Can We Talk? About E-Readers?

[JustinThought]

Originally Posted by barryem

I'm 75 and I've been reading novels since I was 4, so 71 years. I've been reading ebooks for about 25 or 30 years along with paper books and now for the last 6 or 7 years, just ebooks.

During that entire time the concept of a standard way for books to look just never occurred to me, probably because they all had their own unique look and style. Now that you have me thinking about it I'm glad that's how it is. Please, please, please don't make books all look the same.

Frankly I don't care that much. What a book looks like, the style of it's printing and formatting, has little impact on the story in most cases. Or, if it does, I'm not aware of it. There have been a few exceptions such as books by Alfred Bester where the layout of the text was almost pictoral in places. Usually though, a book has it's own font and spacing and margins and that's just fine with me.

Barry

I think I wasn't clear when I referenced the "standards." Again, I'm not suggesting that all e-books look the same. That probably wouldn't affect the readability of the book, but that would be like every web page you visit on the net looking like every other one. Booorrrriinngg!

What I'm advocating is a standard for the way the programming is presented, so that when the developer comes up with a cool presentation technique, it shows the same on Aldiko, Cool Reader, Moon+, and any other app you use; and the same on the dedicated e-readers.

I have to say, one of the most brilliantly formatted e-books I've seen is, not surprisingly, the user manual for Sigil. Dave Heiland has used some clever layout techniques, use of embedded fonts, and various other devices which, while not improving (or degrading) readability, gives an interesting-looking page to enjoy while you're reading.

So maybe instead of saying a uniform presentation, maybe I should have talked about a uniform interpretation of the unique coding within the e-books.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JustinThought

What I'm advocating is a standard for the way the programming is presented, so that when the developer comes up with a cool presentation technique, it shows the same on Aldiko, Cool Reader, Moon+, and any other app you use; and the same on the dedicated e-readers.

I've understood this all along. I just fail to see:

1) why device/app manufacturers/developers would honor any such standard. They already disregard current format standards when they see fit; why would they honor a presentation--or ebook-coding--standard?

2) If such a standard were adopted, how would existing devices/apps handle newer layouts they're not equipped to display as per the standard? Would they have to decline to open a book if they determine they couldn't display it the way the standard requires?

My point is that it simply can't work. The same ebook will ALWAYS render differently on other devices/apps. Sometimes drastically so. Just like internet browsers.

It is what it is.

[capidamonte]

The discussion is good, however, and the visual presentation.

DiapDealer is right; device manufacturers will never care as there is no money in doing it right. Better to use this sort of thing as a type of review, to point people toward the finest apps/readers -- those that honor the various format conventions the best. Those that allow both the original intent of the ebook designer and also allow overrides for the reader's preferences. (Assuming the book is designed robustly and effectively.)

Look at web browsers: none display the same result, even if they've grown more similar over time as people complained about the obvious problems. It's the nature of the beast when you have reflowable, resizeable, re-fontable documents and individual interpretations of the standards by coders.

In the end, the best device will likely need to be an open-hardware, open-source project. Done the right way because the people making it are just compelled to have it be right. Scratching that sort of itch is not the sort of itch most manufacturers ever feel. Open standards help everyone, which is why the best you can hope for from corporations is "embrace and extend", but usually get "divert and deligitimize" or "pretend and propagandize". Hello, Apple!

I like FBReader, an it is absolutely the best at FB2 files, totally under the reader's control -- as the format has always intended. (It was a marvel on my old Nokia 770!) But it stinks at ePub, and probably stinks at every other format that it supports. Unfortunately, it is hard to get well-formed FB2 files for FBReader so you end up with crappy ePub display as the primary experience of using it. If I was experienced with coding, I'd take the source and strip out everything that wasn't for FB2 files and fork it.

A device that used dedicated apps per format is probably the ideal, at least from my Linux philosophy's perspective. I know that most people just want to dump all their variously formatted ebook files into a single program and have everything look great, but that's a forlorn hope. Responding to that desire is also why we get FBReader bolting on ePub display to their previously simple and effective app. (Aside: is there a name for mediocrity resulting from ignorant but popular opinion? Hello, Apple!)

Bit of digression, but I think my overall point is this: find what is great and promote it -- the mediocre will never be raised to the good, never mind to the excellent. There is too much money in selling the mediocre to the ignorant.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by barryem

During that entire time the concept of a standard way for books to look just never occurred to me, probably because they all had their own unique look and style. Now that you have me thinking about it I'm glad that's how it is. Please, please, please don't make books all look the same.

Frankly I don't care that much. What a book looks like, the style of it's printing and formatting, has little impact on the story in most cases. Or, if it does, I'm not aware of it. There have been a few exceptions such as books by Alfred Bester where the layout of the text was almost pictoral in places. Usually though, a book has it's own font and spacing and margins and that's just fine with me.

