Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
Ok... and again, I agree with a lot of things you say.
But I emphatically do not believe that the new possibilities either need to come at the detriment of what can already be done with paper books, or that those new possibilities are worth the quality-drop of such a discarding.
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We're already lacking some of the abilities of paper; the low-res screens take care of that. Fonts that are gorgeous on a printed page can look spotty and unstable on a 166 dpi screen. Kerning, leading, and justification are all affected by the dpi count and screen size. Coffee-table sized books, and many textbooks, are too big to read full-size on most computer screens unless blown up to pixelated views. (Can't show a full page on most laptops; the screen's just not tall enough.)
Other screen limitations affect images--cover art with iridescent or metallic sections doesn't translate to screens; two-inch-tall author photos on hardcover jackets look lose their fine detail when set at screen resolutions. And the color issues are huge, and not limited to images; some books use color text. (I know color is just e-ink related, but the tradeoff of color for battery life is a serious issue.)
Already, typographical science at its best can't give us ebooks that match pbooks. The best typographical settings for ebooks--even PDF--haven't yet been developed.
It's possible the eventual answer will be "here's your ePub file; throw it into your PDF converter with your choice of settings to get the PDF that best works for your screen." Because there certainly isn't going to be a single layout that works well on desktops, laptops, netbooks, portable readers, and cellphones--and people are going to want ebooks that move smoothly between all of those devices. They're certainly not going to want to have to decide before they buy which one they'll be reading with.