A Comparison of format limitations based on The Hobbit - Page 4

kovidgoyal · 04-21-2009, 10:38 PM

Any chance you could email me the deDRMed EPUB.

Faenad · 04-21-2009, 11:01 PM

It's a bit sad to see how good the Lit format looks. One would have thought that after all these years, the others formats would have looked better, not worse.

Another thing is that these pictures are from the desktop software reader. The result on each reader may differ quite a bit. It would be nice to have photo showing how the books are displayed on the devices themselves.

For example, the Lit Reader on PDA was quite bad as you were imposed very big margins for a PDA/smarphone screen.

On the other hand, the Sony Desktop software is very bad. The anti aliasing is either very bad, or not present.
Books look much better on the Sony Reader which don't have this problem. Especially if you use PRS Customizer to load your favorite font on the reader.
If you're using a computer to view Ebook, I would not recommend shopping at Sony at all. Calibre do a better job of displaying LRF books (LRX books without DRM).

Timoleon · 04-21-2009, 11:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Faenad

It's a bit sad to see how good the Lit format looks. One would have think that after all these years, the others formats would have looked better, not worse.

Another thing is that these are the desktop software reader. The result on each reader may differ quite a bit. It would be nice to have photo showing how the books are displayed on the devices themselves.

For example, the Lit Reader on PDA was quite bad as you were imposed very big margins for a PDA/smarphone screen.

On the other hand, the Sony Desktop software is quite bad. The anti aliasing is not good here. Books look much better on the Reader. Especially if you use PRS Customizer to load your favorite font on the reader.

I agree completely. The Lit files look great on the desktop, the Sony Desktop viewer is nasty, and the Sony Reader display is excellent.

Maybe that's why I always convert everything to Lit for computer display and storage, and push everything to the Reader in Lrf format. The best of both worlds.

wallcraft · 04-21-2009, 11:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Any chance you could email me the deDRMed EPUB.

I have extracted a small sample and submitted a ticket.

starrigger · 04-22-2009, 02:19 AM

I bought the .LIT version of The Hobbit from fictionwise and ran it through convertlit, then Calibre, to produce an epub and a lrf version. Both worked well. The lrf looks a little better on my 700, except that the menu-generated TOC had an odd quirk of showing all chapters twice, first just with chapter numbers, then again with titles. That was a LRF produced from the EPUB. I ran it again, this time producing the LRF from the zip. Better, in that this time the list of chapters without titles in the TOC comes after the list of chapters with titles, and is less in the way. (I suppose there's some setting I could use to prevent that from happening.) The chapter heads look better in this LRF version than in the EPUB.

Godzil · 04-22-2009, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pilotbob

The ereader problem is a Sony bug? Or were you talking about something else.

BOb

I you read in the right order, I was speaking to Amalthia who ask about the missing "justify" feature in the PRS 505/700 and this is really a "sony bug" since the DE reader version they use doesn't support justification

netseeker · 04-22-2009, 02:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Godzil

I was speaking to Amalthia who ask about the missing "justify" feature in the PRS 505/700 and this is really a "sony bug" since the DE reader version they use doesn't support justification

You are right. Lets hope for another firmware update from sony. The missing text-justification is nearly the only issue that i really dislike when reading ePubs on my Sony.

pdurrant · 04-22-2009, 03:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Godzil

Arg, WHY only the ePub version has NO justifications?

It's a shame...

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Because they did not put in text-align: justify; into the CSS. But if you've managed to strip the DRM, it's very easy to fix.

And it's good that the ePub doesn't include text-align: justify;. The ePub reader software should provide some way to override the default justification of paragraphs, while leaving alone those which have a justification specified.

It's a shame that current ePub reading software doesn't do this.

Godzil · 04-22-2009, 03:34 AM

Allow the user to everride is a good option, but justify should be the default setting! Like for paper book.

netseeker · 04-22-2009, 03:37 AM

We made an poll on this within the german sub-forum some weeks ago because we were unsure if we should include "text-align: justify" in the ePubs we are publishing here at MR. The overwhelming majority of the participants seem to prefer justificated text.

HarryT · 04-22-2009, 04:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by netseeker

We made an poll on this within the german sub-forum some weeks ago because we were unsure if we should include "text-align: justify" in the ePubs we are publishing here at MR. The overwhelming majority of the participants seem to prefer justificated text.

But please don't hard-code full justification. Give the user the choice of selecting left or full justification.

netseeker · 04-22-2009, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

But please don't hard-code full justification. Give the user the choice of selecting left or full justification.

