Odd formatting

[JSWolf]

Why is it that publishers feel it is OK to start each XML file at 15% from the top of the screen? That's just a waste of screen space and looks awful.

[theducks]

I saw one that was 50%
Another with line-height: 1.4 for the BODY text

It is all about PAGE COUNT (screen flips) cheating bragging rights

Why do we need Hi-res covers? 500px high has plenty of detail. Many Early digital (cheaper, consumer) cameras did not have that much

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why is it that publishers feel it is OK to start each XML file at 15% from the top of the screen? That's just a waste of screen space and looks awful.

Have you tried contacting any of the publishers to see if they would offer an explanation?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why is it that publishers feel it is OK to start each XML file at 15% from the top of the screen? That's just a waste of screen space and looks awful.

Probably because I prefer it that way (and am surely not alone). I find starting a new chapter with no large top margin (even upwards of 50%) to look as "awful" as you think a top margin of 15% looks. It screams "amateurish" to me.

If anything, I find that vertical spacing in ebooks needs to be exaggerated (compared to pbooks) to be effective--in almost every case. I don't really care about "wasting" screen space. I've never run out of screen in all the time I've been reading ebooks.

My question is: why has ereading turned so many readers into armchair typography (and book formatting) experts?

[John F]

I don't look at the XML files (normally), so I can't say as it bothers me that much.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Probably because I prefer it that way (and am surely not alone). I find starting a new chapter with no large top margin (even upwards of 50%) to look as "awful" as you think a top margin of 15% looks. It screams "amateurish" to me.

If anything, I find that vertical spacing in ebooks needs to be exaggerated (compared to pbooks) to be effective--in almost every case. I don't really care about "wasting" screen space. I've never run out of screen in all the time I've been reading ebooks.

My question is: why has ereading turned so many readers into armchair typography (and book formatting) experts?

Because that is the nature of man?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Because that is the nature of man?

Well I get that.

I just find it ironic that we (the typography "experts") complain more about formatting that is infinitely easier to "fix" than we ever complained about formatting we simply had no chance in hell of "fixing."

I'm also amused by the increasingly popular notion that there was ever some sort of magical, mythical pbook formatting/typography standard that ebooks aren't somehow adhering to. I can pull hundreds of pbooks off my shelves that break the typography "rules" laid down by the books on either side of them. And yet, it's only ebooks that are criticized for their typographic/formatting inconsistency.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Have you tried contacting any of the publishers to see if they would offer an explanation?

The book in this case is from Orbit. I've not tried contacting them. But I have a feeling the answer would be it's that way because it's that way in the print edition.

I'll see if I can find a way to contact Orbit and hopefully find out what they actually do have to say.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Probably because I prefer it that way (and am surely not alone). I find starting a new chapter with no large top margin (even upwards of 50%) to look as "awful" as you think a top margin of 15% looks. It screams "amateurish" to me.

If anything, I find that vertical spacing in ebooks needs to be exaggerated (compared to pbooks) to be effective--in almost every case. I don't really care about "wasting" screen space. I've never run out of screen in all the time I've been reading ebooks.

I would not mind a top margin of say 2em. But 15% just doesn't look very good. I have an H2O and with it's 6.8" screen, the chapter header is even farther down than on a 6" screen.

My question is: why has ereading turned so many readers into armchair typography (and book formatting) experts?

What I don't get is why a lot of people want formatting that's completely different than the formatting they got from pBooks. I've not read of people complaining that they want no indents and paragraph spaces from pBooks yet from eBooks they want to deviate from the normal indents with no paragraph spacing.

I do understand why some want left justified because they don't like the gaps that can happen in justified lines with no hyphenation. But what I don't get is why some still want left justified even when there are hyphens.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I just find it ironic that we (the typography "experts") complain more about formatting that is infinitely easier to "fix" than we ever complained about formatting we simply had no chance in hell of "fixing."

I'm also amused by the increasingly popular notion that there was ever some sort of magical, mythical pbook formatting/typography standard that ebooks aren't somehow adhering to. I can pull hundreds of pbooks off my shelves that break the typography "rules" laid down by the books on either side of them. And yet, it's only ebooks that are criticized for their typographic/formatting inconsistency.

On reason to complain is that something can be done about it by the publisher. For example, if we borrow an eBook from the library, unless we strip the DRM andfix the formatting to what we want, then there's nothing we can do about it. Once a pBook is published and it's on the shelf at the library, there is nothing that can be done to change the formatting. But an eBook can be changed. I've seen a lot of eBooks have their formatting changed. Another issue with this is that we don't get notified for most eBooks that they have been changed and the only way we can find out is to download them again and compare to the previously downloaded copy.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

I don't look at the XML files (normally), so I can't say as it bothers me that much.

