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#31 | |||
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The current ebook formats are a bit limited and that's intentional. Mobipocket is especially limited since it uses a subset of what is today a rather primitive version of HTML. The Peanut Press/eReader format, although very different in markup, is similarly limited. Both formats are more than 10 years old, too, and were developed for devices where you had one font with maybe a few sizes. I was actually quite shocked when I found out that Amazon uses Mobipocket as the ebook format for the Kindle. EPUB will hopefully allow more fine-grained control over a book's layout, but it will still be constrained by being a reflowable format which means it will still not be suitable for certain content. Quote:
In a few years maybe this will be less of an issue and we can both have our ways with ebooks. I don't know much about the publishing industry, but I'm sure it would help a lot if the electronic version was a bit more coordinated with the print version. If a publisher would distill the LaTeX or PostScript file that is used for the print copy directly to an EPUB file, it would help the major issues you mentioned with line spacing and such and give output that is more closely matched to the printed version. I imagine that currently the original manuscript is used for the electronic version by many publishers rather than the print-formatted version, which means major formatting differences will be an inherent problem. This means Amazon will have to adopt EPUB, too. |
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#32 | |
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Netseeker, I understand, perhaps I should have worded my previous post differently, but I meant when it affects the reading experience, in the instances I've posted picture of above. No book is supposed to look like the examples I've shown. |
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#33 | |
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Many, if not most of those didn't have an electronic form to start with. Amazon makes them by having an outsourced operation scan and OCR a paper copy. The result is what they publish as a Kindle book. OCR is never perfect and errors will be present, but to my knowledge, editing and proofreading are not done. They just feed the result to whatever program generates the Mobi files, and that's what they issue. (MobiPocket had a beta command line version of MobiPocket creator for Linux at one point, and I suspect that or a derivative called in a script does the book construction.) The results are what you might expect: leaving a lot to be desired. But in fairness, Amazon is not the only offender. I've heard screams of outrage about other vendor's works, where there is an electronic file to start with and less excuse for poor formatting. It is a problem, and will only really be addressed by lots of buyers saying "This is unacceprtable. I want my money back." ______ Dennis |
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#34 |
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I'm with you on OCR and other typos. But the spacing/indenting is, for me, part of the design of a book that the author may want to control. Some want their books to be "lighter" to look at, others want it condensed - this is not something I, as a publisher, would accept as a complaint.
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#35 | |
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@ Donovan, I don't see how you could say you don't want the ebook to match the print version, when most ebook versions DO match the print version.... when these errors are not present, there is nothing to complain about (I have never heard anyone complain that there ISN'T a huge gap between each and every paragraph of a story), but it is only when they are present do people start talking about differing layout decisions and unrealistic expectations. Last edited by Anarel; 01-02-2010 at 08:06 PM. |
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#36 | ||||
New York Editor
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Aside from long battery life and ease on the eyes during extended reading, the other advantage to current dedicated readers is portability. They are relatively small and light, and can be tossed into a (large) pocket, purse, briefcase or shoulder bag when traveling. Get a screen that large, and portability drops. And for a fair number of source texts, even a 14" screen will require side scrolling to view the pages. No thanks. That's painful. If it needs that, I'm not going to try to view it on a reader. And yes on the higher res. I have some photography volumes that are B&W photos, but use 300 line screens for halftone reproduction, and need to. The 72dpi resolution common for a lot of electronic devices would simply not be adequate to properly display the source material. I can see a screen with eInk's ease of reading becoming popular as a display for systems you don't carry around. (Some folks may remember older "paper white" monitors offered for computer systems.) I wouldn't mind such a thing for design work, if it supported color and was large enough to display side-by side 8.5x11 pages in actual size. But whatever it was, I don't think it would be eInk - as I understand the technology, the sort of color support I'd want is unlikely, and I'd need a faster refresh rate than I think is possible with eInk as well.) Quote:
I think we'll see limitations imposed by the device for the foreseeable future, and while ePub is more capable than Mobipocket, the best we are likely to see is graceful degradation, with the device rendering the stuff it [i]can[i] support and ignoring the rest, like automatic gray scale dithering of color images and font substitution making the best available match for what the document uses from what the device has installed. Quote:
Most stuff I read on my Palm device is in Plucker format, which permits greater contraol, as Plucker can use it's own custom fonts, and various choices can be specific to the document, rather than global for everything. (I have some computer volumes where standard text is in a proportional font, but code samples are in a monospaced font for readability.) Quote:
What the publishers all do is typesetting and markup in Adobe InDesign. The output from InDesign is a PDF file the printer feeds to an imagesetter to generate the plates the book will be printed from. In a large bit of irony, Adobe was the principal force behind ePub as the recommended standard ebook format in the IDPF, but while InDesign can output ePub, it does so badly. Recent point releases of InDesign have added better ePub support, and I'm cautiously hopeful that InDesign CS5 will have ePub highly enough developed to allow my dream: ebook production as a normal part of the publisher's workflow. Typeset and markup the manuscript, Save As PDF for the printer, and Save As ePub for ebooks. ePub has all of the required data and metadata, so if you need an ebook in a format other than ePub, that can be a scripted conversion from the ePub source files. ______ Dennis |
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#37 |
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I wasn't implying that YOU don't Know the difference, but that such à Button would probably Be severely misused.
