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#256 | |||
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 25133758
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
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The publishing industry does not particularly cater to technophiles. In fact, it's pretty solidly entrenched in providing content to technophobes. And right now, the ebook industry is dominated by print publishers, who have no idea how to deal with ebooks, so they stick to print-ready PDFs as an attempt to convince everyone that an ebook is very much like a printed book--see, same fonts, same pages, same cover art; it just shows up on your screen. They shy away from utilizing the features that ebooks offer that don't exist in pbooks. They don't tag. They don't bookmark. They're sloppy with metadata--either they have a program that manages that, or they ignore it entirely. They certainly don't provide an extra page at the end with links to the publisher's/author's website and more books. Quote:
They download one, after twenty minutes of bizarre software installation and info-gathering, and they read it, and it looks odd. Then they hear you can put ebooks on your Blackberry, so they try that... but the ebook they bought doesn't work because the B'berry doesn't read .lit files. But they're diligent, so they look for another ebook that does work on their phone, and after another half-hour of weird software hassles, they have installed BeamReader and opened one of their sales proposals... And decide very quickly that ebooks are not their thing, because the type is too small and the zoom is too much hassle, and how does anyone read this stuff? Wow, those technogeeks must really like reading on a little screen. Good for them; I'll stick to paperbacks. I work in litigation support--scanning, printing & copying documents for law firms. (I'd say "for lawyers," but I never deal with lawyers; I deal with people two or three steps down from them.) Some of the Q&A I've dealt with: ME: Do you want that in TIFF or PDF format? A: Ummm... I don't know what that is. Let me check with [person]; I'll have to get back to you about that. ME: How do you want these files named? A: Oh, don't name them anything. Just scan them onto the CD. ME: What format do you want these in? A: I want searchable tiffs. ME: There are no searchable tiffs. There are tiffs with OCR text, either in a database load file, or separate text file; which would you... A: No, I want searchable tiffs, just like I got from [rival company] last time. Publishers will not go broke by underestimating people's interest in the technical aspects of ebooks. (I think I like the idea of a TeX rendering ebook reader, but agree with the people who think it's too complex and potentially too much of a resource drain to be practical. One could be created; it's not going to overtake the current ebook formats. Especially not without a do-it-yourself converter program.) |
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#257 | |
Guru
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Karma: 2003751
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Ottawa, ON
Device: Kobo Glo HD
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The size of the resulting PNG image is 38918 Bytes. Although not all pages in the publication are full of text (chapter headings, for example, leave lots of white space, which compresses better) an "average" publication will cost you: 40 KB * 500 pages = 20000 KB. How many 20 MB files fit on 2GB SD stick ($10)? The size of publication is not an issue. |
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#258 | |
Apeist
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Karma: 381090
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: The sunny part of California
Device: Generic virtual reality story-experiential device
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I am really starting to think, that an Apple tablet may usher all these things, and bring a new era for publishing. Just like the iPhone did for smart phones. If they partner with magazine/newspaper publishers, and a few booksellers (remember the iPAD survey item), and get full-color, large format content on the screen of a slim, easy to use device, then it will be all over for the Kindles and Sonys. And such a tablet will also do movies, and web, and photos, etc.. I personally like e-ink, but it's current limitations are just too numerous for mass consumption. So, how does this rant relate to PDFs? If Apple brings out a large screen tablet, all those PDFs people are used to viewing on their laptops and desktops, will also be viewable on their iPADs (or whatever.) And all this talk of .mobi and ePub will die off. |
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#259 |
Banned
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Karma: 2682
Join Date: Aug 2009
Device: N/A
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Yea, well, you're not a major book publisher or hardware device maker with millions to lose if you're wrong. I know it's been veto'd from a tool it would of been useful in at least one place I've worked over the liscence issue.
You can make assumptions about what's needed, but you've just made a dangerous assumption there - that books should be allowed to embed code. Can't you see the potential for security problems there? You have to start making huge assumptions about which parts to leave out, and you're going to force people to use specalists to get their book laid out in TeX, it's effectively asking them to code rather than script, as WISYWIG editors provide. And... I don't want the "quality" of TeX. It's aimed at the print book market, and has very little relevance to what I want in an ebook. The goals of rendering an ebook are very different. How does TeX markup reflow? Sonist - Large screens defeat the whole reason a lot of people want ebooks in the first place, because they're portable. They're not all going to be large, unless you come up with a foldable screen, and even there there are major useability issues. And a 2-hour battery life tablet is going to do away with the PRS's and Kindle's? |
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#260 | |
Apeist
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Karma: 381090
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: The sunny part of California
Device: Generic virtual reality story-experiential device
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A regular size trade paperback is 7 x 9 inches (17.8 x 22.9 cm), which is the equivalent of a diagonal screen size of 11.5 inches (29.2 cm). Which is larger, than the 9.7 inches screen of the Kindle DX. A tablet with a 10 inch screen would be likely a tad smaller than a trade paperback, and a 12 inch screen one a tad larger than a trade paperback. It is also likely, that either tablet will be thinner than an average trade paperback. So, portability will be about the same, as with a trade paperback. As to battery life, Jobs has apparently killed the previous attempts at bringing a tablet to market, at least partially because of this issue. But the new Apple MacBooks do 7 hours on video, so I'd guess that some of this tech will find its way into the rumored tablet. If battery life is within reach of iRex's products, I think an Apple tablet will be usable for most. |
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#261 |
Banned
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Device: N/A
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Um...
