Touch Are the fonts too light?

[tomsem]

I am finding the fonts lighter than they 'should' be.

It does not seem to be any physical problem with the screen. I took a screenshot of a typical Kindle page, and used it as a screensaver image on my Nook. They look equal in contrast and clarity.

But comparing Caecilia on Kindle with the same typeface on Nook Touch, at approximately the same size, the former looks a bit pale. I don't think it is just because I prefer smaller text and the strokes are thinner. Sometimes I get a glimpse of what it might look like when I bring up the reader options panel and put it back. When it redraws the text that the panel covers up, that text sometimes looks noticeably darker.

I think they perhaps have optimized too much for power savings, and it comes at the expense of text contrast and darkness. I'd like to see that fixed, perhaps by providing a 'saturation' control like Sony has. I would trade some power savings for it.

But I'm wondering what other people think. I haven't seem a lot of complaints about this here, though it has been mentioned in some reviews.

[kezza]

I haven't found the text to be "too" light, but that's not to say it isn't lighter in comparison to a Kindle or Sony pearl screen. I like your saturation control idea, it would allow B&N to continue making their battery life claims while giving some control to the user w/r/t personal preference.

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I think they perhaps have optimized too much for power savings, and it comes at the expense of text contrast and darkness. I'd like to see that fixed, perhaps by providing a 'saturation' control like Sony has. I would trade some power savings for it.

But I'm wondering what other people think. I haven't seem a lot of complaints about this here, though it has been mentioned in some reviews.

Hmm, that's strange. I haven't noticed this (upgraded from a classic nook). It can't a power savings thing though since there is no "brightness" control to speak of. There's a maximum black and white based on the actual physical orientation of the "E-ink" pixels. So, redrawing a page would cost the same energy no matter you draw on it. It may cost more or less energy if the processor was doing heavier computations for whatever reason but for displaying books (as opposed to playing games, etc), this is again going to be pretty much equal for any page.

To get to the point, might it just be related to the residual "ghosting" reported on this forum? This has to do with the nook2 not refreshing each page completely (until you hit 6 pages). Perhaps that's why you get a glimpse of what it "should look like" when you go to the home screen (full refresh).

Just a thought ...

[Japes]

The Caecilia that the Kindle uses is "Caecilia-Bold" which is really not bold, but rather, a semi-bold font. Then, for bolded text, they use Caecilia-Heavy (which is definately a bolded version).

[tomsem]

I can accept that Kindle uses Semi-bold while Nook uses Regular, accounting for differences between the two, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

Try the following experiment: Set text to Caecillia at a small type size (1, 2, or 3). Bring up a page of text that fills the screen. Tap the 'nook' button once to bring up the navigation panel, then push it again to dismiss the panel and restore the text that the panel was hiding.

On my Nook, the last line of just restored text is consistently and noticeably darker and clearer than the rest of the text on the screen (particularly with size 1). That's the way I'd like to see ALL of the text look. Dark and saturated.

There may be individual device variation on how dark the text looks, which is why I started this thread. But to me, it looks like the text is not getting fully rendered, and I'm not seeing true 'FFFFFF' black most of the time, it is like it is 'underexposed'. I'm wondering if I'd have better luck if I exchanged my Nook for a different one, but the store models I played with were the same, and together with some reviewer comments, it suggests they are all about like mine.

I'd post photos but my camera is 300 miles away at the moment.

[Davinator]

Has anyone had any luck changing the fonts on the Nook STR? I know we can already root the device, so changing the fonts shouldn't be too difficult... right?

[SCION]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I can accept that Kindle uses Semi-bold while Nook uses Regular, accounting for differences between the two, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

Try the following experiment: Set text to Caecillia at a small type size (1, 2, or 3). Bring up a page of text that fills the screen. Tap the 'nook' button once to bring up the navigation panel, then push it again to dismiss the panel and restore the text that the panel was hiding.

On my Nook, the last line of just restored text is consistently and noticeably darker and clearer than the rest of the text on the screen (particularly with size 1). That's the way I'd like to see ALL of the text look. Dark and saturated.

There may be individual device variation on how dark the text looks, which is why I started this thread. But to me, it looks like the text is not getting fully rendered, and I'm not seeing true 'FFFFFF' black most of the time, it is like it is 'underexposed'. I'm wondering if I'd have better luck if I exchanged my Nook for a different one, but the store models I played with were the same, and together with some reviewer comments, it suggests they are all about like mine.

I'd post photos but my camera is 300 miles away at the moment.

I know what you're saying. I've noticed the same with the smaller font sizes. Very noticeable. You need to beef it up for real clarity.

