Quote:
Originally Posted by delphidb96
Some people have *strange* tastes.  I'm more interested in making sure the story is readable and enjoyable-when the typography becomes more important than the story... Well, let's just say that PDF has it's place but as a standard for electronic novels is *not* 'it'.
Derek |
It's all in what level of typography you prefer. If you get the formatting too screwed up, it's not enjoyable for anyone. Truly professional typography that obeys the conventions which have evolved over the last few hundred years is pleasurable precisely because it gets out of the way: you don't notice it at all, but it makes your eye flow across the words effortlessly. Imagine trying to read a book on a 8.5"-wide paper with 0.25" margins and a 10-pt font. Your eye has to move around too much, it tires you quickly, plus the brain is presented with a morass of text that is overwhelming.
Whether text is presented to you in print or electronic form is meaningless: your eye and brain function the same way regardless. So the ideal electronic format for a book is one that ... looks like a book, astonishingly enough. The screen should be large enough and the pixels dense and small enough such that, at least at one font point size, the electronic form of the book is crafted as closely as possible to the conventions of professional typography. If the user needs to depart from that font size and reflow the document, the algorithm controlling the reflow should at least attempt to maintain those standards as much as feasible. Right now epub doesn't even come close to doing that. Hopefully at some point in the coming years it will.