Reader with best quality formatting?

[JMikeD]

Does anyone have any info on the relative quality of, say, Sony versus Kindle for quality of formatting with books purchased from the bookstores?

I've been pretty disappointed in the formatting of purchased Kindle books, it's a rare volume that doesn't have some sort of problem that just jumps out at me, ranging from typos, missing hyphens, run-together words, garbage characters, paragraph breaks in the middle of words, etc.

If some other source has higher quality proofing, I'd consider a switch.

The books I get here on Mobileread are of much higher quality than from Amazon (although I realize that Amazon doesn’t control that).

Thanks.

[zetareticuli]

The e-readers I have tried have not been very good at formatting either. In my case, my ebook library is composed primarily of PDF but I have tried other formats as well. I have seen the formatting problem you describe with many of my ebooks. I have tried the Kindle, Kindle DX, Astak EZ Reader, PocketBook, and Nook. I have had problems with all. I have also tried books from different vendors with the same results you describe. My answer to your question, based on my experience, is that no such device or ebook content vendor is available yet. I think that with the abundance of devices coming out in the new few months there will be better chances of finding a reader that can resolve most of these problems.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

The books I get here on Mobileread are of much higher quality than from Amazon (although I realize that Amazon doesn’t control that).

Thanks.

Thanks for noticing that. The books posted here are formatted by our own members...with care and for the love of the job, and sharing.

[Geppetto]

I think that publishers should drop those weird formats. Why not paging 90x120 mm for 6" screens and 148x210 mm (say) for larger screens and selling as PDFs?
Why? That's so simple...

That's what an Italian publisher did (www.edizionidellavigna.it) - have a look, if you speak or study Italian

[HarryT]

PDF is a dreadful format for eBooks, because it's formatted for a fixed page size. A publisher would need to produce a different PDF for every differently-sized screen on the market. It also negates one of the key benefits of eBooks - the ability to change the font size to suit your personal preference.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JMikeD

Does anyone have any info on the relative quality of, say, Sony versus Kindle for quality of formatting with books purchased from the bookstores?

I've been pretty disappointed in the formatting of purchased Kindle books, it's a rare volume that doesn't have some sort of problem that just jumps out at me, ranging from typos, missing hyphens, run-together words, garbage characters, paragraph breaks in the middle of words, etc.

All those issues are down to the publisher, and have nothing to do with the device, or the choice of format.

[Geppetto]

Originally Posted by HarryT

PDF is a dreadful format for eBooks, because it's formatted for a fixed page size. A publisher would need to produce a different PDF for every differently-sized screen on the market. It also negates one of the key benefits of eBooks - the ability to change the font size to suit your personal preference.

2 PDFs are more than enough: 90x120 for 5"-6" screens, and the bigger one for bigger screens - and the second one is the pdf you've already sent to the pressman, so you simply have to make one pdf.

You're telling me that you can't change the font size with PDFs. You know that's not true. You can't do it on a Cybook (and maybe on any Netronix EB600 clone - I'm not sure which), but you know that you can do it on a Hanlin (and clones: BeBook, Astak, Papyre, Lbook and so on). You can do it on a Sony.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Geppetto

You're telling me that you can't change the font size with PDFs. You know that's not true. You can't do it on a Cybook (and maybe on any Netronix EB600 clone - I'm not sure which), but you know that you can do it on a Hanlin (and clones: BeBook, Astak, Papyre, Lbook and so on). You can do it on a Sony.

You can "zoom in" on the page, yes, but that's not at all a satisfactory solution, because it means that you have to "pan around" the page in order to read it. Most PDFs which are more than just plain text will not "reflow" in any way that is at all satisfactory.

I'm sorry, but I maintain my view that PDF is an extremely poor choice of format for an eBook. It is not what PDF was designed to do - the point of a PDF file is to provide a digital representation of a fixed-sized page. A "real" ebook format such as ePub will do a much better job.