[JSWolf]

I was an B&N today and had my 650 with me. I was able to download one of the new Star Wars samples that uses Charis SIL as the embedded font. In comparison to the 650, there seems to be an issue with the nook's font rendering. It didn't render the font as well as the 650. On the nook, the font didn't look all that good.

The font looked very uneven. All the strokes were not the same. On the 650, the font looked darker because all the strokes were even.

Is this a bug in the font rendering of the nook? Could this be why some fonts look lighter then they should be?

[kezza]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Is this a bug in the font rendering of the nook? Could this be why some fonts look lighter then they should be?

I think this might be part of it. I've been paying close attention to my nook touch and the fonts look decidedly pixelated, like they're being anti-aliased. My sony 505 did some very mild anti-aliasing of fonts, but this is far more noticeable. I don't know if the degree of apparent anti-aliasing is related to the limited screen refreshes or if it's part of how the fonts are displayed by the software, but the edges are not sharp like I expect them to be.

[sonyreaderfan]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I am finding the fonts lighter than they 'should' be.

It does not seem to be any physical problem with the screen. I took a screenshot of a typical Kindle page, and used it as a screensaver image on my Nook. They look equal in contrast and clarity.

But comparing Caecilia on Kindle with the same typeface on Nook Touch, at approximately the same size, the former looks a bit pale. I don't think it is just because I prefer smaller text and the strokes are thinner. Sometimes I get a glimpse of what it might look like when I bring up the reader options panel and put it back. When it redraws the text that the panel covers up, that text sometimes looks noticeably darker.

I think they perhaps have optimized too much for power savings, and it comes at the expense of text contrast and darkness. I'd like to see that fixed, perhaps by providing a 'saturation' control like Sony has. I would trade some power savings for it.

But I'm wondering what other people think. I haven't seem a lot of complaints about this here, though it has been mentioned in some reviews.

The Kindle rendering of fonts makes it appear darker. There have been reports of it in two reviews. Here's a specific explanation why:

http://www.marco.org/2011/06/03/nook...e-touch-review

"The Kindle’s rendering is slightly more readable, with the Nook’s too often aligning on half-pixel boundaries, resulting in thin gray strokes. This is least noticeable with Caecilia but is problematic with the thinner fonts, especially Gill Sans and Trebuchet."

Lest anyone dismiss the reviewer as a Kindle fanboy, Lisa from mobiletechreview.com says something similar. Lisa has been in this forum described as an even-handed reviewer and the favorite reviewer of certain forum members.

Lisa from mobiletechreview.com:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/erea...uch-Reader.htm

"The New Nook Simple Touch vs. the Amazon Kindle 3

We have both ereaders in house, and put them through their paces for this 30 minute video comparison. We look at several key features in depth on each: search, dictionary, annotation, page layout options, shopping and more. The video isn’t a “this one is better” sort of thing, because honestly, it’s a very close race. I vastly prefer the touch experience, durable and grippable rubber casing and more open ePub format support of the Nook Touch. But I find text clarity and page layout are better on the Kindle 3 (that’s the most important feature to me in an ebook reader) , as is Amazon’s selection and customer service. " (Emphasis mine)

[SCION]

Yeah, text clarity or lack thereof is an issue. It's become a distraction for me because I'm constantly fiddling with the font settings.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by SCION

Yeah, text clarity or lack thereof is an issue. It's become a distraction for me because I'm constantly fiddling with the font settings.

I don't like the 6 fonts available in the font menu. The other thing that bothered me was when I changed the text size, it went off publisher default. So I had to then elect that to turn it back on. But the real issue that makes the nook a no-go is the poor font engine. It just doesn't work well. The different size strokes make the reading experience very poor. B&N needs to fix the font rendering engine.

[GreenMonkey]

I've noticed this same problem too. I figured they were going light on the rendering of some pixels in letters as part of the partial refresh tech they're using. But the pixel explanation above makes some sense too.

[rahulm]

I wish B&N and the Nook team were more active and communicative in these forums (like the Kobo guys).

They could very well be working on a fix or something, or maybe not. But we'll never know cause they don't talk to the community.

Makes me sad.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by sonyreaderfan

The Kindle rendering of fonts makes it appear darker.
...
"The Kindle’s rendering is slightly more readable, with the Nook’s too often aligning on half-pixel boundaries, resulting in thin gray strokes.

Aligning the font outline with pixel borders is called "hinting".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinting
you MUST read the following article if it interests you.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...tingIntro.mspx

Kindle goes one step further. Caecilia font (the copy located at the Kindle 3 device) contains hand-tweaked raster versions of font at sizes used by Kindle.

Traditionaly Microsoft does very aggressive hinting on fonts used to display things on Windows, and Apple used almost no hinting. At small point sizes, the hinting can severely change the look of a letter, but it improves our perception of contrast and clarity, because font boundaries are very crisp.
see: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html