The Grand Experiment!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

I do like the 505 very much. I like it much more with the tweaks from PRSPlus. I've never been against the 505, I've just had a preference for the Kindle which I still do but I have decided to keep the 505 as my ePub reader (at least until I decide on a larger screen reader). There are certainly features of the 505 that I wish the Kindle had and vice versa.

These are my impressions based on un-hacked features of K2 and 505 (of course things that are important to me, may mean less than nothing to someone else):

• Font Face: better on 505 because there are more to choose from and easier to make the switch (via Calibre)
• Font Sizes: better on K2, there aren't enough "between" sizes on the 505 and they vary from book to book unless I build in a base font with Calibre or a CSS
• Margins: better on K2, I prefer more white space around the text
• Justified vs. non-justified: originally I didn't have a preference but the more I play with the 505, the more I like left justified text
• Bookmarking: better on 505, there's a dedicated button and it's fast
• Page Turn buttons: better on K2, little tiny side button on 505 side in wrong order (for me) and are too small, big round button on bottom right does not turn pages in books (it should), big round button on the left is awkward for me
• Pages vs Locations & Percentages: better on K2, wish I could have both but honestly when I see page x of y, I mentally calculate the % or fraction of the book I've read. In a pbook I would do the same thing visually. I really like K2s chapter dots a lot.
• Organization: better on the 505, collections rocks!
• Search: better on K2, not available on the 505 so the K2 wins but search is not necessary to find books on the 505 because of the collections feature but finding things within books is not possible. I lost my place while fiddling around a few times and I had to go page by page to get back to where I wanted to be and it was frustrating.
• Navigation: better on K2, I just feel I can get to what I want faster on my K2 than on the 505, maybe because I'm more comfortable to K2

I have used PRSPlus to bring in as many "like" features of K2 to the 505 and it has made the reading experience much better.

Now as far as ePub itself, I'm going with it because the industry seems to want it to be the standard. With all the tools like Calibre and those for removing DRM available, it really doesn't matter what format you start with because you can convert it for your needs (if you have a little bit of tech savvy). I will continue to purchase my ebooks from Amazon (and maybe Fictionwise depending on how that experiment goes) and convert them for use with any non-Amazon readers I own. I probably won't be buying ePub or Adobe ADE specific titles but I will download all the freebies.

Daffy, that was a really well thought out comparison between the 505 and the K2.

Font Face: ePub makes it very easy to embed whatever font you want so that really does give you more choices.

]Font Sizes: On the 505, font sizes are based on some size difference from the current size. I do feel that that should be made to be a specific font size instead. Because given the way that ePub do have different sizes to start with, changing the size gives differing results.

Margins: On the 505, Margins are based on what the book specifies.

Justified vs. non-justified: I would like to have ADE on the 505 support justified text even if just so we can get all the "I like LRF better because it's justified" people away from LRF. I' would not mind ADE being justified and given that you now know a lot more about digging into an ePub, you'd be able to change the justification to left quite easily I'd think.

Bookmarking: I do think the Sony has done bookmarking quite well.

Page Turn buttons: I do think this is a person preference and having had a 500 and now a 505, I do prefer the setup of the 505. But, one thing I would like is the page turn buttons on the right to be up a little higher. And if the same buttons were on the left, it would be easier for left handed people. On the k2, it is nice that there are page turn buttons on both sides.The only thing I would change is the home button on the right would be the page previous button. And the buttons are larger on the K2 and I can easily see how some may find that easier.

Pages vs Locations & Percentages: Now the chapter dots are nice. That's one thing I would really like on the 505 is to see how close I am to the end of a chapter. But, also coming from pBooks, I do like having actual page numbers. It helps in knowing how far along I am and how far I have to go.

Organization: One thing you can do with collections that you cannot do with folders is to have the same books listed in multiple collections without having to have the same book multiple times. Given how many people have been asking for folders on the K2, I am surprised that Amazon has not add folders.

Search: K2 hands down since the 505 doesn't have search.

Navigation: This I don't really know about as I've not used a K2 other then a quick demo at the Boston Book Fair where eink had one on display. For the 505 to get back to the collections menu from inside a book takes either 3 button presses or 2 button presses. 3 presses: 1 back to the books' menu, 2. back to that book's collection menu, 3. back to the collection menu. For the 2 presses, 1. press and hold the menu button and back to the main menu, 2. press 5 to go to the collection menu.

