Paperwhite Second Gen: First Impressions - Page 65

jswinden · 10-09-2013, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Are even Caecilia, Caecilia Condensed and Verdana too thin for you? Futura is actually quite fat as well, but not very readable.

I completely concur with Baskerville and Palatino being too thin to read on an e-ink screen. They look very nice, but for people with less than stellar eye-sight, they may be hard to read if not set very large.

I myself have resorted to just embedding my preferred font into the AZW3 file. That's easy, as I convert everything from EPUB, and don't use the AZW3 for anything except for reading on the Kindle.

Yes, they are all too thin. Out of the lot the only ones I like, though they are too thin, is Caecilia and Caecilia Condensed. I've got a Caecilia Heavy I put together and can embed, but that is kludge. I would greatly prefer never having to deDRM, edit in Sigil, rebuild in Kindle Previewer, then send to Kindle. Sure the process is easy to do, but it takes time, and there are issues with embedding. The major issue is that the embedded fonts will not display in Kindle for iOS. So if I modify the eBook I simply add a statement to bold everything because that does work in Kindle for iOS and I like the way Caecilia and Caecilia Condensed look when bolded. But all text being bolded makes heading blend in too well with normal text. Plus I don't like having to take the time to do it and then winding up with a Personal Document rather than a Book.

Katsunami · 10-09-2013, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Yes, they are all too thin. Out of the lot the only ones I like, though they are too thin, is Caecilia and Caecilia Condensed. I've got a Caecilia Heavy I put together and can embed, but that is kludge. I would greatly prefer never having to deDRM, edit in Sigil, rebuild in Kindle Previewer, then send to Kindle. Sure the process is easy to do, but it takes time, and there are issues with embedding. The major issue is that the embedded fonts will not display in Kindle for iOS. So if I modify the eBook I simply add a statement to bold everything because that does work in Kindle for iOS and I like the way Caecilia and Caecilia Condensed look when bolded. But all text being bolded makes heading blend in too well with normal text. Plus I don't like having to take the time to do it and then winding up with a Personal Document rather than a Book.

Hmz, ok. I can understand the time aspect. I've just bought 16 "Complete Works" compilations of Delphi Classics (they have a 25% discount), and their e-books are so fracking huge that Calibre is actually unable to convert them. ("Too many index entries. Calibre does not support creating multiple indices at this time.")

Therefore I have to split up each book in Volume I to III (or IV or V for some), using EPUBSplit, export, then fix the contents on the first over-arching contents page and fix the guide-tag in Sigil, and import the series again and then convert.

It's a similar disassembly/fixing proces as what you need to do; not difficult, but it costs quite a bit of time.

sparklemotion · 10-09-2013, 07:48 PM

Can anyone with a PW2 please tell if theirs does this. When you turn a page, does the font start off thicker for a brief second and then get thinner? My PW1 doesn't do this, but my second PW2 did.

jswinden · 10-09-2013, 07:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Can anyone with a PW2 please tell if theirs does this. When you turn a page, does the font start off thicker for a brief second and then get thinner? My PW1 doesn't do this, but my second PW2 did.

Mine doesn't do that, but I set it to refresh with every page so that might be why.

sparklemotion · 10-09-2013, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Mine doesn't do that, but I set it to refresh with every page so that might be why.

Mine was set to refresh every page too. :\ It was very weird. Someone else said theirs did it as well and I was just wondering if it was common. I haven't heard it mentioned so I'm thinking the one I had was more of a fluke.

induna · 10-09-2013, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Can anyone with a PW2 please tell if theirs does this. When you turn a page, does the font start off thicker for a brief second and then get thinner? My PW1 doesn't do this, but my second PW2 did.

No. The only time I've seen that effect is opening the vocabulary builder. During reading, with page refresh on or off, there are no anomalies. In addition, the partial page refresh bug is (mostly) fixed. The vast majority of the time there are no faded words/lines left behind on the page after closing a menu or pop-up window, although I have seen it on a couple of occasions.

sparklemotion · 10-09-2013, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by induna

No. The only time I've seen that effect is opening the vocabulary builder. During reading, with page refresh on or off, there are no anomalies. In addition, the partial page refresh bug is (mostly) fixed. The vast majority of the time there are no faded words/lines left behind on the page after closing a menu or pop-up window, although I have seen it on a couple of occasions.

Thanks for your input, induna.

It was frustrating. I think I'll try another one tomorrow and see how that one is.

jswinden · 10-09-2013, 08:13 PM

Although I was at first cold to the idea of including the Wikipedia tab in the dictionary word look up window, I've now changed my mind. I just encountered the word Gaue' [spelling from book]. When I selected it to get a definition, the dictionary tab was blank but the Wikipedia tab correctly defined it as a German term for a "region within a country". I checked and Gaue is not in either of the Oxford English dictionaries included with the PW2. I read a lot of histories about non-English areas of the world, so the Wikipedia tab will probably get more use than I thought.