You don't have to look at the XML/CSS. You see the effect of large space for section/chapter headers on the screen.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why is it that publishers feel it is OK to start each XML file at 15% from the top of the screen? That's just a waste of screen space and looks awful.

Because it is normal in many print books to start a new chapter about 30-50% down the page. I have many that do this, and I'm not surprised publishers are just copying this to digital books.

The things I find way more irritating are the ones that are very common in ebooks, but which I've never seen in print books (it may exist in print, I've just never actually seen it):

- Have a white line between every paragraph.
- Have a white line of half height between every paragraph
- Have a ragged right (non-justified) text.
- Tiny indents (1-2 characters)
- Huge indents (Sometimes up to 2 inches...)
- No hyphenation

Some publishers even combine multiple of these, which, if it also has some errors in it, make the book look like some pirated versions. (I'm looking at you, Picador, regarding those *dreadfully* laid out books by Lian Hearn. They were even missing the maps and persona listings!)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Well I get that.

I just find it ironic that we (the typography "experts") complain more about formatting that is infinitely easier to "fix" than we ever complained about formatting we simply had no chance in hell of "fixing."

I'm also amused by the increasingly popular notion that there was ever some sort of magical, mythical pbook formatting/typography standard that ebooks aren't somehow adhering to. I can pull hundreds of pbooks off my shelves that break the typography "rules" laid down by the books on either side of them. And yet, it's only ebooks that are criticized for their typographic/formatting inconsistency.

I could go look at a dozen different pbooks and see a dozen different formats.
3 books come to mind on really different.
1 book had a picture for the first page of a chapter and a blank page to end the chapter. Actually chapter length was 3 pages. Now that author I will let slide because she was close to 90 when she wrote that book.
The second one is an inch thick but only 64 pages. It is literally printed on cardboard, but then what else would one expect from a redneck.
Now the last one is a 1000 page paperback. They needed to include a magnifying glass.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The book in this case is from Orbit. I've not tried contacting them. But I have a feeling the answer would be it's that way because it's that way in the print edition.

I'll see if I can find a way to contact Orbit and hopefully find out what they actually do have to say.

A preview of the book in question may be available for viewing from Amazon, in order to test that theory.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by theducks

Why do we need Hi-res covers? 500px high has plenty of detail. Many Early digital (cheaper, consumer) cameras did not have that much

No. Covers and other pictures need to be as large as possible, to cover future screen sizes. If I have a map which is 800x600, it works fine on a current lower end e-reader. It will also work on a 1600x1200 e-reader, but it starts to struggle at higher resolutions.

At some point, there WILL be devices with resolutions such as 8000x6000 pixels, and then the covers and maps will look horrible.

The very best solution would be to have illustrations in SVG or another vector format, as much as possible, and have all bitmapped illustrations in a huge resolution.

I don't care if an e-book is 10MB, and 9MB is taken up by covers and maps.

It's easy to create a reader fast enough and with enough storage to handle that. Any tablet can easily do it, so one could take the processing power of a small tablet and design an e-reader around it. It would be a good replacement for an e-reader such as the Voyage.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

My question is: why has ereading turned so many readers into armchair typography (and book formatting) experts?

Because people either want their e-reader to look EXACTLY like a book and complain if it doesn't, or they want it to NOT look like a book and complain if it does.

I'm somewhere in the middle.

I don't need a one inch margin around the text on an e-reader. 5px is more than enough.
I don't mind if the chapter starts at the top, or in the middle of the screen.
I do want my text justified, no white lines between paragraphs, and a normal indent.
I would like ligatures... but they are not really required. (I've had many books with and without them.)

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Well I get that.

I just find it ironic that we (the typography "experts") complain more about formatting that is infinitely easier to "fix" than we ever complained about formatting we simply had no chance in hell of "fixing."

I'm also amused by the increasingly popular notion that there was ever some sort of magical, mythical pbook formatting/typography standard that ebooks aren't somehow adhering to. I can pull hundreds of pbooks off my shelves that break the typography "rules" laid down by the books on either side of them. And yet, it's only ebooks that are criticized for their typographic/formatting inconsistency.

This is because ebooks are now fixable. Everybody understood that a book is something you buy and it is what it is... but as soon as it is something digital, everybody understands that it's possible to tamper with it. Therefore everybody wants to have it changed to their preference.

Also, as pwalker8 says, it's the nature of man. Have you ever played Caesar or SimCity or any other building game? In the beginning, people don't really complain, except about the really big stuff. It goes like this:

- "We have no houses!" (give them houses)
- "We have no food and water!" (give them food and water)
- "We have no...!" (give them....)
...
...
- "Why do I have to walk 2 minutes to the nearest grocery store?!"
...
...
- "Why do we only have 4 types of wine to drink?!"
...
...
- "I want my perfume in a heart-shaped crystal bottle with a pink porcelain stopper!"

The same is going on with e-books: complaints are being raised about smaller and smaller problems.