PDF is not an eBook format

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

jbjb --- you keep saying that something is possible (machine-done, perfect page composition) and asking people to prove that it's not possible --- yet you can't prove that it is possible by showing us a single implementation

No, I don't. I make no claim that it is possible. Saying that I don't accept that the claim that it is impossible is proved is not the same as claiming that it is possible.

I'm not making a claim, Ahi is. It is incumbent on the one making the claim to provide the proof.

I can't even find a grammar checker which can reliably disambiguate between the two different forms of ``present'', let alone every other such word in the English language --- and that's only a small part of the problem.

"I can't find a solution to X" != "X is non-computable".

/JB

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

and Dawnfalcon asked
>Which language is that?

English for one, see my example for ``present'' in the post just above.

And that's why having, in an ebook standard, a way of marking ambigious words with an appropriate marker so a dictionary will get the correct meaning and it'll be treated properly by the grammar engine is worthwhile.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by jbjb

I know that's a pedantic point, but non-computability is a formal thing and needs to be treated formally (i.e. with a better definition of what constitutes a solution before claiming one can't be found).

It's a point pedantic to the extent that it feels as though you are trying to turn attention away from the eminently real, easy to grasp, and practical problems brought up... for which the assumption of imminent software solutions probably seems a bit silly to a number of people in this discussion.

If that isn't your intent, I apologize for suggesting otherwise. But, to be clear, I personally will not be trying to satisfy your curiosity about the mathematical veracity of my claims. I think, other than perhaps for your perception of my level of intelligent or personal character, it is beside the point.

Will any of the issues raised be addressed by any arguments that don't rely on:

1) deciding that the stuff that's too hard for software is not important anyways.
2) offloading work that presently nobody making ePubs is doing onto the bookmaker.
3) suggesting that in some nebulous and yet unforeseeable way technology will save the day.

If so, I shall be impressed and intrigued. If not, we shall have to continue to agree to disagree.

Originally Posted by jbjb

I'm not making a claim, Ahi is. It is incumbent on the one making the claim to provide the proof.

And he definitely won't be providing any, or even wasting any time on this suggested detour.

Sorry.

- Ahi

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by ahi

I have on most occasions, whether or not I have done so in the piece I quoted, stated that I believed typography to not be machine-solvable without human-level artificial intelligence.

Again - in order to claim that you need to define "solved". Given that you accept there is no perfect layout, the answer must be that solved means a layout is produced which meets somebody's criteria of acceptability. Now, the issue is who is that somebody? I assert that, as far as I'm concerned, it's me.

The different opinions mostly come from individuals whose work and profession have nothing whatsoever to do with bookmaking. To be frank, I am not going to pretend they ought to be considered on equal footing with definitions of typography not debased by an ardent desire to only read HTML books in the future.

The market is mostly made up of people who don't work in bookmaking,and yes - their opinions are just as valuable as yours. A solution which satisfies the vast majority of these will do very well, irrespective of whether or not there are theoretical objections by "experts".

And surely you will concede that whether or not experts can agree on what is perfect hyphenation, there are objective standards in most written languages as to what is incorrect hyphenation.

Indeed, but different people will have different levels of sensitivity to minor violations of what are, essentially, arbitrary rules.

No. My actual level of expertise, which is moderate at best, however does. Much as my car-mechanic's musings of my car's road-worthiness are far more valid than my own, regardless of whether or not I am satisfied with its operation.

That's a completely false analogy, as road-worthiness is an objective measure and requires technical understanding to evaluate. Beauty, on the other hand, is in the eye of the beholder.

/JB

[ahi]

Originally Posted by jbjb

Indeed, but different people will have different levels of sensitivity to minor violations of what are, essentially, arbitrary rules.

....

Beauty, on the other hand, is in the eye of the beholder.

These two sentences of yours are basically the only parts of what you wrote I agree with. But, evidently, even these I interpret differently from you.

I don't think we'll convince each other.

So... have you read The Memoirs of Casanova before? I highly recommend it!

