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Originally Posted by SensualPoet
We're all agreed, to some extent, that typography matters; for some of us, it matters more than for others. Typography, as an art, is plainly absent from non-pdf documents on e-ink devices. Poetry, for example, is pretty much impossible on a Kindle.
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I'm waiting for digital poetry to hit its stride--to use the features available in screen-based displays and reflowable text to find new ways to share messages that can't be done with traditional print. (Um. But we can skip the blinking & scrolling marquee poetry, okay?)
In the meantime, print poetry translates badly to most ebook readers. Kipling's not easy, and Cummings is right out.
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The second part of his article is about doing something "more" with the residual meta-data (ie not the author's work but your own reading experience). He goes on to suggest that the highlights of 10,000 readers should be linked together to produce "hot spots" of not-to-be-missed passages; or that we ought to be able to see the highlights of one famous author's private notes reading a second famous author.
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While I have no interest in reading-in-general being a social experience, I think I understand some of what he means. Booksharing is an essential part of print reading, and visiting a bookstore in order to just talk to the salesperson or other customers helped a lot of us sort out our taste in books. Chatting about favorite passages or most important plot points is part of what book clubs do. And all that could be switched to digital, not require leaving your house. (Which has both pros & cons.)
I don't want to see everyone's favorite passage during a first readthrough of a book--but if I had a way to participate in a "discussion" afterward, by highlighting what I liked best and throwing strikethrough on the parts I thought were boring, that'd be fun. And there's no reason we can't have that, eventually; no reason we can't have "this book is recommended by a dozen people who loved the same passages you did in this other book."
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Originally Posted by leebase
Am I the only person not in love with hyphenation? I'd rather have rivers or a ragged edge than have to start a word, keep it in mind, and finish it on the next line.
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People who need really large text to read comfortably are most likely to want hyphenation; if you're only getting 4-6 words on a line, bumping that down to 3 because "understand" wasn't split into "under- stand" can be annoying.
Most problems with hyphenation are from *bad* hyphenation. When it's done right, it shouldn't be noticeable.