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Old 07-27-2011, 03:08 PM   #106
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Originally Posted by Hellmark View Post
It isn't really all that new. Most of the stuff for design in ebooks is that which was first applied to webpages.
No wonder as both epub and mobi is based on html, loosely speaking.

Quote:
Reflow, fluid and elastic design, etc aren't new concepts, only is new to the book publishing industry. Font design is also largely the same, regardless of print or digital. If you have the same text on a screen and on paper, why should the style of the text have any difference between the two, especially when most likely the screen is one designed to mimic paper. Yes, from a design and technical aspect, eink is meant to mimic paper.
It is not that LCD is meant to be unlike paper. It simply was the best technology that we had before e-ink. The web typography is quite different from print especially in how it uses white space. And it also lacks strict standards as every browser may display things slightly differently. That's why pdf format has gained so much popularity although it is only good for printing out. I hold no hope for unified ebook standard as there are even more variations in screen sizes and the technology itself is immature.
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Old 07-27-2011, 03:11 PM   #107
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Originally Posted by charleski View Post
This can be done in ePub. You just need to know how to use the code properly.
It was fine in ADE on computer but on Kobo everything was left aligned.
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Old 07-27-2011, 03:26 PM   #108
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Originally Posted by karunaji View Post
No wonder as both epub and mobi is based on html, loosely speaking.
And HTML was itself derived from SGML and GML, which predates the web.
Markup itself does not imply anything about features or functionality.

More relevant is that both mobi and epub are derived subsets of...what's it called? Open eBook or something? That's where similarities or differences in features would come from.
Last edited by ApK; 07-27-2011 at 03:54 PM.
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Old 07-27-2011, 03:45 PM   #109
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Not for me. The point of eInk was that it gave me a device which would last long enough to complete a transatlantic flight, which my previous device (a Palm T3) could not do. Now that tablets can do that as well, I have no need for the eInk device.
This does not change my point in the least.

The purpose of an e-Reader (hardware) and e-Book (software) is to replicate the book experience to some extent. I was responding to (what I read as) an attempt to deny this notion wholesale.

The capability of e-Readers and e-Books are different than a standard paper book, but they are an evolution from that medium. We can resize text, change fonts, hold the device so we read in either portrait or landscape modes, etc. You can also stick the e-Reader in a ziplock bag, sit in a pool, and turn pages (my favorite feature!).

But it's still based on paper books: we read sentences and paragraphs, in a specific font, sometimes with special formatting, and need to turn pages. To discuss things we love about paper books -- such as font choice -- and how they relate to electronic books is an important exercise, and does not make us "elitist" by any means.

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Old 07-27-2011, 03:52 PM   #110
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I hold no hope for unified ebook standard as there are even more variations in screen sizes and the technology itself is immature.
I'm not sure why you would say this. We are on the edge of a unified standard: there is only one hold-out! That hold-out happens to be the largest seller of e-Readers in the world, making them impossible to ignore.

I'm also not sure which technology is immature. That of e-Readers (hardware) or e-Books (software). Both can -- and will -- change with time. Web browsers and Web pages are incredibly more advanced than in the '90s, but the web in the '90s was still effective, useful and popular... and based on a unified formatting standard.

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Old 07-27-2011, 04:03 PM   #111
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karunaji View Post
No wonder as both epub and mobi is based on html, loosely speaking.



It is not that LCD is meant to be unlike paper. It simply was the best technology that we had before e-ink. The web typography is quite different from print especially in how it uses white space. And it also lacks strict standards as every browser may display things slightly differently. That's why pdf format has gained so much popularity although it is only good for printing out. I hold no hope for unified ebook standard as there are even more variations in screen sizes and the technology itself is immature.
What does screen size have to do with anything? Part of the whole point of proper ebooks is it will work on any screen size.

PDF was popular because the software to read it was free, and it was available on all systems.
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:08 PM   #112
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Originally Posted by Hellmark View Post
What does screen size have to do with anything? Part of the whole point of proper ebooks is it will work on any screen size.

PDF was popular because the software to read it was free, and it was available on all systems.
PDF also became popular because the PDF looked just like the original document. This is apparently what the folks who feel embeddable fonts is important want to preserve...the exact layout the creator intended.
And this is indeed valuable...sometimes.
But then reflowing, and adjusting fonts and lines to fit various screen sizes and various people's eyesight goes out the window.

