Jetbook arrived

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Is a 12pt fount supposed to produce the same size glyph on a device no matter it's size and resolution?

I'm not an expert either, but as I originally said in post #10 to the (>72 pts) thread:

The desk-top publishing point is 1/72 of an inch, and so a 24pt font is therefore 1/3 of an inch high on the grid used to define the font (which is larger than all actual characters). Fonts are always eventually mapped to bitmaps, and then the number of pixels per inch come into play. If there is a mismatch between the actual number of pixels per inch on the screen and the assumed number of pixels per inch in the font bitmap, then the on-screen size will be different than expected.

So when I say a font appears to be (say) 36pt I mean that it is a bit less than 1/2 an inch high on the screen. However, when you select a 36pt font on your computer (or the Jetbook) it is typically 36pt with respect to a standard number of pixels per inch which probably does not exactly match your screen ppi.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Bob,
Well, back from my days on the High School Yearbook, I remember that font size actually had a definitive relationship to real world measurements. If I remember correctly, 36pt type was such that a capital letter would be 1" tall.

With a computer never knowing how large a monitor it is going to be connected to, this relationship has gotten fuzzy over the years. But on an ebook reader, where one knows how large the screen will be, it should be easy to scale the letters such that the pt size is connected to the actual screen size seen.

--
Bill

36pt should be 1/2" tall. There are 72 points to an inch. Screens normally have a setting that allows you determine the pixels per inch which is often 75 or 96. Pts and pixels are often equated but this need not be so. It can be very confusing and different font families seem to vary this as well. Garramond or whatever it is called seems to be smaller for the same font size. It can be very confusing.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

36pt should be 1/2" tall. There are 72 points to an inch. Screens normally have a setting that allows you determine the pixels per inch which is often 75 or 96. Pts and pixels are often equated but this need not be so. It can be very confusing and different font families seem to vary this as well. Garramond or whatever it is called seems to be smaller for the same font size. It can be very confusing.

Oh... I remember the old one used to be CPI (characters per inch). So the bigger the number the smaller the font.

BOb

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I'm not really much into typography... but I always wondered this. Is a 12pt fount supposed to produce the same size glyph on a device no matter it's size and resolution? For example, is a 12pt font on a 6inch device the same size as a 12pt font on a 20 inch monitor? Isn't there another way to specify font size, I seem to remember earlier PCs used something other than point sizes... also I think it was the inverse where the bigger the number the smaller the font.

That said, is there any device size independent way to specify a font size whether it be on screen or paper?

Thanks,
BOb

Actually, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I've always learned that fontsize expressed in .pt came from points or pixels.

This would depend on the resolution of the screen.

Wikipedia states that: "Today, the traditional point has been supplanted by the desktop publishing point (also called the PostScript point), which has been rounded to an even 72 points to the inch".

I may be totally wrong, but I think this could be true on 144DPI screens.
However the higher the DPI reaches on a screen the harder it is to read, and the smaller the letters become on screen.
(eg: the 5" 800x600 screen reader has a higher DPI (220ppi)than an 6" screen with the same resolution(166DPI). On the 5" the fonts will be considerably smaller, though not less clear, since they both have the same resolution (eg: pt 12 has 12 pixels in height on both the 5" and on the 6" screen))

CRT monitors had greater issues here, since you could literally have a dpi of over 250(by having extreme high resolutions in the likes of 2560x2048 or something absurd, on a 21" screen); but LCD screens are pretty consistant @ around 150dpi, partly because of the marketing. Laptops generally come in 14 or 15" screens 1280x800 for widescreen, 15-16 have 13?? x ??? - 17" => 1600 x 1024 resolution...etc...
Though Fujitsu recently released a high grade LCD of 1280x800 screen in a 5" display on the u2010, one of their mini laptops!, (=costly)


there's much mathemathics behind it, again I could be wrong but I think that a screen's DPI is measured by measuring the amount of pixels horizontally, and vertically and out of them the diagonal ones are calculated.

On a perfect square screen that would be eg:
SQ root of (eg: 150pix horizontal ^2 + 150 pix vertical ^2) = 212 DPI

I believe there's lots behind the scenes here I don't know. But I think pixels are pixels per inch bound. Meaning on every screen with ?144DPI? a 72pt will measure 1" in height.

Then another question might be if this holds true for both 4/3 and 16/9 resolution...
I can't tell you.. (don't know)

[bill_mchale]

Well, regardless of how tall 36 and 72 pt type should be, I find that that on the Jetbook, the 36 pt is rendered at about 1/4" for a capital letter.

Alas, I also found that the fb2 support is somewhat less that it should be. One character, I believe it is — which should be rendered as a longish dash is instead rendered as an empty box; I think the real problem is the currently supported font doesn't have that character. Easy enough to code a work around in the conversion script... but a little disappointing.

I quite like the device, but I have to say, this is not an ereader for one who is not tech savvy. Certainly if one wants to read anything new, at least until they increase their support or develop conversion tools, one needs to be prepared to do the work of converting oneself into a compatible format.

Fortunately, I am making progress on PDFs . My pages are just a little too long for the screen right now. I hope to have that figured out soon. There is a slight lag on page turns for PDFs (while there is none with fb2 and .txt files). I would say the lag is under a second.. say no worse than a page turn in eInk (and without the flash).

