I'm thinking of doing a style survey

[William Campbell]

I think ebooks should have no formatting. Leave that up to the reading device, which should offer all the choices.

An ebook should be comprised of chapters, passages, paragraphs, and sentences of words, nothing more. Let the device determine fonts, justification, spacing between lines, paragraphs and passage breaks, which the reader can adjust to their desired preference. Then every book could look completely different, but for one particular reader, every book would look exactly the same. The reading experience becomes transparent, allowing the reader to better indulge in the story, not how it "looks."

My question would be--which format (as in container) are we going to use? Having all these file formats is a messy affair. What do others think? Is EPUB where all this will end up someday? Or...?

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Mel

I work at a college and often have to format documents several times with different fonts because it has to go to a variety of people with different vision problems. For some conditions a serif font increases readability and for other conditions a san serif font is optimal. The ability to choose fonts would increase accessibility.

Thank you so much for this point! I have trouble reading fonts with serif, and even some without. I find the Calibri font to be the easiest - it's sans serif and also true type so no letters run together. It seems most of the world likes to ignore those with vision problems - especially a weird one like mine where I can't read easily on a bright white page.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by William Campbell

I think ebooks should have no formatting. Leave that up to the reading device, which should offer all the choices.

An ebook should be comprised of chapters, passages, paragraphs, and sentences of words, nothing more. Let the device determine fonts, justification, spacing between lines, paragraphs and passage breaks, which the reader can adjust to their desired preference. Then every book could look completely different, but for one particular reader, every book would look exactly the same. The reading experience becomes transparent, allowing the reader to better indulge in the story, not how it "looks."

My question would be--which format (as in container) are we going to use? Having all these file formats is a messy affair. What do others think? Is EPUB where all this will end up someday? Or...?

That would be the most awesome solution, yes. And epub would be a good container for this. As you'll need some form of XML formatting (defining blocks, without inherent layout). It is actually the way I'm formatting all books I reformat. As I want to be able to make epub, mobi and PDF from the same source, I needed to formalize my content layout. Especially for the PDF generation. I have made a tool (being a developer does help) that can transform my HTML into LaTeX and by defining "LaTeX templates", I can generate my PDF exactly as I want it, without having to change my source HTML.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by William Campbell

I think ebooks should have no formatting. Leave that up to the reading device, which should offer all the choices.

An ebook should be comprised of chapters, passages, paragraphs, and sentences of words, nothing more. Let the device determine fonts, justification, spacing between lines, paragraphs and passage breaks, which the reader can adjust to their desired preference. Then every book could look completely different, but for one particular reader, every book would look exactly the same. The reading experience becomes transparent, allowing the reader to better indulge in the story, not how it "looks."

You have just described the FB2 e-book format.
On my reader the principal reading application is FBReader and this is how FBReader treats all formats it supports. It lets you to define all formating options. FBReader was originally developed to read FB2 format.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by kacir

You have just described the FB2 e-book format.
On my reader the principal reading application is FBReader and this is how FBReader treats all formats it supports. It lets you to define all formating options. FBReader was originally developed to read FB2 format.

Problem with FB2 is that most documentation is in Russian. I did look into it when I first decided I'd want more formats than simply mobipocket (aka, when I got my BeBook Mini). But I just couldn't get it to work (partly because of the fact that images are entered binary and I've no idea how to put a TOC in there...)

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by William Campbell

I think ebooks should have no formatting. Leave that up to the reading device, which should offer all the choices.

I entirely agree, but so far as I know not many (if any) ebook readers in any format offer all the choices. I hope to use part of the survey to get an idea how many people use ebook readers which have this, that, or the other capability.

If anyone knows of an ebook reader which has the capability of offering all the choices you mention do please let me know.

Regards, Alex

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, you have to start a new chapter on a new page if you want most eBooks to conform to the mobile ePub standard. If you have the entire book in one flow, it won't work with mobile ADE. So the book has to be split and in most cases, splitting at chapters works fine.

Sorry, Jon, I don't agree. One of the books I've prepared, War is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler has chapters each starting on a new page, but is all one HTML file. Granted, it's quite a small book, but it has chapters and is all one file.

I must admit that I'm not sure what you mean by mobile ADE; is this a version for cell phones or something similar? I have no idea how War is a Racket would show on a cell phone or similar device.

Regards, Alex

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing that would help is to have different photos of different layouts and then as us to pick which layout and then comment on our choice.

I'm sorry, but I think that's beyond Survey Monkeys capabilities, and I know it's beyond mine.

Regards, Alex

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Problem with FB2 is that most documentation is in Russian. I did look into it when I first decided I'd want more formats than simply mobipocket (aka, when I got my BeBook Mini). But I just couldn't get it to work (partly because of the fact that images are entered binary and I've no idea how to put a TOC in there...)

How can I help you with FB2?
I have had a brief look and it seemed to be pretty straightforward format.
An XML file with some elements that are mandatory.
I was under impression that you include images and other "binary" elements inside an FB2 file by using the same encoding as email clients use (MIME, UUE, XXE).

There are .xsl files available on the official FB2 site. You just feed appropriate .xsl file alongside an FB2 file into a parser written in Java (standard tool, from what I understood) and it does conversion for you. I am under an impression that even some XML aware browsers can use that .xsl. But I am not specialist in that field.

I can look into specific problem for you, if you are interested ...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Sorry, Jon, I don't agree. One of the books I've prepared, War is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler has chapters each starting on a new page, but is all one HTML file. Granted, it's quite a small book, but it has chapters and is all one file.