Very few paperbacks are that large here, they're far more typically A size (~8" diagonal) rather than "trade" size (which is 135 mm x 216mm (5.32" x 8.51") - a 10" diagonal), 7"x9" is a hardback size. Even a trade paperback is too large for the size people are looking to carry arround as a small, pocketable e-reader. The 505 is on the upper margin for it, and the 300 will sell because it's the right size. "But the new Apple MacBooks do 7 hours on video" Knowing someone with one, I will quote his take on that: "If you're watching just the right format in a letterbox format". Okay, actually it was ruder than that, but that's the gist of it. And for the iRex, you mean 6-7 hours? Well, how does that compete again? Last edited by DawnFalcon; 08-28-2009 at 09:51 PM. |
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#262 |
Wizard
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Join Date: May 2009
Device: none
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#263 | |||||||||
Wizard
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Karma: 12890
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Device: Sony PRS-505
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A do-it-yourself converter program doesn't sound too difficult to fashion using existing tools. Quote:
But more importantly what does this offer that PDF doesn't? Quote:
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Last edited by frabjous; 08-28-2009 at 11:49 PM. |
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#264 | |
Addict
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Karma: 24688
Join Date: Aug 2009
Device: Sony PRS-505, iPad
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#265 |
eReader
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Karma: 4968470
Join Date: Aug 2007
Device: Note 5; PW3; Nook HD+; ChuWi Hi12; iPad
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Disclosure: I know nothing about TeX.
However, from what various people have been saying it certainly sounds like it could be a viable way to mark-up ebooks. The big issue I see here is that the degree of typographic excellence some posters are looking for requires a fixed page layout: and that is the one thing that other posters are most opposed to. No one fixed page layout will fit every person's need or every device, so you either need sub-optimal rendering on certain devices or different files or render paths for different devices - and the former kills the idea of a universal standard file-type. Reflow is one of the single most important features for many people - removing that defeats the point. |
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#266 |
Banned
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Karma: 2682
Join Date: Aug 2009
Device: N/A
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Nope, as long as you're trying to pushn the rigidity and inflexability of print books onto e-readers, people are going to keep telling you that it's not what they want. The one-size-fits-all view is, as you note, nonsense.
frabjous - The problem is not with using TeX to create the book, it's with including a TeX rendering engine. The problem related to it being "conditional public domain", which legally is problematical (because, and only because, of the American 35-year rule. Let's not go there...). And the sort of embedding being talked about was /code/ defining additional tags. Allowing book-embedded code...yea. cmdahler - I know what TeX is. It's a markup language aimed at the print book market, especially technical books. I'd rather get away from the restrictions of print books than impose them on ebooks. Last edited by DawnFalcon; 08-29-2009 at 10:30 AM. |
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#267 | ||||
Wizard
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Karma: 12890
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Device: Sony PRS-505
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#268 |
Banned
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Device: N/A
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frabjous - "Surely the fact that they don't have to pay anyone for the software isn't going to be a turn-off for reader makers, it's going to be an attraction."
Uh. Have you never worked with a large company* on software projects, right? If you haven't, take it from me: No, they often think value is something you have to pay for. Also, legal departments are paid to be paranoid about these things, and it's a valid issue in this case. (*large enough to have non-technical managers) There also seems to be no reason why you'd need to embed TeX itself, as I've said before - it can output PDF's, which can allready be read. And there are still issues with reflow on TeX-created PDF's, which would be no different if you ran a TeX rendering engine directly. ePuB has some major advantages, which are only very partially related to the fact they're XHTML - it's a standard. It's aimed directly at a reflow text standard, and will improve over time. You don't need to make the assumptions and guesses you would with a cut-down TeX renderer. More, no, a reader page is far, far closer to a web page - it does not need to have a fixed aspect regardless of the user's wishes. The user cand and will change things like font size, and expect the text to be readable - and the text has to be readable on multiple devices, it's not laid down in a set size... |
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#269 | |
Wizard
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Karma: 4000000
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Paris
Device: Cybooks; Sony PRS-T1
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The only reason i'm considering a larger sceen reader is because of pdf. But i'll rather have the publisher use ePub and spare me the expence. |
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#270 | ||||
Wizard
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Karma: 12890
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Device: Sony PRS-505
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There is work in progress to make TeX output tagged PDF, which should partially help with the reflow. (Look at the proceedings of the latest TUG conference for evidence--there was also a session on TeX as an ebook reader there). Still, it's not entirely true that there would be no advantage to having the TeX engine on the reader itself. You can program TeX graphics e.g., to take up a certain percentage of the screen size, or alter its widow and orphan rules according to screen size, "float" tables to where they fit best, and a number of similar things that would be greatly complicated even with a reflowable PDF. Your claim that that there would be issues with reflow with the TeX engine on the reader is just false. I'm sorry, but it is. TeX has no trouble adjusting to new font sizes and new page sizes when given to it. I do this all the time. Check out the link above if you don't believe and look at the six different sized PDFs I made with LaTeX for the same book with precisely the same code. Quote:
What assumptions and guesses are you talking about? You seem to be making this stuff up. TeX is improving over time, too, as I noted in a previous message. The difference is that it has a nearly 20 year head start. Quote:
A e-ink screen is geometrically much more similar to a book page than a web site page. That was my point. Last edited by frabjous; 08-29-2009 at 11:52 AM. |
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