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#76 |
Fanatic
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Karma: 27509
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Greater Vancouver Area, BC, Canada
Device: Nexus 7, Sony Xperia z3 tablet, Kobo Glo, Boyue T63
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Since my 360's screen just cracked, I'll be watching for the 360 Plus to show up before I order a replacement. Hopefully I'll be able to use all the same themes and config customizing on the new version.
The person from Service indicated that they might be shipping to the US soon, so my fingers are crossed that he was right. |
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#77 | |
Zealot
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Karma: 1248
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Florida
Device: N800/Nokia 5230/PB IQ701/PB 360
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Quote:
If the code is developed by Russkies, I would kinda see why the documentation would be in that language, but that's me I suppose. Why not? You seem to imply that something the openness of the PB360 upsets you.. is that the case? |
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#78 | ||
Zealot
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Karma: 1248
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Florida
Device: N800/Nokia 5230/PB IQ701/PB 360
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Quote:
Quote:
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#79 | |
Zealot
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Karma: 1248
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Florida
Device: N800/Nokia 5230/PB IQ701/PB 360
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Quote:
![]() Here is what I really would want: a tablet with Debian on it ![]() Maybe one day... |
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#80 |
Chasing Butterflies
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Karma: 5074169
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: American Southwest
Device: Uses batteries.
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I think it's more a matter of customizability and extra options.
I do think the iPhone and Android phones are very similar, which is why it was so odd to me that one would be intuitive to some but not to others. I think it's because Android apps generally have so many extra nested options - which is great for someone who wants complete control over their device and its apps, but not for someone who finds that sort of thing intimidating. With the PB, you really see the concept of the "long press" to bring up more options. Select a book, do a long press, and there suddenly you have a menu letting you decide how to open your book - FBReader? AdobeViewer? PDFViewer? FBReader180, your custom app? CoolReader? With Sony, you don't seem to have those options - you press a book and it's open. The end. For someone like me, having different reader options is a bonus; for someone who finds that sort of thing tedious to use, remember, and manage, it's a chore. (Or overwhelming!) So while I don't think the PB / Android interfaces are especially similar, I think the ability to do whatever you want with your device is (as opposed to "one right way" to do things). ![]() |
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#81 |
Zealot
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Karma: 1248
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Florida
Device: N800/Nokia 5230/PB IQ701/PB 360
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yep. you are right, these are very different design philosophies, target audiences and readers. cheers!
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#82 | |
Wizard
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Karma: 10684861
Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
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Quote:
Recently I have had an opportunity to try out several different e-ink reading devices. All were very decent machines, yet, I am *so* spoiled by the configurability of my PB360 that I am always missing something. I got used to being able to fine-tune the user interface, controls, font, line spacing, margins, justification, hyphenation and other things. It doesn't mean that I am constantly fiddling with settings. It means I have configured my device *exactly* to my taste and I am happy. Long time ago I was working in DTP field and I learned to see things that are typographically ... not good ... When I see text on a reader that is fully justified, I always cringe, because I see rivers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_%28typography%29 ), extremely un-even typographical gray, weird or, more often, non-existent hyphenation ... I have written several long rants on this topic. |
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#83 |
Chasing Butterflies
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Karma: 5074169
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: American Southwest
Device: Uses batteries.
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Love the definition of "rivers". I've seen those before and just hate them, but didn't know there was an actual term for them. Nice!
