Best 10" and up readers?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

2 (PW2 and PW4) but unused.If I want to admire the beautiful appearance of a book, I sit down in my library and read, feel and smell a paper book with leather cover and gold cut.
With a reader I am not interested in beautiful formatting at all. I want to record the text as effectively as possible and in the flow of readings I am hampered by the unevenly long spaces caused by the justification format.
In a well-set paper book, this does not happen, the letter width is also varied, which is not possible with the fonts in an ebook.

Hi:

Well...presumably you're aware, you must be as you're so up on all this--that with hyphenation and (on KDP) enhanced typesetting, that's not happening now, right? Rivers are increasingly a thing of the past. I hate them myself, so I'm right there with you. Of course, typography/typsetting is my line of work, so it would irk the crap out of me and it does, when I still encounter it.

Hitch

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well...presumably you're aware, you must be as you're so up on all this--that with hyphenation and (on KDP) enhanced typesetting, that's not happening now, right? Rivers are increasingly a thing of the past. I hate them myself, so I'm right there with you. Of course, typography/typsetting is my line of work, so it would irk the crap out of me and it does, when I still encounter it.

I live in Austria and my library is in German. Automatic German hyphenation doesn't work very well and errors interfere with my reading flow even more.
That's why I turned it off.
I admit that left-justified doesn't look nice, but I can read it without a hitch - and if I want to see something nice, then ....
I have a very large library with about 300 m2 of shelves

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

I live in Austria and my library is in German. Automatic German hyphenation doesn't work very well and errors interfere with my reading flow even more.
That's why I turned it off.
I admit that left-justified doesn't look nice, but I can read it without a hitch - and if I want to see something nice, then ....
I have a very large library with about 300 m2 of shelves

Did you really just say that you can read it without a hitch????

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Does NeoReader respect the CSS of ePub and does NeoReader handle ePub 3?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Does NeoReader respect the CSS of ePub and does NeoReader handle ePub 3?

You know, Wolfie, if you really wuved me, you'd go buy one and find out.



Hitch

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Is that about it in general, or simply due to justified text? Are there other problems that make you want to nuke it? Or did you like it, BUT for the justified text?

(Sorry for the long-winded response.)

A big part of is that I really think that running Android on a 16 levels of grayscale eink device is a big mistake. As far as I know Android doesn't have any awareness of whether or not the display is grayscale and it may not have any awareness of how many different colors/gray levels it can display and assumes that it's at least 256 colors. The reason this is a problem is that the apps all assume it's a color display and the colors of their buttons, icons, user interface stuff is designed for that, but can fail horribly on the 16 grays eink device. Case in point, the Boox didn't come with the google apps installed; I think they have to pay google licensing fees in order to do that. So they have some relatively painless way of installing the google apps, which I did. I wanted the google play store so I could install an alternative epub reader. After you install the play store you have to do some minimal song and dance to make it work, maybe sign in with your google account. But that's when the grayscale problem hit me because google was using colors that mapped to nearly identical grayscale values for some message and I couldn't see it and assumed it was hung. I reset it several times but eventually tried turning up the brightness a lot and that allowed me to see the message and proceed. Then that introduced me to the wonderful world of horrible epub readers on android, the ones that think they're clever and use some faux paper background on all pages, or used impossible colors for eink. I could have avoided all that pain and anguish and just installed koreader, which the boox has a direct download for; it does a great job. But by that time I was so disgusted it went into a drawer and I've never taken it out again. I really think that I should be able to buy an ereader and use it out of the box without it requiring me to install some additional software just for basic functionality. And overall it had a sort of cheesy half-baked feel to it. You can sort of see that in the boox forum here where boox keeps claiming that they'll fix things or update android but it's all hot air.

Originally Posted by Hitch

--presumably, you grew up and went to school in a day and age before computers? I mean, many if not most MRers seem to be that age. What did you do about paper books? Textbooks, novels, etc.?

Hitch

Yes, 67 here. I think it's because printed books are done at a high enough resolution and/or use software that can handle fully justified text well without those ugly big spaces between words, the ones that jump out at me on an eink device. My stupid Kobo doesn't hyphenate when it's ragged right and I do notice when a big word is pushed to the next line and leaves a big space at the end of the line above but it's only a momentary thing. It's rare that I've seen a printed book where the spacing is wonky.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

You know, Wolfie, if you really wuved me, you'd go buy one and find out.



Hitch

I need a new iPad more then I need a 10.3" Reader.

If you can get Onyx to send me an Onyx Boox Note2, I'd be happy ot test it for you.

[hobnail]

What about that new 10" ereader from pocketbook? Does it support note taking? I don't know if newegg carries it but there was a recent thread about them now carrying pocketbook ereaders.

...

No mention of a stylus/pen: https://www.newegg.com/p/0VG-00FH-00004

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by hobnail

(Sorry for the long-winded response.)