[WillAdams]

For an automated system to do perfect typography it would have to not

- break a paragraph so that it's so poorly spaced as to be virtually unreadable.

- break a paragraph and introduce an incorrect hyphenation point (i.e., hyphenating present w/o knowing if it's the time, or a gift / verb form)

- not typeset any stacks or rivers. Every paper which I've ever read on H&J indicates that an effort to detect and prevent stacks results in race conditions and endless loops where a break which prevents a stack is removed and then re-inserted.

``Good enough'' isn't, and only perfection should be striven for.

Of course if one allows gappy paragraphs and disallows all hyphenation, a system can set a paragraph --- the problem is, that's not a well-set paragraph, nor is it good, or even mediocre typography.

Breaking paragraphs optimally, so that they are well-spaced, all hyphenations are linguistically correct and there are no rivers, or stacks is simply not perfectly automatable at this point in time. If nothing else, it requires the existence of a grammar checker with a perfect understanding of all forms of expression including idiom --- does anyone seriously believe that that exists now or is likely to w/o major advances in artificial intelligence?

I write typesetting systems for a living ( http://www.customstoryinc.com/ ). Believe me, I've been looking for better solutions for typography for a long while now and TeX is the state of the art, but can still require a lot of manual intervention.

William

[WillAdams]

Dawnfalcon said:
>A LaTeX install is also, at a minimum, hundreds of meg in size.
>This is one of the things I'm on about - it's not suitable as a
>typological processor in a low-resource environment. Typography
>is demnstrably mostly-solveable, by brute force, but that that
>soloution is not applicable to low-power devices.

Actually, a LaTeX install can easily be done in 10s of megabytes:

http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/

For PCs there's an even more granular install set:

http://w32tex.org/

I've seen TeX installations done for pen top computers and a colleague is working on an implementation for the Apple iPhone / iPod Touch.

Moreover, an ebook reader wouldn't need a general LaTeX installation, but rather a specific one w/ a specific subset of fonts and the desired documentclass, so could easily be stripped down to the bare essentials which would be quite small --- remember TeX dates back to a time when a 25MHz 68040 w/ a 105MB HD was a professional workstation --- these days most cell phones have more processing power.

William

[DawnFalcon]

Great, and I'm sure you understand print typography very well. But pretending that ebooks have identical requirements is to be willfully blind to the realities of why people purchase ebooks, and to obscure the potential of ebooks to do things which print books litterally cannot in terms of interactivity, etc.


"Good enough'' isn't, and only perfection should be striven for."

Ahh, the MIT Method. Well, Better Is Worse typically provides quicker soloutions which solve the practical problem they set out to solve without needing to be technically correct (Yes, this is an old, old argument).


And I'd point out something there - you can make small TeX installs, and you linked me to several. A small LaTeX install? Not practically (there are a bunch of large dependencies for any practical work). Most LaTeX installs are 750+ MB for a reason.

As to a stripped down TeX install for e-readers, is there anyone actually working on such, and are they willing to submit it as a standard?

[ahi]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

Dawnfalcon said:
>A LaTeX install is also, at a minimum, hundreds of meg in size.
>This is one of the things I'm on about - it's not suitable as a
>typological processor in a low-resource environment. Typography
>is demnstrably mostly-solveable, by brute force, but that that
>soloution is not applicable to low-power devices.

Actually, a LaTeX install can easily be done in 10s of megabytes:

http://www.uoregon.edu/~koch/

For PCs there's an even more granular install set:

http://w32tex.org/

I've seen TeX installations done for pen top computers and a colleague is working on an implementation for the Apple iPhone / iPod Touch.

Moreover, an ebook reader wouldn't need a general LaTeX installation, but rather a specific one w/ a specific subset of fonts and the desired documentclass, so could easily be stripped down to the bare essentials which would be quite small --- remember TeX dates back to a time when a 25MHz 68040 w/ a 105MB HD was a professional workstation --- these days most cell phones have more processing power.

William

Hmmm... I suppose LaTeX files that include all their various .sty and whatever else dependencies would be a step up.

