basic design principles that have proven themselves over the centuries... regardless of whether they use sails or motorized propellers.
Typography in books is like windows on carriages. eBooks will have to get it right if they are ever to become a serious alternative to books, the same way as cars aren't being built as windowless tanks even though recording/display technology would make it feasible to do so.
You might be so brilliant or unique that you don't need proper typography in your books, just as you might be so brilliant or unique that you don't need windows on your car... but that doesn't mean that typographically-broken books or windowless cars are respectable concepts that society will ever embrace or even accept. They won't.
There are utterly straightforward solutions to people wanting variable-size fonts that still use fixed layouts. The key thing to understand is that
reflow is a fundamentally broken concept in relation to books--it will not survive the maturing of the eBook market, like it or not.
And, to answer your question, as to which part of "suits their need" I don't understand: I understand everything perfectly. It's just patently clear that the person commenting, like too many people in this thread and on this board, are not knowledgeable enough to either understand what it is they want... because in effect what keeps getting repeating here ad nauseum basically translates to:
Quote:
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I don't want my eBooks to be specially designed to be easy and pleasant to read because I want my eBooks to be easy and pleasant to read.
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Typography is
ENTIRELY about enhancing the reading experience by making the text "disappear" and letting the reader focus on the content. If you have decided not to care about that... its nonsensical to talk about ease of reading, which nonetheless seems to be people's mantra about reflow... and is basically nonsense.
Fixed layouts and adjustable font-sizes are perfectly compatible concepts that I am certain will be joined in the future, eBooks eventually featuring quality typography with multiple font-sizes.
Reflow however is fundamentally incompatible with quality typography. Why? Because typography is not a machine-solvable problem. It requires a human mind. Therefore if your layout is not fixed, proper typography is practically speaking impossible to achieve for the overwhelming majority of process documents.
Any of this getting through to anyone? This must be the 30th time I state this in this thread... although since even programmers semi-regularly fail to comprehend this, I suppose it's understandable that lay people would think otherwise.
- Ahi