--
Bill

[HarryT]

Are you able to load your own fonts onto the Jetbook, Bill?

[bill_mchale]

I haven't checked that yet. I might take a look at that tonight.

What would be really nice would be a tool like they have at Manybooks.net that allows me to create PDFs the way I want them formatted. For some reason, Firefox and Safari both want to leave really large margins when I shrink the page size down to 3"x4"; I can get around it on Firefox by setting the minimum font up to 24 pt and then setting the zoom level to 50%, but it creates a page where the print is just a hair too small to be read comfortably (Jetbook actually zooms in to chop off the margins which makes the text readable, but which requires a small bit of scrolling to fit the entire page in).

--
Bill

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

Actually, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I've always learned that fontsize expressed in .pt came from points or pixels.

This would depend on the resolution of the screen.

Wikipedia states that: "Today, the traditional point has been supplanted by the desktop publishing point (also called the PostScript point), which has been rounded to an even 72 points to the inch".

I may be totally wrong, but I think this could be true on 144DPI screens.
However the higher the DPI reaches on a screen the harder it is to read, and the smaller the letters become on screen.
(eg: the 5" 800x600 screen reader has a higher DPI (220ppi)than an 6" screen with the same resolution(166DPI). On the 5" the fonts will be considerably smaller, though not less clear, since they both have the same resolution (eg: pt 12 has 12 pixels in height on both the 5" and on the 6" screen))

CRT monitors had greater issues here, since you could literally have a dpi of over 250(by having extreme high resolutions in the likes of 2560x2048 or something absurd, on a 21" screen); but LCD screens are pretty consistant @ around 150dpi, partly because of the marketing. Laptops generally come in 14 or 15" screens 1280x800 for widescreen, 15-16 have 13?? x ??? - 17" => 1600 x 1024 resolution...etc...
Though Fujitsu recently released a high grade LCD of 1280x800 screen in a 5" display on the u2010, one of their mini laptops!, (=costly)

Points at 72 per inch is much older than pixels or computers. 12 point is the standard typewriter font (Pica) and 6 lines per inch and 10 characters per inch. The points system was originally developed for printers and typesetters.

A 5" screen at 600x800 is rectangular, not square and has 200 ppi which is easy to compute using the Pythagorean theorem.

Computer screens typically have a way to adjust the ppi to correspond to points per inch. On windows you can right click on the screen and bring up properties. Then select settings and advanced to reach the number. It is usually close. Use google to search for a pixel ruler or cool ruler to download a ruler you can use.

[HarryT]

It certainly used to be the case that Windows video drivers would "lie" about their pixels per inch value, and claim to be less than they really were, so fonts would be physically larger on the computer screen than on paper. That's because one generally sits further from a computer screen than from a printed document, and 10pt text which would be comfortable to read on paper would not be comfortable on a computer screen. What you got when you asked for 10pt text on the screen would really be about 14-16pt. Printer drivers told the "truth", so when you printed your document, you'd get your requested 10pt text on paper.

[ProDigit]

With the first generation of mini notebooks and their tiny screen resolution (800x480), I figured 8pt was really about the smallest font viewable on screens.
Any smaller would result in letters being smaller than pixels can display, and letters would be rendered on the screen with some pixels half lit.

8pt was really so small, you needed to peer on the screen, but you could read everything flawlessly.
9 or 10pt makes more sense as being the smallest font type for reading books.
It might not be comfortable for everyone, but 9 or 10pt sizes could help with some layout issues that are not displaying onscreen very well with eg: 24pt.

[DDHarriman]

Hi Bill

Feedbooks (www.feedbooks.com) has an outstanding custom Pdf option that for sure will help you with your eBook formatting in this format.

Best regards,

[Kris777]

jetBook has User's setting menu that let you choose between Arial and Verdana fonts.
I like Verdana font. It is also very handy that you can rotate the screen with text and make auto turn page every 5,10,20,30...60 seconds.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by DDHarriman

Hi Bill

Feedbooks (www.feedbooks.com) has an outstanding custom Pdf option that for sure will help you with your eBook formatting in this format.

Best regards,

Yeah, I noticed that. For older books, Manybooks.net and feedbooks are the way to go. But for newer works, its nice to be able to convert from .lit files (maybe others). I suspect that ultimately part of the problem might be CSS... so I will have to look at them as well.

--
Bill

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Alas, I also found that the fb2 support is somewhat less that it should be. One character, I believe it is — which should be rendered as a longish dash is instead rendered as an empty box; I think the real problem is the currently supported font doesn't have that character. Easy enough to code a work around in the conversion script... but a little disappointing.

Just a quick update on this. I emailed Jetbook support and the advised me to download new firmware. I will let you know how it does with correcting the fb2 problem.

--
Bill

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by Kris777

jetBook has User's setting menu that let you choose between Arial and Verdana fonts.
I like Verdana font. It is also very handy that you can rotate the screen with text and make auto turn page every 5,10,20,30...60 seconds.

What do you mean, it's like automatically turning your pages?
That's maybe good for a screensaver, but don't tell me it's handy to read!
Unless you really time your reading saying after x-seconds I have to have read 50% of my page in order to make the page before it swaps...