The good thing with ePub is that when you do finally decide on a larger screen reader someday, chances are, that your ePub formatted eBooks will be able to be used with this new reader without having to convert. Newer Mobipocket/AZW eBooks convert fairly easy. But some older Mobipocket/AZW eBooks can be a mess. And you do have to know something of HTML & CSS to clean up the results.

[edbro]

Is there a way to have full justification in epubs by modifying the style.css? I looked at that css tutorial site daffy4u mentioned and it said {text-align:justify} is the proper code. Where would I put that and would it make all the epubs justified? I already have the style.css on the reader for the fontin.ttf hack.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by edbro

Is there a way to have full justification in epubs by modifying the style.css? I looked at that css tutorial site daffy4u mentioned and it said {text-align:justify} is the proper code. Where would I put that and would it make all the epubs justified? I already have the style.css on the reader for the fontin.ttf hack.

The version of ADE on the 505 does not support full justify. I'm hoping Sony will update ADE so it does support full justify like it does on the 900.

[pilotbob]

Is it actually a dot for each chapter on the kindle? I never noticed a 1:1 correlation with the dots. I just think of it as a progress bar.

BOb

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Is it actually a dot for each chapter on the kindle? I never noticed a 1:1 correlation with the dots. I just think of it as a progress bar.

BOb

Yes, it's one dot per chapter. Or rather, to be strictly correct, it's one dot per particular item of Mobi "markup" in the book, and it's normal to use it at chapter starts.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

To specify margins, one way to do it is by using @page in the CSS as the first line like the following code. that way, you don't have to go digging into the CSS to find all the places that specify the margins.

@page { margin-bottom: 1em;margin-left: 1em;margin-right: 1em;margin-top: 1em;}

just a note, as i just mentioned in the sigil forum, it's not a good idea to use ems as a unit of measurement for margins. ems are a proportional unit, equal to the width of the letter "m" in the font size in use (when ems are used to define font size, 1em is equal to about 16pt). this means that if you increase the font size, the margins will also be increased, leaving less room for text. instead, you should use either percentage (also proportional, but based on the size of the display) or pixels. so the code could look like this :

@page {margin : 15%;}
or
@page {margin : 20px;}

defining a global "margin" as i did above sets the same margin on all 4 sides. you can refine this with a different margin for top/bottom vs. sides by specifying two measures :
@page {margin : 20px 10%;}
= 20px for top and bottom, 10% for right and left.
or specify a different margin for each side like jon did in his example.

[daffy4u]

How do I translate pt to px? Calibre's default configured with 5.0 pt all the way around (72 pts = 1 inch). I could use a bit more but I don't understand px.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

How do I translate pt to px? Calibre's default configured with 5.0 pt all the way around (72 pts = 1 inch). I could use a bit more but I don't understand px.

px is pixels, but i'm not sure there's an easy way to translate them into inches or similar, since depending on the screen the size of one pixel will vary (for instance : currently, the 6" screens and 5" screens have the same resolution, 600 x 800px. but, since the same number of pixels must fit in a smaller area for the 5" screen, the individual pixels are therefore smaller). for reference, i think the smallest margin to set on the right side is 15px, to avoid having the page numbers overlap the text. that should give you an idea of how small 15px is (pretty small). knowing that your screen is 600 px wide may help you to visualise the size as well (especially if you break it up : half a screen is 300, one tenth of a screen is 60...).

however, you can probably just pretend that pixels are about the same as points, and that will give you a good mental jumping off point. or you can use pts, but since pts is originally a unit of measurement made for print (paper), i'm not sure it's the most relevant one to use for ebooks, and actually i'm not really sure how acurately it translates into a digital display. you might want to just play around a bit with different sizes to find what you like. you can try using percentage, too ; that might be easier to visualise.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

px is pixels, but i'm not sure there's an easy way to translate them into inches or similar, since depending on the screen the size of one pixel will vary (for instance : currently, the 6" screens and 5" screens have the same resolution, 600 x 800px. but, since the same number of pixels must fit in a smaller area for the 5" screen, the individual pixels are therefore smaller). for reference, i think the smallest margin to set on the right side is 15px, to avoid having the page numbers overlap the text. that should give you an idea of how small 15px is (pretty small). knowing that your screen is 600 px wide may help you to visualise the size as well (especially if you break it up : half a screen is 300, one tenth of a screen is 60...).

however, you can probably just pretend that pixels are about the same as points, and that will give you a good mental jumping off point. or you can use pts, but since pts is originally a unit of measurement made for print (paper), i'm not sure it's the most relevant one to use for ebooks, and actually i'm not really sure how acurately it translates into a digital display. you might want to just play around a bit with different sizes to find what you like. you can try using percentage, too ; that might be easier to visualise.

