future-proof Fictionwise multiformat choice ?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Superlucky

I've heard it repeatedly asserted that it's missing from ebooks, and I (and many other people) haven't noticed, so this statement is patently false. I think people who create p-books would love for it to be true, but it just isn't. I agree with Nate. It's great when a book (p or e) looks good, but if it doesn't I don't care.

It depends on what you mean by functional typography. The goal of silent typography is to maximize the readability. So if the readability is reduced by 20% compared with a paper book you will most likely not notice it if you do not know what to look for. Less readability will lead to slower reading speed since the amount of "reading" errors increases.

[rogue_ronin]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

I agree. I don't want a cover image. I want a title page like a 6th grade book report, title up top in large letters, author's name in the bottom right in smaller letters. That's it! The feedbook branding annoys me, particularly because it's a color to gray-scale transition. I don't care about a synopsis or author biography, that's what Wikipedia is for.

Inside the book, I don't want pictures unless they're presenting factual information. In a fiction book, the best picture is the one you draw in your head. Bill Watterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, never told his readers what the "wet noodle incident" was. This was an event Calvin's parents would reference when Calvin was really acting up, and would scare him. Bill never explained the incident, because it could never be as good as what the individual reader had imagined for themselves.

For a textbook, sure pictures are important. Ditto for a biography. But for a cheap fiction story? It actually detracts from the reading experience for me to deal with poorly rendered images of someone else's thoughts. I HATE the Harry Potter art because it doesn't jive with my conception of how Harry should look.

I don't want fancy chapter titles, or curlicue first letters of a sentence. That's annoying. It throws the rest of the page off, and often makes it hard to locate where the next line begins because of the stupidly exaggerated letters. Oh sure, "if done well" will be a caveat, but why even add the complexity and annoyance? Books are about transferring thoughts in written form, not to look pretty.

Part of the reason I enjoy ebooks so much is because it removes all of that excessive garbage so often found in pbooks. If only most of them weren't OCR'd...

I'm not surprised that you can't perceive the value, but I am surprised that you find it annoying. I think you're probably an outlier.

Your low standards are easy to achieve. If it were the common standard, those of us with a greater need for aesthetics would suffer.

Subtracting information that you don't want from a well-designed and edited ebook is easy enough. Adding the information is hard, but worth doing. Destruction is always easier than creation.

Paying publishers for the terrible formatting that would satisfy you is ridiculous. It becomes paying people for a license to access, which is an aristocratic permission-culture ideal.

Add value and beauty and you are worth paying. And, frankly, admiring.

The real value is in pursuit of excellence and beauty itself. We must not live to the minimal values of the accountant when we embrace our culture.

m a r

[Superlucky]

Originally Posted by rogue_ronin

Paying publishers for the terrible formatting that would satisfy you is ridiculous. It becomes paying people for a license to access, which is an aristocratic permission-culture ideal.

Add value and beauty and you are worth paying. And, frankly, admiring

I'm paying for content, period. That's not creating an aristocratic permission-culture, it's providing compensation for the time and effort it took to produce and distribute the content. Those of us who love reading (as opposed to loving books) can't grasp this obsession with what to us is essentially packaging. Yes, the packaging serves a purpose and needs to be adequate, but all the waxing poetic about the space between letters and the claim that there is no way to have a pleasant reading experience with an epub evokes nausea and eye rolls.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Superlucky

I'm paying for content, period. That's not creating an aristocratic permission-culture, it's providing compensation for the time and effort it took to produce and distribute the content. Those of us who love reading (as opposed to loving books) can't grasp this obsession with what to us is essentially packaging. Yes, the packaging serves a purpose and needs to be adequate, but all the waxing poetic about the space between letters and the claim that there is no way to have a pleasant reading experience with an epub evokes nausea and eye rolls.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by rogue_ronin

I'm not surprised that you can't perceive the value, but I am surprised that you find it annoying. I think you're probably an outlier.

Your low standards are easy to achieve. If it were the common standard, those of us with a greater need for aesthetics would suffer.

Subtracting information that you don't want from a well-designed and edited ebook is easy enough. Adding the information is hard, but worth doing. Destruction is always easier than creation.

Paying publishers for the terrible formatting that would satisfy you is ridiculous. It becomes paying people for a license to access, which is an aristocratic permission-culture ideal.

Add value and beauty and you are worth paying. And, frankly, admiring.

The real value is in pursuit of excellence and beauty itself. We must not live to the minimal values of the accountant when we embrace our culture.

m a r

Ah, but that is where people differ. I'm sure I'm not the only one, although I may be a standard deviation or two out, that does not believe it is worth paying for some of these formatting issues.

Subtracting information out? That involves me putting effort into the item, which in turn lowers the price I am willing to pay for it, because time is money. If it doesn't have the features you want, don't buy it. If it has too many crappy features that I don't want, I won't buy it either. There will be a common ground reached, although not as fast as many would wish.

It's not necessarily terrible formatting to omit images, and I'm not sure why you believe so. Hell, I didn't even know what "kerning" was until I read this forum, even after reading a few novels on a Sony eReader. It obviously didn't affect my enjoyment of the story. And the story is the most important part of a book, which many seem to forget.

As far as that accountant crack and "culture"? It kind of goes back to that old joke about a cup. Is the cup half full or half empty? To an engineer, that cup is twice as large as it needs to be. Function is always more important than form, unless you're Apple.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Sure, but you'll need to write an addon to support your changes (Which people can and did even when PDF was propriatory!). If you want to change PDF for everyone, you'll need to get involved with the ISO...