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#84 | |
Wizard
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Karma: 10684861
Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
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Quote:
You look at the page with half closed eyes, so you do not recognize text, just grey smudges and the page must look uniform. Some people hold the page at arms-length and upside down when assessing how evenly the text fills the page. There is software that can typeset a page almost as well as a trained human typographer. Adobe InDesign has elaborate algorithms, open-source TeX has even more sophisticated tests. Unfortunately an average e-book reader (a person) doesn't really care enough to warrant implementing such algorithms for e-book reading devices. Sigh ... what can you expect when there are loads of texts that aren't even proofread, or are little more than raw OCR dumps. Just have a close look at capital letter 'T' in serif font on any reader. The "arms" of the T are asymmetrical. Even Amazon Kindle 3 that boasts hand-tweaked font Caecilia has this "feature". Hand-tweaked Caecilia contains directly bitmaps for those few sizes used to display books and yet, capital 'T' is just as ugly as on all other readers regardless of rendering algorithm. Yes, I have ... aehm ... obtained ;-) Caecilia font files from Kindle 3 and I have had a look in FontForge. |
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#85 |
Zealot
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Karma: 1248
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Florida
Device: N800/Nokia 5230/PB IQ701/PB 360
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Ok, now I am going to sound like a total Ubuntu-groupie (which I kinda am, I have to admit), but one of the most important things I have found important to configure on my PB360 is the typeface; the best one I have found so far is the Ubuntu-font family. With these fonts both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets look absolutely fantastic.
![]() A joy for the eyes. Try it out. Cheers! |
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#86 | |
Wizard
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Karma: 10684861
Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
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I am not an Ubuntu groupie, I am Mint Linux groupie.
Have a look. It is basically Ubuntu, configured just the way I like my distro. Almost perfect. Quote:
And you should try Gentium. Free, supports very wide selection of codepages and looks great on PocketBook. http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/p...wnloadsGentium There is "basic" version with most often used characters, "book basic" version that looks just perfect on PB on 26 point size with 90% line spacing and there is complete version - Gentium Plus, but complete version doesn't have Italics variant. I keep returning to Gentium. |
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#87 |
Zealot
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Karma: 1248
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Florida
Device: N800/Nokia 5230/PB IQ701/PB 360
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@kacir: dear fellow 'groupie' :-)
thanks for the pointer about Gentium - I am grabbing it right now. I know Mint, of course, and if Shuttleworth and Canonical continue to rule by decree without consulting the community (Unity, Banshee cases) I will probably switch to either Mint or Debian. We shall see. Cheers and thanks! Farhad |
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#88 | |
Wizard
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Karma: 10684861
Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
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Quote:
There are several versions of Mint Linux. Main version is build on top of Ubuntu with Gnome, but there is also KDE version, XFace version, there is even PeperMint distribution for machines with limited memory. The most interesting version for you might be Mint built on top of Debian - http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1604 By the way, when I saw that Ubuntu font, I was very skeptical. I thought that the shape of 't' and 'f' letters would be too distracting when reading, but now that I have read on it for several hours I find it surprisingly good. Very balanced. *Very* nice find. |
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#89 |
Wizard
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Karma: 5843878
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: UK
Device: Pocketbook Pro 903, (beloved Pocketbook 360 RIP), Kobo Mini, Kobo Aura
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Hi had already downloaded Gentium, but it does not show on the list of fonts (PB903) - kacir, you mentioned recently that one shouldn't "overload" the 360 with too many fonts, so do you know if there is a limit? I would love to see Gentium in action, and of course now I also need Ubuntu
![]() Thanks! |
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#90 | |
Wizard
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Karma: 10684861
Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
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Quote:
It is difficult to say what is the magic number that causes reader to become unstable, but I would say that 20 user installed fonts (with four ttf files for each, representing Regular, Italics, Bold and Bold Italics) shouldn't cause any problem, and over 200 installed fonts (up to 800 files!) might cause some instability, not to mention problems when choosing from a loooong list of available fonts. Mind you, even in that case you will only see occasional spontaneous restart when visiting font configuration screen. We have had quite a few lively threads about fonts, just look up threads with keywords such as "droid", "gentium", "caecilia", "lexia dama" (a very nice, *free* caecilia lookalike (Caecilia is font used by Kindle)), "fontin", "lido stf". There are hundreds of sites out there with many, MANY, ttf and otf fonts available for download (free and legal or otherwise ;-)) Also have a look in your Windows font directory. Microsoft supplies some great fonts with MSOffice that sell for hundreds of bucks separately. Linux users can install packages containing "font" keyword and then use program called FontMatrix to view fonts and locate ttf files. |
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