But even there, I personally have reservations as to why such an approach would be taken instead of multiple layouts for popular font/display size combinations, and HTML reflow for the rest. (After all, even LaTeX can't produce typographically decent documents for unrealistic font/display size combinations. If your screen is a few words wide, and less than ten lines in height... may as well leave it as unjustified free-flowing text at that point.)

- Ahi

[DawnFalcon]

Your entire argument is dependent on people sticking with a few screen sizes, Ahi. I simply don't see any chance of that in the future, and any change in screen size when you move devices screws you over, you lose your formatting.

Personally, I'd pay arround 20% of a paper book's price for a fixed-format book. For a format designed for reflow? More. Quite a bit more, because the effort will have gone into a format I can keep and use on multiple devices. Quit trying to control what I read on. "Common sizes" indeed - that's just another way of saying "Whatever a few powerful manufacturers like, screw the rest of you".

(And on tiny mobile screens, er yea...does anyone bother trying?)

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by ahi

I don't think we'll convince each other.

So, which of the following do you agree/disagree with:

• A format which satisfies the vast majority of users is of merit.
• A technically perfect layout which (to the vast majority of users) makes no difference to the reading experience is an academic exercise at best.
• Individuals are the only judge of what is acceptable to them in terms of layout - expert opinion is irrelevant in this regard.

I don't mean to sound argumentative, here - I just don't understand the approach that says that what the "experts" say is technically right is necessarily the most practical solution. It is in the nature of experts to get obsessed by the tiny details of their craft and sometimes miss the big picture. (I'm very sure I'm guilty of this in my own areas).

/JB

[ahi]

Originally Posted by jbjb

I don't mean to sound argumentative, here - I just don't understand the approach that says that what the "experts" say is technically right is necessarily the most practical solution. It is in the nature of experts to get obsessed by the tiny details of their craft and sometimes miss the big picture. (I'm very sure I'm guilty of this in my own areas).

The approach that satisfies experts can be implemented alongside with the solution to satisfy people with partly different, and largely lower expectations.

Yielding wholesale to them however means, that the expectations of what you suppose is a minority will be essentially unmeetable.

Did you check out Jellby's Casanova?

- Ahi

[WillAdams]

Dawnfalcon, both of the filesets which I pointed you to include LaTeX.

I have no problem w/ ebooks being interactive and have often argued for it --- http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/jav.../elements.html is a favourite example of mine of the possibilities.

The problem w/ accepting the quick and dirty solution is that it becomes the new standard / lowest common denominator.

The bottom line here is there will be a continuum of formats:

plain text - reflows fine, little formatting

html / epub &c. - reflows, a reasonable amount of formatting, text display rife w/ poorly spaced lines and bad breaks and disconcertingly large empty spaces at the bottom of the display in multi-screen texts.

pdf - while reflow is possible (w/ limitations as pointed out here previously by others), strength of the format is total controllability over the formatted page and the possibility of good typography

William

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by ahi

The approach that satisfies experts can be implemented alongside with the solution to satisfy people with partly different, and largely lower expectations.

But if the effort required to satisfy the experts is disproportionate, it'll never get done, and in any case would be better spent on other things.

Did you check out Jellby's Casanova?

No - should I? I've got a lot of books on my list.

/JB

[ahi]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

The bottom line here is there will be a continuum of formats:

plain text - reflows fine, little formatting

html / epub &c. - reflows, a reasonable amount of formatting, text display rife w/ poorly spaced lines and bad breaks and disconcertingly large empty spaces at the bottom of the display in multi-screen texts.

pdf - while reflow is possible (w/ limitations as pointed out here previously by others), strength of the format is total controllability over the formatted page and the possibility of good typography

William

In such a case, I see down the road a burgeoning and perpetual underground distribution of PDFs of books that the publisher's could only be bothered to release as HTML/ePub.

The other possibility I see as possible and that I personally favour (despite being firmly of the opinion that read eBooks on anything and everything that has a charger is a passing fad) is a conglomerate file-format that includes both fixed and dynamic layout versions of the book, with each maximized for the potential of its approach.

- Ahi