Duh on me! I was making it way more complicated than it needed to be. Thanks for lifting the veil from my mind.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

Duh on me! I was making it way more complicated than it needed to be. Thanks for lifting the veil from my mind.

lifting the veil, eh ? i feel so powerful. "zelda, the great revealer and lifter of veils." heheheh.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

just a note, as i just mentioned in the sigil forum, it's not a good idea to use ems as a unit of measurement for margins. ems are a proportional unit, equal to the width of the letter "m" in the font size in use (when ems are used to define font size, 1em is equal to about 16pt). this means that if you increase the font size, the margins will also be increased, leaving less room for text. instead, you should use either percentage (also proportional, but based on the size of the display) or pixels. so the code could look like this :

@page {margin : 15%;}
or
@page {margin : 20px;}

defining a global "margin" as i did above sets the same margin on all 4 sides. you can refine this with a different margin for top/bottom vs. sides by specifying two measures :
@page {margin : 20px 10%;}
= 20px for top and bottom, 10% for right and left.
or specify a different margin for each side like jon did in his example.

I'm not a fan of % for margins or indent. Mobipocket eBooks tend to use 5% for an indent and that's way too large. I have been using 1.1em as an indent since after I'm done editing an eBook, I leave it on small. But I probably should figure out a good pt value to use as an indent.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm not a fan of % for margins or indent. Mobipocket eBooks tend to use 5% for an indent and that's way too large. I have been using 1.1em as an indent since after I'm done editing an eBook, I leave it on small. But I probably should figure out a good pt value to use as an indent.

you do know that if you think a 5% margin is too large, you can change it to 3%, or whatever you like, right ? that's got nothing to do with the unit of measurement. (5% seems pretty minimal to me, personally ; but i know you like a really tiny margin, and i don't.) do you have a reason for not using % for margins, or is it just a question of how many percent to use ?

i'm only talking about margins, here ; em is an excellent choice (the best choice, in fact, in my opinion) for indent size, for exactly the same reason it's a poor choice for margins.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

you do know that if you think a 5% margin is too large, you can change it to 3%, or whatever you like, right ? that's got nothing to do with the unit of measurement. (5% seems pretty minimal to me, personally ; but i know you like a really tiny margin, and i don't.) do you have a reason for not using % for margins, or is it just a question of how many percent to use ?

i'm only talking about margins, here ; em is an excellent choice (the best choice, in fact, in my opinion) for indent size, for exactly the same reason it's a poor choice for margins.

I prefer using 0 as a margin actually. So 0%, 0em, 0pt, 0px, etc. are all 0.

Why do you think em is good for an indent instead of a fixed measurement?

[omk3]

Because the indent should be relevant to the font size I suppose, but the margin shouldn't...

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I prefer using 0 as a margin actually. So 0%, 0em, 0pt, 0px, etc. are all 0.

aïe.

Why do you think em is good for an indent instead of a fixed measurement?

because the indent should increase, if the text size increases ; an indent which is a few pixels large, at font-size extra small, might look okay ; but if you increase the font size and the indent stays tiny it won't show as much as an indent. it's the same reason that line-spacing should be proportional. look at these examples :

size 1
...i'm using 3 points (about the width of the letter m, so 1em) to simulate a proportional indent here, to show what i mean. the points will get larger when i increase the font size. (however, the forum software won't automatically increase the line spacing. so at size 1 this text will be small but pretty readable, whereas at size 6 it will be really difficult.)

size 6
...i'm using 3 points to simulate a proportional indent here, to show what i mean. the points will get larger when i increase the font size. however, the forum software won't automatically increase the line spacing. so at size 1 this text will be small but pretty readable, whereas at size 6 it will be really difficult.

small indent :

.here i've decreased the indent to one point, which is less than 1em but probably close to the width of 3 points at size small. you can see the indent is not as visible.

edit : actually, 1 point at size 6 is still larger than 3 points at size 1, so my demonstration is not as effective as it could be. but i think you can still get the idea of what i meant.