Gizmodo article: How To Fix Today's Ebook readers

[Tricorp]

Another thing that the typography freaks need to remember is that sometime the kindle is not at fault, it is sometimes the publishers' fault. Don't blame everything on the device, sometimes it is a matter of just using it right.

[leebase]

I get what the typography enthusiasts are saying. I see how it CAN be important. I merely object to the notion that there's no value to today's ereaders UNTIL the typography issues are handled. I've enjoyed many many ebooks and the state of typography on them hasn't even been a factor.

I'm sure iBooks 2.0, Kindle for iPad 2.0 (or 3.0 or 4.0) will get around to improving the typography. In the mean time, I'll be enjoying reading with what we already have.

Lee

[Ea]

Originally Posted by kennyc

He's one of those typography is everything idiots.

He should stick with paper.

Why not bring the strenghts and quality of paper to e-ink as well? E-ink and e-reader devices affords me more than paper overrall, but why settle in the long run for less typographical quality than paper? I expect things to improve in the long run. It is "okay" as it is now, but I'm certainly aware that things could be better. Why settle for less? When it's put to the test, I'm afraid I'm one of those typography idiots Kenny, I can't understand why you can't at least see the point... (not with your background).

Originally Posted by Tricorp

Another thing that the typography freaks need to remember is that sometime the kindle is not at fault, it is sometimes the publishers' fault. Don't blame everything on the device, sometimes it is a matter of just using it right.

Certinaly it's not all the fault of the device - I'm sorry if that was your impression. It's partly the way the book has been made, and partly the way the book file is 'interpreted' by the firmware of the e-book e-reader in question. I'd say the weight of this issue is on the publisher rather than the device.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by leebase

I get what the typography enthusiasts are saying. I see how it CAN be important. I merely object to the notion that there's no value to today's ereaders UNTIL the typography issues are handled. I've enjoyed many many ebooks and the state of typography on them hasn't even been a factor.

I'm sure iBooks 2.0, Kindle for iPad 2.0 (or 3.0 or 4.0) will get around to improving the typography. In the mean time, I'll be enjoying reading with what we already have.

I agree with you - and I think by far most would agree, too. Just beacuse you could be termed "typography enthusiast" doesn't mean you can't live with it as it is right now on curent devices. I certanly can - but I hope for something better. It can be done on paper, why not on a computer? One thing is to like or accept current state of affairs, another is to work towards a better place.

I don't think you should dismiss "typography enthusiasts" wholesale - or at all - most, by far, would agree at least mostly with you, I think.

I certainly enjoy reading e-books in many forms - and prefer it. But it doesn't stop me from wanting them to improve when I know the can be so.

[citac]

Now, I don't have en e-reader (yet - I hope to change that), and I'm far from an expert on this, but isn't typography more than just type or font design, but also making sure a piece of text is readable, whether on paper or a screen? And isn't hyphenation, punctuation etc a part of typography? I can't imagine why someone would want to dismiss typography. As I understand it, it's goal is to create readable text without being too obvious about it. Kind of like special effects in movies - when they're good, you can't tell they're there, they're seamlessly integrated into a movie. When they're bad, they're obvious and not pleasant to watch.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ea

Why not bring the strenghts and quality of paper to e-ink as well? E-ink and e-reader devices affords me more than paper overrall, but why settle in the long run for less typographical quality than paper? I expect things to improve in the long run. It is "okay" as it is now, but I'm certainly aware that things could be better. Why settle for less? When it's put to the test, I'm afraid I'm one of those typography idiots Kenny, I can't understand why you can't at least see the point... (not with your background).


.....

I see very little advantage and in fact numerous drawbacks of forcing ebooks into the paper book mold. As long as there is at least minimal formatting and flexibility, that's all I want. The more you force ebooks into the constraints of traditional printing the more you sacrifice flexibility. Surely with your background, you know that.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I see very little advantage and in fact numerous drawbacks of forcing ebooks into the paper book mold. As long as there is at least minimal formatting and flexibility, that's all I want. The more you force ebooks into the constraints of traditional printing the more you sacrifice flexibility. Surely with your background, you know that.

I'm not taking about forcing e-books into a p-book mold, only talking about taking what's good from paper and using that in e-books, too. Flexibility should be able to stretch to such basic things as no "rivers" and proper hyphenation and adjustment - as an example. With my background I'm sure it would be possible to adjust so. At the moment I live with it as it is, but I do expect no less from e-books in time than I get from p-books. Why should I conform to less? That is ludicrous.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ea

I'm not taking about forcing e-books into a p-book mold, only talking about taking what's good from paper and using that in e-books, too. Flexibility should be able to stretch to such basic things as no "rivers" and proper hyphenation and adjustment - as an example. With my background I'm sure it would be possible to adjust so. At the moment I live with it as it is, but I do expect no less from e-books in time than I get from p-books. Why should I conform to less? That is ludicrous.

For flexibility. Look at how well Adobe PDFs work on ebook readers for example.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by kennyc

For flexibility. Look at how well Adobe PDFs work on ebook readers for example.

But that's just it. It doesn't work any better than any other format. In my experience. (I'ts not great).

Edit: Besides; conforming to a lesser standard is still not acceptable - unless it provides *much* greater affordance (which it doesn't)

[Ea]

Originally Posted by kennyc

For flexibility. Look at how well Adobe PDFs work on ebook readers for example.

On re-reading this I get you're ironic... Unfortunately, I still don't get the point

[riemann42]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

1.) Hyphenation, and a good one. This will solve lots of problems.
2.) Addition of own fonts. No need to force readers to use just the built-in.
3.) A lot of different font sizes. Let the reader decide which size does suit him/her best.

Agree 100%. The biggest problem with ebook typography is that it doesn't automatically perform Hyphenation. Ligatures and other typographic enhancements would be nice, but to work you really need 300DPI or better screens.

Typography and good hyphenation make text so much more pleasant to read. Just compare a good TeX doc to something from Word.

For now, I'll settle for a good H&J, as this is possible with minimal processing power (at least for English).

[DawnFalcon]

For you. Don't assume I want hyphenation, I absolutely detest it...

[kovidgoyal]

With typography, as with most things in life, there is a threshold. Below that threshold text becomes difficult to read for most people. Above that threshold, only typography nuts complain about the lack of typography. IMO e-books are well above that threshold.

They correctly handle typefaces, punctuation, paragraphs, text styles.

They fail on: hyphenation, widows and orphans

Of the fail list only hyphenation is something that a non typography nut would notice.

[Ea]

If you have medium to larger-sized text on any 5-6" device, good hyphenation is definitely an imrovement.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

With typography, as with most things in life, there is a threshold. Below that threshold text becomes difficult to read for most people. Above that threshold, only typography nuts complain about the lack of typography. IMO e-books are well above that threshold.

They correctly handle typefaces, punctuation, paragraphs, text styles.

They fail on: hyphenation, widows and orphans

Of the fail list only hyphenation is something that a non typography nut would notice.

And they fail on rivers and everybody notice that.

But the point is that a text is still harder to read even if an untrained person does not notice any problems. So there is still a need to enhance the text to make it more readable.