Blossom · 10-09-2013, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Can anyone with a PW2 please tell if theirs does this. When you turn a page, does the font start off thicker for a brief second and then get thinner? My PW1 doesn't do this, but my second PW2 did.

This does happen on the PW1 with certain fonts. You probably never noticed because you used a custom font on the PW1.

Is it happening every page? That would be a increase in the bug on PW2.

sparklemotion · 10-09-2013, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blossom

This does happen on the PW1 with certain fonts. You probably never noticed because you used a custom font on the PW1.

Is it happening every page? That would be a increase in the bug on PW2.

Ah does it? I have never noticed it on the PW1, but on the PW2 it was quite annoying, at least one the one I noticed it on. The font would start off dark and thick for a brief second and then revert to be thinner and lighter. It was happening every page, yes.

xendula · 10-09-2013, 09:07 PM

Sparklemotion,
Neither my PW1, nor the two PW2s I have here do this. It would drive me nuts!

sparklemotion · 10-09-2013, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xendula

Sparklemotion,
Neither my PW1, nor the two PW2s I have here do this. It would drive me nuts!

That's good to know. Maybe mine was an anomaly. I just tested my PW1 with different fonts and don't see it on there at all.

Ocicat · 10-09-2013, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Yes, they are all too thin. Out of the lot the only ones I like, though they are too thin, is Caecilia and Caecilia Condensed. I've got a Caecilia Heavy I put together and can embed, but that is kludge. I would greatly prefer never having to deDRM, edit in Sigil, rebuild in Kindle Previewer, then send to Kindle. Sure the process is easy to do, but it takes time, and there are issues with embedding. The major issue is that the embedded fonts will not display in Kindle for iOS. So if I modify the eBook I simply add a statement to bold everything because that does work in Kindle for iOS and I like the way Caecilia and Caecilia Condensed look when bolded. But all text being bolded makes heading blend in too well with normal text. Plus I don't like having to take the time to do it and then winding up with a Personal Document rather than a Book.

Fonts are also too thin for me and I miss the alternate fonts hack.
On the Android app I read with Trebuchet, and I wish I had the spare time for embedded fonts.

Ocicat · 10-09-2013, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Can anyone with a PW2 please tell if theirs does this. When you turn a page, does the font start off thicker for a brief second and then get thinner? My PW1 doesn't do this, but my second PW2 did.

Not mine. First day, on Home screen with cover view, it was flashing once after displaying the screen, but after I did a restart it was fine.

On the PW1, sometimes I had the half-screen refresh, ie after a dictionary lookup.

I do not have it set to refresh at every screen.

Ocicat · 10-09-2013, 09:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Thanks xendula! The only two issues with it are the thin fonts and the dark screen in the middle. The fonts are not just a PW2 issue though, all Kindles and Kindle apps have thin fonts. I loaded an eBook I modified to turn all the text bold and font-wise it looks pretty good on the PW2. But that is a kludge way to do things. As you can see from the photo I posted in my review, the screen looks a bit dirty in the middle, or actually all over except for a narrow band around the perimeter. The best way I can describe it is to say it reminds me of a cheap paperback after you touch the page with your thumb and then you see the ink lightly smeared about making the page look dirty at that place. The issue with my PW2 is that most of the screen looks that way. Time will tell if I can read like that without eyestrain. So far so good. But the PW2 still has room for plenty of improvements related to the light, IMHO.

EDIT: BTW, the photo in my review was using normal text weight (not bolded). I think I had it set to Caecilia Condensed.

Sounds like you got one of the better ones, thank for the great review and I hope it works for you.

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10-09-2013, 07:48 PM	#963
sparklemotion dangerous when cornered Posts: 1,855 Karma: 22891237 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: USA Device: Kobo H2O, Kindle Paperwhite	Can anyone with a PW2 please tell if theirs does this. When you turn a page, does the font start off thicker for a brief second and then get thinner? My PW1 doesn't do this, but my second PW2 did.

10-09-2013, 08:13 PM	#968
jswinden Nameless Being	Although I was at first cold to the idea of including the Wikipedia tab in the dictionary word look up window, I've now changed my mind. I just encountered the word Gaue' [spelling from book]. When I selected it to get a definition, the dictionary tab was blank but the Wikipedia tab correctly defined it as a German term for a "region within a country". I checked and Gaue is not in either of the Oxford English dictionaries included with the PW2. I read a lot of histories about non-English areas of the world, so the Wikipedia tab will probably get more use than I thought.

10-09-2013, 09:07 PM	#971
xendula eBookworm Posts: 2,300 Karma: 4525746 Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: East Coast brrrrr Device: Kindle 4B/K ~ Nexus 7 ~ Kindle Paperwhite 1&2 ~ iPad Air	Sparklemotion, Neither my PW1, nor the two PW2s I have here do this. It would drive me nuts!