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#38 |
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Bad formatting is irritating. It's especially prevalent in topaz books which are, I understand, scanned from physical copies. I've stopped buying topaz books completely even though there are a number I really wanted as ebooks. Now, I download a preview of every book I intend to purchase just to make sure it's not in topaz.
Mobipocket (azw) books tend to be better but frequently suffer from too much white space between paragraphs. This is quite irritating, especially in books that have extensive dialogues. If the book is DRM-free this can be readily fixed in calibre by replacing multiple blank lines with just a single one. Alas, most Amazon books are DRMed. Perhaps the recently available DRM filter for books imported to calibre might be helpful. I've also noted that some publishers don't even bother to spell check text before converting it to an ebook. I'd love to be able to correct the text as I read but currently this is not possible. What can be done? Leaning on Amazon won't do much in the short run though the message will eventually get through to the publisher. The excess white space problem should be controllable with better Kindle software that would give the user more control over display formats. A limited Kindle editing capability would help those few of us who are annoyed by poor spelling and poor formatting. Refusing to buy topaz-formatted books and pressing Amazon for a better format such as epub will help readers as well as Amazon and the publishers in the long run. And really bad formatting should be brought to the attention of the author via emails to the author's Web site, He or she would be in the best position to pressure a publisher for a better version. Finally, Amazon should augment their computer record system to automatically email purchasers of a given book whenever a corrected version can be re-downloaded. |
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#39 | |
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About the button itself, if it was required that several areas of the form I'm advocating were filled before it could be submitted, that would help. Alternatively, it could also require an Amazon account with a Kindle registered.... Someone mentioned in one of the other forums I've made this post also recommended that the reporting button could be somewhere in Manage your Kindle content page instead of on the book's page- that might work, because then people who don't have a Kindle couldn't abuse the reporting system and people who do would be able to report it... Only thing is, I imagine some people don't go to their manage their kindle page often... perhaps from a link somewhere on the book's page could lead them somewhere to fill out the form. Something x_X Last edited by Anarel; 01-03-2010 at 11:18 AM. Reason: Clarification |
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#40 |
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I can't believe at this stage in the ebook's path they let so many get published with obvious mistakes. You'd think that the millions some companies are making would encourage them to invest more resources into editing the OCR for mistakes.
I report any issues with ebooks to Amazon, who knows if they will ever act upon them. I would HOPE that as they fix these issues they will alert owners of the books of the fixed versions being available. |
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#41 | ||
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"If customers buy them anyway, even with the bad formatting, why should we do anything about it? Proper editing/proofreading costs money..." </cynicism> Quote:
______ Dennis |
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#42 | |
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#43 | |
New York Editor
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And how did you know a fixed version was available when you got them? It would be nice if they did inform you. They have your contact info, but apparently don't have the infrastructure in place to track fixes and send a note to the original reporter. ______ Dennis |
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#44 |
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Yeah,
In my original first post, I had made an example of one of the books in Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series- when I purchased the book it had my favorite massive gap between paragraphs- issue, but I downloaded a newer sample when writing the first post because someone said they didn't see the issues I had seen with the book. It was true, the book had been fixed, but I never would have known that if I hadn't gone back and checked it. |
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#45 | |
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