Quote:
Originally Posted by Anarel
Donovan,
Look, if the print version of the book doesn't have those massive spaces between each paragraph, then the ebook shouldn't, either. It's not a layout decision; why would publishers change the way the ook is laid out just because it's an ebook version? Most other ebooks mirror their print counterparts, why are other people getting it so wrong?
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Then there's the other side of the coin, where the ebook
can't mirror the design of the pbook.
For example, I did design and print production, back when the tools of the trade were T-squares, eXacto knives, rubber cement, and typeset galleys off a photo-typositor. DTP didn't exist, because the hardware it could run on didn't, and wouldn't for years. I still have design volumes in my library like _Production for the Graphic Designer_ and _Design With Type_. Many of these use multi-column layouts and formatting that
can't be done on ebook reader devices. To reproduce the book as intended, you would have to do it as PDF, and you wouldn't
want it to re-flow to fit a smaller device screen.
A friend is a DTP specialist for a major publisher, and spends her days doing typesetting and markup. She wants to be involved in the ebook side of things, and I explained issues like device constraints. "The book is set in 11 point Monotype Bembo on a 13 point body? That won't translate. The display device won't
have Monotype Bembo, or that precise a control over line spacing."
Some devices are more constrained than others. My principal reader is a Palm OS PDA. Palm OS has a set number of slots for fonts, with names like Standard, Bold, Large, and Large Bold. By default, these are mapped to fonts in device ROM. I converted some True Type fonts to a format Palm OS can display, and I've done things like customize the fonts Mobi Reader for Palm OS uses for text with a hack that maps one of my custom fonts into the slot where Palm OS looks for the standard text font. But that's global for all MobiPocket volumes. It won't reproduce what fonts the original book used, because it
can't.
As the hardware gets cheaper and more powerful, I expect this issue to fade (though not got go away entirely.) Meanwhile, I do the best I can on formatting when creating an ebook, and the type geek in me mourns what I
can't do.
______
Dennis