360 Replacement for 360?

[Justy]

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.

[Farhad]

Originally Posted by Logseman

Other not-so-fortunate folks begrudge the weird language choice by Pocketbook..

What documentation in Russian? I thought I had seen the source code commented in English on Sourceforge. besides, the code comments can easily be translated with any machine-translating application, no?

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.

Originally Posted by Logseman

And let's not get started in the new models' openness...

Why not? You seem to imply that something the openness of the PB360 upsets you.. is that the case?

[Farhad]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Comparing PB 360 and PRS-350, to me, is like comparing apples and oranges.

that's very true.

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Having said all that, anyone who says there are no fingerprints shown WHATSOEVER on the Sony screens has a different batch number than the one we bought for Mom this weekend. Both my PB and the Sony have been wiped down once already for "incidental" prints we left during the setup processes.

Ouch! The Sony cult will have a fit reading this

[Farhad]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

It didn't surprise me too much that we had the same PocketBook / Sony divide when it came to eReaders.

Yep. There is definitely something to the Sony/Mac thing. But Andoid and PB? I am not so sure. Even though I love my PB360, I am very disappointed by Android. I much prefer the (now dead) Maemo operating system. Believe it or not, I find Android very much a Mac wannabe and since hate Mac iStuff, I don't like Android either. Maybe as a phone, its ok, but as a tablet OS it sucks. I hope that in the future Android might be forked into something halfway decent with not just the kernel, but the complete stack open (which is not the case with Android at all).

Here is what I really would want: a tablet with Debian on it

Maybe one day...

[anamardoll]

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).

[Farhad]

yep. you are right, these are very different design philosophies, target audiences and readers. cheers!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

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!)

Amen.

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.

[anamardoll]

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!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

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!

More important than "Rivers" is "typographical grey".
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.

[Farhad]

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!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Farhad

Ok, now I am going to sound like a total Ubuntu-groupie

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.

Originally Posted by Farhad

... 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.

I am loading it up on my Reader.
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.

[Farhad]

@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

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Farhad

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.

You can have your cake and eat it too ;-)
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.

[paola]

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 , but how many fonts can I put on the device to make sure they can all be handled?
Thanks!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by paola

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?

On PB360 you simply put the ttf file in X:\system\fonts directory and when you disconnect the reader and open configuration screen in FBReader the fonts will be there. I expect that PB903 shouldn't be different.
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.