Other times, reflowing, and giving the user more control is more important.

Maybe one day we'll have a single format and device that ideally accommodates both, but till then, I want the latter in my portable eink reader, and when I want the former, I'll look at a book. Or a PDF.

I recall Bezos saying it was not the intent of the Kindle to try to out-book the book. eInk readers are a different reading experience.

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Last edited by ApK; 07-27-2011 at 04:13 PM.
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:08 PM   #113
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Originally Posted by EatingPie View Post
I'm not sure why you would say this. We are on the edge of a unified standard: there is only one hold-out! That hold-out happens to be the largest seller of e-Readers in the world, making them impossible to ignore.

I'm also not sure which technology is immature. That of e-Readers (hardware) or e-Books (software). Both can -- and will -- change with time. Web browsers and Web pages are incredibly more advanced than in the '90s, but the web in the '90s was still effective, useful and popular... and based on a unified formatting standard.

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What about the neverend format? What happened to that?

And there seems to be a ton of ebook formats as well.
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:30 PM   #114
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Originally Posted by MrsJoseph View Post
What about the neverend format? What happened to that?

And there seems to be a ton of ebook formats as well.
This strikes me as a non-sequiter. Here's the original post I replied to:

Quote:
Originally Posted by karunaji
I hold no hope for unified ebook standard as there are even more variations in screen sizes and the technology itself is immature.
My reply (shortened):
Quote:
I'm not sure why you would say this. We are on the edge of a unified standard: there is only one hold-out! That hold-out happens to be the largest seller of e-Readers in the world, making them impossible to ignore.
There can be thousands of e-Book formats. But every major e-Reader out there supports ePUB except the Kindle. That is very close to a standard. If Amazon would get on the ePUB bandwagon, we would have a universal standard.

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Old 07-27-2011, 04:34 PM   #115
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i'm glad the harry potter stuff is over. last movie. thank goodness. now this. hopefully everybody can move on with their lives.
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:37 PM   #116
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Lack of a universal standard has not affected my reading one bit. Neither do I expect it to. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice, but I think we're a long way from one. And when it does eventually happen, I look for ePub(3) AND mobi to both be left swinging in the breeze.
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:41 PM   #117
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What will matter is that Amazon and it's customers represent 60 % of the ebook market.
Pure guesswork. Amazon is not 60% of the eBook market. Get your head out from between your legs and look at the world. Amazon is in no way 60%. Not even 50%.
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:47 PM   #118
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I haven't noticed any substantial differences so far. For example, neither Kobo, nor Kindle supports block centered text for poetry. I don't know if it is due to format or device limitations but at the end I used small left indent.

Latvian epubs usually are sold with an embedded font but only because there are many e-readers that do not support Latvian characters by default. The font is ugly and the book looks much better when converted to mobi and displayed on Kindle with its default font.

It would be nice to have a possibility to use additional fonts for highlighting in few cases but Comic Sans should be expressly forbidden in all e-readers
You totally missed the point. The point is that the HP books have multiple fonts for things like different character handwriting and the base font is different then any reader's base font. That is what I am trying to say. Now ePub can have these fonts embedded and they would display quite well on an eink reader. But Mobipocket cannot do this and it fails at giving the reader the better reading experience. All you get is plain text in one of three styles.. sans-serif, serif, and monospace. This in now way works when what's called for it the different fonts.
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:55 PM   #119
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Pure guesswork. Amazon is not 60% of the eBook market. Get your head out from between your legs and look at the world. Amazon is in no way 60%. Not even 50%.
I can see where he's getting his estimates from:
http://www.bookpublishingsoftware.co...ketshare-0511/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20035277-1.html
http://www.ghanavillage.com/showthre...stomer-Loyalty

Where are you pulling YOUR info from, exactly?
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Old 07-27-2011, 04:55 PM   #120
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PDF also became popular because the PDF looked just like the original document. This is apparently what the folks who feel embeddable fonts is important want to preserve...the exact layout the creator intended.
No. The vast majority of typographic principles apply perfectly well to reflowable systems. The fixed layout offered by PDF only really comes into play qith regard to complex designs.
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