Alexa coming to Kindle e-readers?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You keep saying I have no idea what I am talking about. But I do. You just don't know I do.

You hide it well.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I read the article that Goodereader used as the source for their speculation and to me it sounds more like a denial of any plans for Alexa coming to Kindle.

that is my take on it, yes.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by knc1

And keeping in mind that the above was written by a non-owner of Kindles.
So you need to factor in the lack of practical experience on the part of that poster.

They are lacking.And it's pretty limiting. I feel the choices on my PW3 are incredible woeful. The only font and font size I could tolerate was Caecilia Condensed at the smallest size. Everything else I felt was too big. And even Caecilia Condesed is bigger than I'd like at the smallest. They added two new fonts since I bought it, Bookerly and Ember, both again too big even on the smallest setting.

But hey, I have that main bar Goodreads button I have no intention using ever...

[Waitingforatrain]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

that is my take on it, yes.

I suppose it could be taken that way. I still have an old Kindle keyboard that integrated audio. Amazon is all about Alexa right now so it shouldn't be too farfetched that they would do some kind of implementation on a future Kindle eink reader.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[knc1]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

They are lacking.And it's pretty limiting. I feel the choices on my PW3 are incredible woeful. The only font and font size I could tolerate was Caecilia Condensed at the smallest size. Everything else I felt was too big. And even Caecilia Condesed is bigger than I'd like at the smallest. They added two new fonts since I bought it, Bookerly and Ember, both again too big even on the smallest setting.

But hey, I have that main bar Goodreads button I have no intention using ever...

Have you tried using the FONT_RAMP feature?
It is an undocumented feature of the touch screen Kindles, does not require a jail break, it is an Amazon provided feature.

What it is, is a simple file put in the topmost of visible USB storage that scales the font settings per user's choice.

I don't have the link handy - but it is discussed in the Developer's Corner sub-form here.
Discussion includes a number of worked examples contributed by users.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by knc1

Have you tried using the FONT_RAMP feature?
It is an undocumented feature of the touch screen Kindles, does not require a jail break, it is an Amazon provided feature.

What it is, is a simple file put in the topmost of visible USB storage that scales the font settings per user's choice.

I don't have the link handy - but it is discussed in the Developer's Corner sub-form here.
Discussion includes a number of worked examples contributed by users.

Nope, don't really care at this point because I have no plans to read english on the PW3 again.

They should provide decent font sizes without messing about in cryptic undocumented files to begin with.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Nope, don't really care at this point because I have no plans to read english on the PW3 again.

They should provide decent font sizes without messing about in cryptic undocumented files to begin with.

It is not language specific, it will work with any language's font.
Even Klingon.

And you should not be concerned about getting too deep into the file, it is only one line with 8 numbers separated by commas.

Only undocumented by Amazon in the "User's Guide" -
They did documented internally.
And we documented it in public.

But since you have already decided that the grapes are sour . . . .

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by knc1

It is not language specific, it will work with any language's font.
Even Klingon.

And you should not be concerned about getting too deep into the file, it is only one line with 8 numbers separated by commas.

Only undocumented by Amazon in the "User's Guide" -
They did documented internally.
And we documented it in public.

But since you have already decided that the grapes are sour . . . .

I don't mind the font size of CJK fonts on the PW3 and I don't read any other latin character based languages besides english so I have no real need to adjust the font anymore.

Unexplained numbers are still cryptic.If Amazon did not document it, it is an undocumented feature. It doesn't matter if a 3rd party documents it later. And of course Amazon documented it interally. I can't imagine their developers are that bad.

Frankly it's a core feature of a single purpose device, it should be good out of the box. And yea, the grapes are a little sour, because it's terrible and was from day one.

If they fix it and offer a better selection of readers I might go back but right now there's no real point even with haxies that could break at any time should Amazon desire.

[John Hopper]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

As to the really well part, Amazon could do a lot better. And I mean by giving people more choices in how they want to see the eBooks presented. More margin choices, more line hight choices, more font choices, and more font size choices.

For me those features are nice to haves rather than essentials. I also own a Kobo H2O with these features and while it was good to experiment with loading different fonts and narrowing margins, etc., when it comes to the solid experience of actually reading rather than fiddling, the Kindle always comes out on top for me. For example, notes and highlights and dictionary support are more important for me than loads of different fonts, and the Kindle is much better at all of that in my experience.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Waitingforatrain

I suppose it could be taken that way. I still have an old Kindle keyboard that integrated audio. Amazon is all about Alexa right now so it shouldn't be too farfetched that they would do some kind of implementation on a future Kindle eink reader.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Yes, but -

What we ar discussing here is whether Amazon teased the matchup in the interview. That did not happen.

[vrf]

Originally Posted by John Hopper

while it was good to experiment with loading different fonts and narrowing margins, etc., when it comes to the solid experience of actually reading rather than fiddling, the Kindle always comes out on top for me.

Yeah, I'm not saying I wouldn't appreciate more fonts and hyphenation, but the speedy, bug-free reading on Kindle wins me every time. I know Kobo's firmware has been gradually fixing the issues, but I just want fast page turns and absolute reliability.

And Caecilia Condensed is actually my favorite font on Kindle. I don't really want anything more.

[AcidWeb]

I'll take "Useless features" for 500, Alex.

[JSWolf]

I have an H2O and I find reading to be just fine. I read ePub and the speed is good. Plus, I get kerning with variable spaces, ligatures, and hyphenation all without needing a different format.

[John Hopper]

Originally Posted by vrf

Yeah, I'm not saying I wouldn't appreciate more fonts and hyphenation, but the speedy, bug-free reading on Kindle wins me every time. I know Kobo's firmware has been gradually fixing the issues, but I just want fast page turns and absolute reliability.

And Caecilia Condensed is actually my favorite font on Kindle. I don't really want anything more.

I love Caecilia Condensed for classic novels as it a more archaic feel for me; for more modern ones I usually use Palatino or Bookerly.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[Tarana]

Currently, you use your Kindle Basic (as an example) and connect it via BlueTooth to listen to your ebook text-to-speech. You can do this with your Fire Tablet as well. The feature that they want to add is that you can call up the ebook without your ereader/tablet and have it play text-to-speech.

It isn't really going to help most people with more than a few books. Using Audible, if you can't call up the EXACT title of the book,you have to go to your tablet or computer and look it up. You can't have it read book 8 of a series. You can't get a list of the books by a single author. So, you really can't get this feature to work well even with Audible without constant referral to tablet or computer. Can't see how this would improve with the ebook library. On the other hand, if you are seriously visually impaired, it would be a huge boon provided the visually impaired person can access the titles in some way (most legally blind people can read a little).

As to fonts, I'm a big one to complain about the font sizes. They have ever so many fonts for SMALL fonts, but for those of use who need larger fonts, we go from large to giant with nothing in between. Very annoying.