Unfortunetely this is not possible at the moment - at least not before better (or alternate) implementations of the ADE mobile SDK will be published. At the moment we do hardcode it according to what our users prefer. We might change this later when users get the possibility to adjust the usage of justificated text within a ePub-reading-software. But i expect most (future) implementations would then ignore the hardcoded "justify" if the user made the choice not to use justificated text.

HarryT · 04-22-2009, 05:14 AM

I wasn't aware that this was the way that ADE worked. Thank you for the clarification. With MobiPocket files, the recommendation is that you don't hard-code the justification, because the reading application then lets you select either left or full justification.

SpiderMatt · 04-22-2009, 05:17 AM

It seems ePub is the best choice. A lot of people seem to have some minor gripes with each format but at least with ePub, you only have to strip the DRM and editing the book to your liking is a simple task. It looks like running the LIT file through convertLIT has the same effect, actually. The images, at least, are the same size. Can anyone attest to the formatting being the same?

IceHand · 04-22-2009, 05:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wallcraft

[…] I'm not good enough at recognizing fonts to tell if these are all using true italics or not. […]

Well, it's hard to tell with the sans-serif fonts you used in your screenshots of Mobipocket and eReader, but I know that Mobipocket uses true italics if they are available. As for the other formats: LIT and PDF (of course) use true italics, ePub and LRF do not.

It's a bit surprising that Adobe DE does not use true italics …

04-21-2009, 11:01 PM	#47
Faenad Ad astra per aspera Posts: 347 Karma: 724 Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Mexico Device: PRS-505, PRS-300 & HTC HD2	It's a bit sad to see how good the Lit format looks. One would have thought that after all these years, the others formats would have looked better, not worse. Another thing is that these pictures are from the desktop software reader. The result on each reader may differ quite a bit. It would be nice to have photo showing how the books are displayed on the devices themselves. For example, the Lit Reader on PDA was quite bad as you were imposed very big margins for a PDA/smarphone screen. On the other hand, the Sony Desktop software is very bad. The anti aliasing is either very bad, or not present. Books look much better on the Sony Reader which don't have this problem. Especially if you use PRS Customizer to load your favorite font on the reader. If you're using a computer to view Ebook, I would not recommend shopping at Sony at all. Calibre do a better job of displaying LRF books (LRX books without DRM). Last edited by Faenad; 04-21-2009 at 11:20 PM.

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04-21-2009, 10:38 PM	#46
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,360 Karma: 27182818 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Any chance you could email me the deDRMed EPUB.

04-22-2009, 02:19 AM	#50
starrigger Jeffrey A. Carver Posts: 1,355 Karma: 1107383 Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Massachusetts, USA Device: Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus, Droid phone, Nook HD+	I bought the .LIT version of The Hobbit from fictionwise and ran it through convertlit, then Calibre, to produce an epub and a lrf version. Both worked well. The lrf looks a little better on my 700, except that the menu-generated TOC had an odd quirk of showing all chapters twice, first just with chapter numbers, then again with titles. That was a LRF produced from the EPUB. I ran it again, this time producing the LRF from the zip. Better, in that this time the list of chapters without titles in the TOC comes after the list of chapters with titles, and is less in the way. (I suppose there's some setting I could use to prevent that from happening.) The chapter heads look better in this LRF version than in the EPUB.

04-22-2009, 03:34 AM	#54
Godzil a pthread?? where? where? Posts: 1,763 Karma: 30462 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Somewhere in EU Device: Newton MessagePad 2100, and only this	Allow the user to everride is a good option, but justify should be the default setting! Like for paper book.

04-22-2009, 03:37 AM	#55
netseeker sleepless reader Posts: 4,763 Karma: 615547 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Germany, near Stuttgart Device: Sony PRS-505, PB 360° & 302, nook wi-fi, Kindle 3	We made an poll on this within the german sub-forum some weeks ago because we were unsure if we should include "text-align: justify" in the ePubs we are publishing here at MR. The overwhelming majority of the participants seem to prefer justificated text.

04-22-2009, 05:14 AM	#58
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	I wasn't aware that this was the way that ADE worked. Thank you for the clarification. With MobiPocket files, the recommendation is that you don't hard-code the justification, because the reading application then lets you select either left or full justification.

04-22-2009, 05:17 AM	#59
SpiderMatt Grand Arbiter Posts: 447 Karma: 1574837 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Arizona Device: iPod Touch, Amazon Kindle, Motorola Droid	It seems ePub is the best choice. A lot of people seem to have some minor gripes with each format but at least with ePub, you only have to strip the DRM and editing the book to your liking is a simple task. It looks like running the LIT file through convertLIT has the same effect, actually. The images, at least, are the same size. Can anyone attest to the formatting being the same?