I must admit that I'm not sure what you mean by mobile ADE; is this a version for cell phones or something similar? I have no idea how War is a Racket would show on a cell phone or similar device.

Regards, Alex

If the book is small enough, then sure, it can be left in one flow with style tags to break the pages.

Mobile ADE is where you have the flows broken up into a size of no more then 300K uncompressed. (I hope I have it correct with 300K). But you cannot have a normal novel length book as one XML file and use tags to start a chapter on a different screen. That is why it's a good idea to split a book into a separate XML for each chapter. In most books, the chapter will not be too large. When you go to a new flow, you get that starting on a new screen page.

If you do not work within the mobile ADE spec, you will find on some readers that the book won't work. But if you keep to mobile ADE, the book will work on all readers using ADE.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by suzan_cassidy

Of course, not all ereaders (e.g. Kindle) allow either the publisher or the consumer to select a font. I believe that best practice for Mobipocket format is NOT to specify font type or size, and let the device/software/customer choose.

for mobi it might be true for epub it can trounle when writing non-english txt

Originally Posted by L.J. Sellers

One other possible question: Do you like italics or inset text to represent printed material (letters, news stories, etc.) in fiction?

Courier - connotation with typewriters and terminals

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

When it comes to section breaks/point of view changes, I prefer a simple visual marker on a line by itself. I normally use "~~~" centered on a line by itself with a blank line above and below because it's simple and should be able to be consistently generated in any format since the "~" character itself is plain text. It's also distinctive regardless of the spacing between the paragraphs.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'll go with whatever the author put in to indicate a section break. But I do like having the first paragraph after a section break to not be indented so we can easily tell it's the first paragraph of a new section.

Since I put a certain amount of space after every paragraph (I prefer 12 points), I normally don't indent the first line of each paragraph since it isn't needed and the section break marks clearly separate the sections.

Relating to the choice of an ebook format (the topic of discussion in this part of the thread), I'd prefer one that is essentially a flat file that can be formatted and edited with something as simple as a text editor. I do like the idea of a format that leaves most, if not all, of the display choices to the ebook reader while the format takes are of what the parts of the ebook are.

One format that is an example of this is the Palm Reader format, where the final ebook is generated from a plain text file that's basically a simplified version of HTML. Its markup language can be easily mastered and has most of the features needed for an ebook format.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

Since I put a certain amount of space after every paragraph (I prefer 12 points), I normally don't indent the first line of each paragraph since it isn't needed and the section break marks clearly separate the sections.

The problem with the way you've formatted your eBooks is that they look awful.

You start at chapter 1. You read the first paragraph. No problem there. Then you come to the space. Problem there. You are then take away from the reading to focus on a space that should not exist. So, now you get past the space and you get stuck with no indent. Is this the start of another section or is this just poor formatting? So you manage to get past the second paragraph.. wait.. we have yet another line space to take away from the book. Ok, you then have to manage to get past that to get to the third paragraph. Wait, it this a section break or is this yet again a missing indent?

See the problem? Basically, the extra spaces and lack of indents makes the book rather annoying to read. You have things added and removed that cause the eyes to not follow along the way they should. So really, add in the indents and remove the extra line spaces and the book might be readable (depends on the content after that).

[corona]

I just discovered this thread and wanted to say what a great idea your survey is, Alex, and I'm wondering where the project stands.

I think that although there are a lot of quite expert active participants here, it would probably be better to make the survey as simple as possible. The danger, I think, is that if the survey seems overly technical or asks too many questions that people can't answer because of their lack of expertise, they won't complete it.

Oh, and for me the big issues are margins and justification. In terms of the former, the categorical difference between any and not at all; with justification, the difference between full and ragged-right.

I'll add my appreciation for your taking this on -- I think it's very worthwhile! And if Survey Monkey is what works for you, then I'd say do it that way, even if some of the finer points are not thus available.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with the way you've formatted your eBooks is that they look awful.

You start at chapter 1. You read the first paragraph. No problem there. Then you come to the space. Problem there. You are then take away from the reading to focus on a space that should not exist. So, now you get past the space and you get stuck with no indent. Is this the start of another section or is this just poor formatting? So you manage to get past the second paragraph.. wait.. we have yet another line space to take away from the book. Ok, you then have to manage to get past that to get to the third paragraph. Wait, it this a section break or is this yet again a missing indent?

See the problem? Basically, the extra spaces and lack of indents makes the book rather annoying to read. You have things added and removed that cause the eyes to not follow along the way they should. So really, add in the indents and remove the extra line spaces and the book might be readable (depends on the content after that).

I haven't found a blank line after each paragraph to be much of an problem for reading since I use a visual marker on a line by itself to indicate the beginning of a new section (as mentioned before I normally use "~~~" centered on a line by itself with a blank line after it). That's a very clear visual indicator of where a new section begins. Likewise, I format different types of headings (such as chapter headings) in a way that makes them stand out from the main text while still being followed by a blank line.

I'm used to my documents being formatted that way (mainly because that was the mandatory way paragraphs had to be formatted in all documents where I used to work), and I find it very readable and not awful at all, more so than with a first-line indent. For me, the blank line provides a very clear indication of where a paragraph begins and ends, and is much clearer to me than a first-line indent.

However, its a matter of choice and there are many answers (much like if you ask which is the best font for an ebook). But with ebooks, you are able to format them any way that you choose.