(It's been an ISO standard for over a year now)

Rats. I missed the news when it was made an ISO standard. This shows that I should really do research before I post an answer, just to make sure that my 'knowledge' is still current, but who has time?

So I'll retract what I said-if it's an ISO standard then Adobe probably won't sue me. (And I never intended to change it for everybody, just for the people who used my PDF's-but I'm rather surprised that Adobe let people get away with that when it was proprietary. Allowing people to modify & re-distribute a program/technology/whatever without specific authorization is usually a good way to lose your rights.)

[DawnFalcon]

Not when it's done by an authorised process - making an addon through a framework, etc.


rogue_ronin - Great, chase $25 ebooks. I'll stick to chasing $10 ones.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

Ah, but that is where people differ. I'm sure I'm not the only one, although I may be a standard deviation or two out, that does not believe it is worth paying for some of these formatting issues.

Subtracting information out? That involves me putting effort into the item, which in turn lowers the price I am willing to pay for it, because time is money. If it doesn't have the features you want, don't buy it. If it has too many crappy features that I don't want, I won't buy it either. There will be a common ground reached, although not as fast as many would wish.

It's not necessarily terrible formatting to omit images, and I'm not sure why you believe so. Hell, I didn't even know what "kerning" was until I read this forum, even after reading a few novels on a Sony eReader. It obviously didn't affect my enjoyment of the story. And the story is the most important part of a book, which many seem to forget.

As far as that accountant crack and "culture"? It kind of goes back to that old joke about a cup. Is the cup half full or half empty? To an engineer, that cup is twice as large as it needs to be. Function is always more important than form, unless you're Apple.

Why does someone who professes near-complete lack of knowledge about the finer points of bookmaking want to dictate how books (even if only eBooks) should be made?

Why is it that so many people on this board would find the notion ridiculous in any other field, but still fancy themselves insightful experts in how publishers should make books? Is there a reason beyond the "Gee-golly-gosh, everything is relative/everyone is different!" mantra?

- Ahi

[Superlucky]

Originally Posted by ahi

Why does someone who professes near-complete lack of knowledge about the finer points of bookmaking want to dictate how books (even if only eBooks) should be made?

We are heavy consumers of ebooks, and as such it is perfectly legitimate for us to speak to our reality. You keep telling us how terrible our experiences of reading epubs were and are, and I think it perfectly appropriate for us to dispute your claims, especially given that your claims are about our own subjective experiences, of which you are not privy.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ahi

Why does someone who professes near-complete lack of knowledge about the finer points of bookmaking want to dictate how books (even if only eBooks) should be made?

Why is it that so many people on this board would find the notion ridiculous in any other field, but still fancy themselves insightful experts in how publishers should make books? Is there a reason beyond the "Gee-golly-gosh, everything is relative/everyone is different!" mantra?

- Ahi

Well what was being discussed was aesthetics -- art moreso than usability. Everyone is open to an opinion on art. Anyone who reads is also open to an opinion on the readability of a book.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

So if I have an idea I think will improve PDF I can implement it into PDF's that I distribute? I suspect I'd have Adobe's lawyers knocking on my door if I did that.

Being able to freely *use* a format doesn't mean that it isn't proprietary.

It used to be propietary, but then about a year and a half ago, Adobe pushed to have it published as an open format by the International Organization for Standardization.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by ahi

Why does someone who professes near-complete lack of knowledge about the finer points of bookmaking want to dictate how books (even if only eBooks) should be made?

Why is it that so many people on this board would find the notion ridiculous in any other field, but still fancy themselves insightful experts in how publishers should make books? Is there a reason beyond the "Gee-golly-gosh, everything is relative/everyone is different!" mantra?

- Ahi

You appear to be misreading me. I am not trying to dictate how books, or eBooks, are made. The initial post was entirely about images within eBooks. I used kerning as an example of something that I wasn't even aware existed, and had no impact on how I've viewed books my entire life. If you like them, then consume them. I won't.

Let me state this again, if a product (in this case an eBook) does not have the features that are important to you (like kerning or full justification, or whatever) DO NOT BUY IT. Like so many of you culture warriors, I was merely expressing my frustration with what I view as a useless feature, images in books.

Am I not allowed to do that because I hold an opposing view?

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

You appear to be misreading me. I am not trying to dictate how books, or eBooks, are made. The initial post was entirely about images within eBooks. I used kerning as an example of something that I wasn't even aware existed, and had no impact on how I've viewed books my entire life. If you like them, then consume them. I won't.

Let me state this again, if a product (in this case an eBook) does not have the features that are important to you (like kerning or full justification, or whatever) DO NOT BUY IT. Like so many of you culture warriors, I was merely expressing my frustration with what I view as a useless feature, images in books.

Am I not allowed to do that because I hold an opposing view?

Give it up, Moviebird. Ahi knows everything about books and the rest of us are a bunch of Philistines who wouldn't know a good book if we saw one.

The fact that we know a good book when we READ one completely escapes him/her. Ahi has *standards*. The rest of us just like to read.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Give it up, Moviebird. Ahi knows everything about books and the rest of us are a bunch of Philistines who wouldn't know a good book if we saw one.

The fact that we know a good book when we READ one completely escapes him/her. Ahi has *standards*. The rest of us just like to read.

[Hellmark]

While I admit, if I see a badly formatted ebook, it seriously detracts from the reading experience, but most I see are on par with the average paperback.

As far as issues with limitations in epub, it mostly boils down to the reader's implimentation, as well as the publishers making shoddy copies. You can make good epubs, if you want.