Gizmodo article: How To Fix Today's Ebook readers

[ekaser]

The article is at:
http://gizmodo.com/5522341/embracing-the-digital-book

From its introduction:

The problem is much simpler: iBooks and Kindle.app are incompetent e-readers. They get in the way of the reading experience and treat digital books like poorly typeset PDFs.

We can do better. (We have to do better.)

But there's something beyond interface and design issues nagging at me: these applications are ignoring a core characteristic unique to digital text. They're ignoring the meta-data created as we move through and mark our e-books.

This essay considers two sets of questions:
1) What's wrong with our current e-readers and how do we rebuild them?
2) What meta-data do we create when engaging digital text, how can our e-readers embrace it and how does that change our relationship with books?

And in summary:

Instead, let's focus on the fundamentals. Improve e-reader typography and page balance. Integrate well considered networked (social) features. Respect the rights of the reader and then - only then - will we be in a position to further explore our new canvas.

[Teddman]

This guy is super demanding... Just read off a PC if he really thinks an e-reader needs to do all that.

And "today's e-readers" apparently consist of iBooks and Kindle for iPad?

[Ea]

Very interesting. He had good points with regards to typography.

[Dulin's Books]

which are addressed with several- want to say many but it doesnt sound right- current ebook readers. These guys all think kindle and nook and ibooks are the only game in town. want to fix ereaders? Start reviewing the ones out here that get it right already.

[SensualPoet]

Typography takes it right in the groin with current e-readers ... just as it did when "desktop publishing" demolished generations of work of type artisans. But as technology improved, so did typography return as a craft and art. The same thing will happen with e-readers. I, for one, am willing to be patient. Right now, the word is the content I am interested in, not the form it is presented in. Function is the watchword for the time being.

[Worldwalker]

When I read a book, I want to curl up and lose myself in the book. I don't want to carry on some sort of ersatz communication with 10,000 random strangers. Nor do I want to be influenced by what 10,000 weenies think is the "important" part of the book -- I'm smart enough to figure that out for myself. I don't want to watch embedded video, I don't want to be distracted by surfing off to read further information, I don't want audio commentary on it, I don't want author interviews. I don't want any of that. I just want to Read. My. Book.

My Sony PRS-505 does that very well. It puts text on the screen. In fact, that's true of just about every other reader out there. The way the text is put on the screen can be improved, and so can the amount of screen available to put text on, but that's a matter of making a better ebook reader, not a device to facilitate access to some lame parody of a social networking website with some book as its supposed theme.

Has this generation gotten so far away from the core concept of reading (or, for that matter, of doing anything as an individual instead part of a swarm?) that they can't even just sit down and read a book?

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

Start reviewing the ones out here that get it
right already.

Helooooo! Gizmodo.

Seriously, you can't fix them, stop trying ><

[charleski]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

which are addressed with several- want to say many but it doesnt sound right- current ebook readers. These guys all think kindle and nook and ibooks are the only game in town. want to fix ereaders? Start reviewing the ones out here that get it right already.

Unfortunately none of them do. The only reader to offer hyphenation (FBReader) also fails to follow important parts of the spec. There certainly is a hole in the market waiting to be filled, and Apple's lamentable iBooks has only made that even more obvious.

While I'm not that interested in seeing what passages were read by Joe Bloggs of Bugtussle, there is an argument to be made for providing an outward-facing data-structure to expose markup that the user has made in a book, though this is as much a standards issue as anything else. We're starting to see truly useful management and collaboration systems emerge for PDFs (see Mendeley for instance) as a result of the more advanced state of the PDF spec.

[stargazertony]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

When I read a book, I want to curl up and lose myself in the book. I don't want to carry on some sort of ersatz communication with 10,000 random strangers. Nor do I want to be influenced by what 10,000 weenies think is the "important" part of the book -- I'm smart enough to figure that out for myself. I don't want to watch embedded video, I don't want to be distracted by surfing off to read further information, I don't want audio commentary on it, I don't want author interviews. I don't want any of that. I just want to Read. My. Book.
...
Has this generation gotten so far away from the core concept of reading (or, for that matter, of doing anything as an individual instead part of a swarm?) that they can't even just sit down and read a book?

Amen to this. I like the idea of a dedicated e reader. I have other electronic equipment if I wanted to be assaulted by other annoying, unwanted stuff. Think it's more that this generation that has gotten away from recreational reading. There are lots of people around that resent that there are readers out there who just want to read and are trying to stop it.

[kennyc]

He's one of those typography is everything idiots.

He should stick with paper.

[Mickey330]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

... [snipped a most excellent and concise paragraph from post #6 above to save space] ... I just want to Read. My. Book.

Exactly, Worldwalker ... exactly!

Marilyn

[BillSmithBooks]

I think a couple of comments earlier nailed the fundamental disconnect between reading and the Web.

When you read a book, you want an immersive and by its very nature solitary experience.

I don't want the equivalent of Facebook chatter and Farmville spam being battered away at me while I am reading a book...I don't want a Twit feed while reading.

There are two modes of using the web: community (interactive) and grazing (consuming) -- a lot of web-oriented folks assume that making something more of an "interactive community" experience automatically makes it better (because it improves stickiness to the community and in turn gives the owner of that community more opportunities to sell you things).

With books, interactiveness actually harms the product.

Multimedia stories with integrated interactivity could well turn out to be the amazingly cool medium of the 21st century...but they are not books.

Book communities, where people can chat about ideas, etc. are a great addition to the book experience for those who want them...but I feel the push to integrate them directly into the reading experience is really making it needlessly far. The same benefit can be accomplished with simple message boards, etc. that can be accessed by an ordinary web browser.

[Logseman]

Multimedia stories with integrated interactivity could well turn out to be the amazingly cool medium of the 21st century...but they are not books.

Indeed, they're videogames. Usually MMORPG's.

[nolaviz]

Yeah, I've already seen the trolls above dissing typography. I don't care.

I do own an ebook reader (Hanlin V5), as well as reading on a PC (FBReader and Calibre), and I'm hugely disappointed in the quality of their typesetting. I know, it's considered a quirk now, but I do care about how the text looks.

This is extremely annoying to me, as 1982-era computers (when one MIPS was "wow") could already run the TeX formatting algorithms--and these produce vastly better results than the crappy text we see now.

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by kennyc

He's one of those typography is everything idiots.

He should stick with paper.

Yep.

I wouldn't call them idiots though, as I can respect people with different opinions.

But personally, I couldn't give a crap less about typography. As long as it's a standard font, and there aren't major formatting errors (lack of paragraphs etc.) I couldn't care less what font it is, whether it's justified or right aligned etc. etc. etc.

Text is text to me for the most part.