The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Anything that does text markup as opposed to page layout.

I really wish this will someday be taken to heart.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

And earlier still TVs were 5:4. There are some TVs wider than 16:9. But it's a stupid aspect ratio, especially on laptops & tablets. The 1600 x 1200 (4:3) laptops better than 1920 x 1080 (16:9), unless you mostly watch video for TV (cinema can be any aspect).
Also 16:9 (AKA WS) for TVs predates LCD, HD and Digital. Though WS without big HD screens was stupid.

I did say the days when most TVs were 4x3. I owned a NTSC Toshiba CRT TV that was 16x9 format. It was handy watching DVDs but most programming was pillarboxed.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Word or LibreOffice are good for creating the source text. But, you HAVE to use styles instead of highlight the text and hit a button on the toolbar.

I use LibreOffice and do use styles, although I sometimes will do direct formatting when it is something that is a one-off in a document. I used to dislike styles when I was using MS-Word but I've grown to like them when I started using OfficeOffice.org (continued with LibreOffice) due to the control it gives me over my documents and the ability to easily make consistent document-wide changes.

Although it takes a few minutes at the beginning it saves a great amount of time in the long run. It also allows for consistent formatting, and also makes it easy to change the formatting document-wide if desired.

As an example, I normally put a blank line between my paragraphs with no first-line indent because it's easier for me to read and it's what I'm used to, and I can also make small adjustments in the space after each paragraph (10 points instead of 12 points). However, if I decide to change it to first-line indents with no blank lines between the paragraphs all it takes is making two adjustments in the Body Text Style (0 points after each paragraph, indent the first line of each paragraph 0.5 inches).

I'm sure this can be done in MS-Word, but with LibreOffice when I set the size of the page to the same as my Nook Glowlight 4 when I'm in Normal View I can see precisely what the ebook will look like on my ereader when I save it as a PDF. Using Styles I can make sure that all of my self-created ebooks look the same on my ereader, and correct any formatting issues (such as a badly split paragraph between pages).

One thing I'm looking into is page styles to see if I can set up a page style in a templet that will automatically apply to all documents attached to that template (when I open up a document it will automatically update to reflect the formatting changes in the template). Then all I'd have to do is change the page size for my new ereader in the template and all of the ebooks attached to that templet will automatically update rather than having to do each ebook individually.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by ratinox

4:3 broadcast TV is a formal standard. Actually it's several related formal standards: NTSC, PAL and SECAM. 16:9 became a formal standard with HDTV specifications.

IIRC, the reason 4:3 was established as the standard for early television is because it matched the same aspect ratio used at movie theaters. Then to compete with television, theaters started using wider screens (I could be wrong but the widest one was 2.35:1). This lead to problems when showing movies on TV (I remember seeing the movie Beach Party where one of the credits showed "Annette Funicello" as "nette Funice").

Benny Hill did a sketch that illustrated how wrong this can go when the technician is not paying attention when doing pan & scan for a movie that is in widescreen (such as a fight where you don't see the actual fight because it is in the part of the frame that has been cropped out). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the sketch on YouTube.

[DNSB]

I seem to remember seeing some films in Ultra Panavision 70 which used a 2.76:1 aspect ratio.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I use LibreOffice and do use styles, although I sometimes will do direct formatting when it is something that is a one-off in a document. I used to dislike styles when I was using MS-Word but I've grown to like them when I started using OfficeOffice.org (continued with LibreOffice) due to the control it gives me over my documents and the ability to easily make consistent document-wide changes.

Although it takes a few minutes at the beginning it saves a great amount of time in the long run. It also allows for consistent formatting, and also makes it easy to change the formatting document-wide if desired.

As an example, I normally put a blank line between my paragraphs with no first-line indent because it's easier for me to read and it's what I'm used to, and I can also make small adjustments in the space after each paragraph (10 points instead of 12 points). However, if I decide to change it to first-line indents with no blank lines between the paragraphs all it takes is making two adjustments in the Body Text Style (0 points after each paragraph, indent the first line of each paragraph 0.5 inches).

I'm sure this can be done in MS-Word, but with LibreOffice when I set the size of the page to the same as my Nook Glowlight 4 when I'm in Normal View I can see precisely what the ebook will look like on my ereader when I save it as a PDF. Using Styles I can make sure that all of my self-created ebooks look the same on my ereader, and correct any formatting issues (such as a badly split paragraph between pages).

One thing I'm looking into is page styles to see if I can set up a page style in a templet that will automatically apply to all documents attached to that template (when I open up a document it will automatically update to reflect the formatting changes in the template). Then all I'd have to do is change the page size for my new ereader in the template and all of the ebooks attached to that templet will automatically update rather than having to do each ebook individually.

Forget page sizes. Your ePub will be reflowable and it won't matter the screen size.

As for the minor one-off, forget it when writing/editing for an eBook. The one-off should be a style.