Barry

I'm one of those weird people who needs their e-books to look exactly the same. Otherwise I just cannot concentrate on the story. So I strip out all the things that make a book look unique (margins, spacing, embedded font etc.). All my e-books have the exact same layout and formatting, it's the only way I can happily read them. Funny, I never had that problem with paper books, but in the case of e-books any deviation from my preferred look bothers me exceedingly. I just can't help it. Of course I know I'm in the minority, probably in the very small minority.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I'm one of those weird people who needs their e-books to look exactly the same. Otherwise I just cannot concentrate on the story. So I strip out all the things that make a book look unique (margins, spacing, embedded font etc.). All my e-books have the exact same layout and formatting, it's the only way I can happily read them. Funny, I never had that problem with paper books, but in the case of e-books any deviation from my preferred look bothers me exceedingly. I just can't help it. Of course I know I'm in the minority, probably in the very small minority.

Count me in.

[JustinThought]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I'm one of those weird people who needs their e-books to look exactly the same.
//snip!//
Of course I know I'm in the minority, probably in the very small minority.

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Count me in.

So for you two, Moon+ reader is the "perfect" choice. There's a selection in the miscellaneous options called "Disable CSS," which I didn't discover until very recently--the default is checked. Pretty well turns the e-books into plain vanilla.

I'll be honest, I like a little variety as I'm reading, although my wish is that each author's books all look the same. Moon+ pretty well eliminates that. The main reason I'm keeping Moon+ as my main reader is because it has so much of my reading history already. Another reason is that I use short articles in my work that have audio files with their transcripts. Moon+ is the only one I've found so far that will play those files spanning multiple pages. Some of the others will play the files on the page from which they are called, but when you turn the page, the audio stops.

Thanks for weighing in!

[Cosimo]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I'm one of those weird people who needs their e-books to look exactly the same. Otherwise I just cannot concentrate on the story. So I strip out all the things that make a book look unique (margins, spacing, embedded font etc.). All my e-books have the exact same layout and formatting, it's the only way I can happily read them. Funny, I never had that problem with paper books, but in the case of e-books any deviation from my preferred look bothers me exceedingly. I just can't help it. Of course I know I'm in the minority, probably in the very small minority.

I'm just the opposite. I do have a preferred font, and occasionally I have to adjust the font size, but that's all.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by JustinThought

So for you two, Moon+ reader is the "perfect" choice. There's a selection in the miscellaneous options called "Disable CSS," which I didn't discover until very recently--the default is checked. Pretty well turns the e-books into plain vanilla.

Mantano makes a better work for me

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Cosimo

I'm just the opposite. I do have a preferred font, and occasionally I have to adjust the font size, but that's all.

Ah, yes. But You don't even have that with paper books. Neither choice of font nor size of font. For me the real beauty of ebooks is that if you want to adjust things you can. That choice makes it also possible to make every book exactly alike if you choose. Even if all do is make the font and size the same, all books will look close-ish. Minor things like indent or no indent, space or no space after paragraph don't change the act of reading that much. Changing fonts, size, line spacing from one book to next would throw me off. Anymore when I pick up a paper book and look it doesn't give the impression it wants to be read by me. Paperback is too crammed - can't even read the inside without nearly ripping the spine in half. Hardcover has so much white space in the text blocks.

Originality in ebook design has its downsides as well. Just yesterday I looked at my wife's book/Voyage and was asking if that page was a letter or something. No, the whole book looks like that with the left margin twice as big as the right. Eeeew.

[Kyle Connor]

Well, the E-Readers have gone through a lot of variants but the recent ones that are out in the market are the best for your reading experience.

The latest "eInk Carta" screen type was introduced in 2015 with a better and higher contrast display for the best reading experience. It's exactly like reading an actual paperback, even under the sunlight.

But the best is yet to come.
http://123helpme.com/ebook-readers-o....asp?id=158705
I read this paper published back in 2008 that predicts the future (i.e. now) and what an ideal ebook reader should be like. I see that we are there already with the predictions coming right.

[JSWolf]

I don't mind authors/publishers doing things their way. It's just that when their way is not good that it becomes a problem.

A common problem is the use of way way way too much top space for a chapter header. I've seen it as bad as 14% of the screen space wasted. Also, there is no reason to make the main font small. Just let it be the default size. And there there indents at 5%, margins at 1.2em all around, and overly large line-height.

Then we also get left justified text and instead of embedding a font when needed to display letters/characters that are not in the default font for some reading programs, we get graphics used instead so they do not match the text well enough and they do not size with the text.

Then we have the embedded fonts that don't work with eInk because they are too light. A great example of that is the book, The martian. It used some free fonts that were way too light for comfortable reading.

One thing I would like is to be able to mark the different elements to allow the reading software to be able to customize how each looks. This would give the user the ability to have things as he/she wants.

I know that if using defaults (font size, margins, line-height, etc.) with my H2O, I can customize the font, margins, line-height, and justification to how I want.