A big part of is that I really think that running Android on a 16 levels of grayscale eink device is a big mistake. As far as I know Android doesn't have any awareness of whether or not the display is grayscale and it may not have any awareness of how many different colors/gray levels it can display and assumes that it's at least 256 colors. The reason this is a problem is that the apps all assume it's a color display and the colors of their buttons, icons, user interface stuff is designed for that, but can fail horribly on the 16 grays eink device. Case in point, the Boox didn't come with the google apps installed; I think they have to pay google licensing fees in order to do that. So they have some relatively painless way of installing the google apps, which I did. I wanted the google play store so I could install an alternative epub reader. After you install the play store you have to do some minimal song and dance to make it work, maybe sign in with your google account. But that's when the grayscale problem hit me because google was using colors that mapped to nearly identical grayscale values for some message and I couldn't see it and assumed it was hung. I reset it several times but eventually tried turning up the brightness a lot and that allowed me to see the message and proceed. Then that introduced me to the wonderful world of horrible epub readers on android, the ones that think they're clever and use some faux paper background on all pages, or used impossible colors for eink. I could have avoided all that pain and anguish and just installed koreader, which the boox has a direct download for; it does a great job. But by that time I was so disgusted it went into a drawer and I've never taken it out again. I really think that I should be able to buy an ereader and use it out of the box without it requiring me to install some additional software just for basic functionality. And overall it had a sort of cheesy half-baked feel to it. You can sort of see that in the boox forum here where boox keeps claiming that they'll fix things or update android but it's all hot air.

You know, it's weird. It seems to be one those love/hate things. People either really LOVE 'em or really hate 'em. You apparently hate it, but to be fair, you did kinda judge it on apps unaffiliated with it. But, I may keep looking. Yet another Unicorn hunt for me. :-)

Yes, 67 here. I think it's because printed books are done at a high enough resolution and/or use software that can handle fully justified text well without those ugly big spaces between words, the ones that jump out at me on an eink device. My stupid Kobo doesn't hyphenate when it's ragged right and I do notice when a big word is pushed to the next line and leaves a big space at the end of the line above but it's only a momentary thing. It's rare that I've seen a printed book where the spacing is wonky.

Hell, if you see a printed book like that--and today, you damn sure could, with the dreck being produced with Word and KDP--send it the hell back. That's unforgivable with the cheap tech available today (even the Affinity Publisher app is only $25.00, for crying out loud.)

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I need a new iPad more then I need a 10.3" Reader.

If you can get Onyx to send me an Onyx Boox Note2, I'd be happy ot test it for you.

Darling, if I could, I would keep it for moi. Greedy old cow that I am.

Originally Posted by hobnail

What about that new 10" ereader from pocketbook? Does it support note taking? I don't know if newegg carries it but there was a recent thread about them now carrying pocketbook ereaders.

...

No mention of a stylus/pen: https://www.newegg.com/p/0VG-00FH-00004

I'll have to review it. I'm very specifically interested in note-taking on files that I've created or downloaded myself. Otherwise, honestly, I'd just flip over my Yoga Thinkpad into tablet mode and do it that way. It's just a bit large for that. But that Inkpad X is much of a price with the Boox, so...I'll have to do a side-by-side comparison, somehow.

Thanks, lads. MR never fails. :-)

Hitch

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by hobnail

What about that new 10" ereader from pocketbook? Does it support note taking? I don't know if newegg carries it but there was a recent thread about them now carrying pocketbook ereaders.
...
No mention of a stylus/pen: https://www.newegg.com/p/0VG-00FH-00004

It is only a big ebook reader.
And I have no idea what that could be good for.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Hi:

Well...presumably you're aware, you must be as you're so up on all this--that with hyphenation and (on KDP) enhanced typesetting, that's not happening now, right? Rivers are increasingly a thing of the past. I hate them myself, so I'm right there with you. Of course, typography/typsetting is my line of work, so it would irk the crap out of me and it does, when I still encounter it.

Hitch

Actually, it *is* still happening with hyphenation and KFX (enhanced) typesetting. This is a screenshot from a book bought recently, in KFX format, downloaded directly from Amazon. This is at font size 9. I'm also attaching a screenshot of the same page set to "ragged right".

Shari

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by shalym

Actually, it *is* still happening with hyphenation and KFX (enhanced) typesetting. This is a screenshot from a book bought recently, in KFX format, downloaded directly from Amazon. This is at font size 9. I'm also attaching a screenshot of the same page set to "ragged right".

I have to read the left picture word for word, I grasp the right one with a glance.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

And I have no idea what that could be good for.

My guess is for also reading PDFs. But I'd be more likely to read them on a tablet, for the color.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

I have to read the left picture word for word, I grasp the right one with a glance.

Exactly. Just clicking the Previous and Next buttons and watching how the spacing changes demonstrates, to me, how awful fully justified is. Especially that 3rd to last sentence, "One, refuting Christianity". Ugh.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by hobnail

Exactly. Just clicking the Previous and Next buttons and watching how the spacing changes demonstrates, to me, how awful fully justified is. Especially that 3rd to last sentence, "One, refuting Christianity". Ugh.

The spacing of letters is also adjusted on well-placed paper books, which makes it easy to read justified, but on an electronic device this is horrible because only fonts and their specific width can be displayed and the adjustment can only be made by changing the space width.