[DNSB]

But sadly with a reflowable ePub, it's harder to do fixed objects and page layouts. For use on an ereader, most FLO ePubs are just as much of a pain to read as a PDF and without the minor grace of being relatively easy to generate.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

But sadly with a reflowable ePub, it's harder to do fixed objects and page layouts. For use on an ereader, most FLO ePubs are just as much of a pain to read as a PDF and without the minor grace of being relatively easy to generate.

True that.

There is no way to make a PDF that works on a Readers. When making a PDF. It's best to size the PDF for the screen being used and set the text to a size that's comfortable to read.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

IIRC, the reason 4:3 was established as the standard for early television is because it matched the same aspect ratio used at movie theaters.

Mostly. 1.33:1 and 1.375:1 were the earliest de-facto standards for film stock. The former being 35mm silent films and the latter being a slightly wider version of 35mm stock to accommodate the optical audio track because nobody liked 1:17:1. There were other aspect ratios and frame sizes but these two were the most common until the 1950s.

Interestingly enough, the 1.78:1 aspect ratio of HDTV has never corresponded to any standard film format. Any theatrical film released in this format was cropped from larger frames (film or digital). With digital cinematography the norm now, almost everything is shot "overscan" and cropped to the desired aspect ratio.

But you're not wrong about bad pan and scan conversions. The most egregious for me is the original VHS release of "Ghostbusters" when the trio are in the elevator (the "Switch me on" scene). The cropping shows only two of them: the switched on proton pack and its wearer are almost entirely off screen. That scene convinced me that I'd rather have letter boxed video than bad cropping.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I seem to remember seeing some films in Ultra Panavision 70 which used a 2.76:1 aspect ratio.

Ben Hur most notably among around a dozen or so. Super Panavision 70 was much more common. Only reason I know this is from one of the commentary tracks for TRON where director Steven Lisberger (IIRC) quips that the cameras they had were the same ones used for Lawrence of Arabia -- and they had to clean out the sand.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Forget page sizes. Your ePub will be reflowable and it won't matter the screen size.

As for the minor one-off, forget it when writing/editing for an eBook. The one-off should be a style.

Although there are reflowable PDFs, the ones I generate aren't. When I'm talking about a one-off, I thinking of making a single word bold and it's the only thing that is bold in my entire ebook. To me its not worth the effort to go through the process of making a style. If it is used throughout the book then I would create a character style for it.

[Solitaire1]

ratinox wrote the following as part of a post:

Originally Posted by ratinox

But you're not wrong about bad pan and scan conversions. The most egregious for me is the original VHS release of "Ghostbusters" when the trio are in the elevator (the "Switch me on" scene). The cropping shows only two of them: the switched on proton pack and its wearer are almost entirely off screen. That scene convinced me that I'd rather have letter boxed video than bad cropping.

There are a lot of bad pan-and-scan issues. As an example, there's a scene in one of my favorite movies, Doctor Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. What we see in the pan-and-scan version is a character walks off the screen, then another character walks into a door and knocks himself out. The scene as presented made no sense. When I finally saw it in widescreen, the first character walks through the door like it wasn't there, and the other character runs into the door.

Added to that are the films of Robert Altman. In his movies it is not unusual for him to have several separate scenes running at the same time, but when they are panned and scanned some of the scenes are cut off. An example of this is in the movie Popeye, where there's a scene with the characters on a large boat. All over the boat there are many things happening at the same time but much of it is cut off in pan-and-scan. To me, he is one of those directors who work must be seen in widescreen to the point that if you've only seen his movie in pan-and-scan you haven't actually seen the movie.

That's why I was a big proponent of laserdisc. Due to its resolution it could show movies in widescreen. With VHS the resolution was so low that if they letterboxed a movie it became difficult to make out what was going on. I saw the movie "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" on VHS in letterbox and it was so fuzzy that I couldn't make what was going on. The image was about a quarter of the total screen space, with large blank space at the top and bottom.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

That's why I was a big proponent of laserdisc.

LaserDisc, S-Video out, Trinitron TV.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

True that.

There is no way to make a PDF that works on a Readers. When making a PDF. It's best to size the PDF for the screen being used and set the text to a size that's comfortable to read.

That's what I do when I make PDF files for my ereader. It works very well.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

IIRC, the reason 4:3 was established as the standard for early television is because it matched the same aspect ratio used at movie theaters.

Academy ratio. Which is nearly 4:3 (1.333). It's 1.375:1 since 1932.
However loads of cinema was not in Academy ratio even before 1935 TV (5:4 in UK) or 1950s (4:3) TV.

Widescreen in various formats existed before the 1950s, even in 1930s.

It's true than in the USA (not UK) that the advent of color TV in 1952 in USA accelerated changing to colour and also Widescreen (various methods). There wasn't Colour TV in UK till 1967 and few had it before 1970.