Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm not making any "assertions" - just expressing a personal opinion  . You're right that most paperbacks do have an aspect ratio very close to that. Perhaps it's just that we're all so used to reading books on screens with a 4:3 aspect ratio, that the narrower format looks strange. |
Typesetting novels in 4:3 is actually rather frustrating, especially when there isn't a lot of margin to play with. It's not as easy to make good use of the very limited vertical space, as spacing manipulation and gaps from widow/orphan removal are much more obvious than they are in a taller text block. Hyphenation frequency also becomes more of a concern (specifically, it's more conspicuous on a short page), though it's offset slightly by the greater possible line length, assuming a small enough font is used.
But yeah, when someone is accustomed to ebook reader screens and the lack of decent typesetting on ebook files outside of specialized PDFs, it's hard to imagine upgrading to a better form factor.
Of course, the Joojoo is a bit on the unwieldy side anyway due to overall size...so I'm hoping for a Mirasol or Liquavista or even PixelQi screen in 16:9. 8" or 9" would be great, but even 7" 16:9 (similar to the first generation of netbook screens) would allow typesetting on par with that of paperbacks, which for all the maligning done on these fora, are a hell of a lot more sophisticated than current ebooks.
