Is Sony just simply ignoring the Reader?

[orcinus]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't understand why people keep "blaming" Sony for the simple physical fact that there's no good way of viewing an A4/Letter sized page on a 6" screen . It's not Sony's fault that PDF is a "page based" format and cannot sensibly be "re-flowed" like, say, RTF can, is it?

Ok, how about blaming Sony for bad typesetting, faux italics, terrible antialiasing in some PDF's ("nibbly" letters) and some other stuff that doesn't relate to the original format/size?

[NatCh]

Well, that would be somewhat more reasonable, except ... Sony purchases the content is from ... you guessed it, the publishers and distributors who generate it, and given that, they only have, at best, after the fact influence on it.

[Leaping Gnome]

Stop making excuses! Rowwrrrrr!

[NatCh]

Is it an excuse if it's true?

[NormB]

Yes an excuse can be true but is generally thought of as something the person or party had the capability of changing or avoiding if they had wanted.

[Dr. Drib]

If the device was abandoned tomorrow, I still have a way to get all of Gutenburg on the Reader. Additionally, I have BookDesigner and Word to help me with these tasks. PLUS, their are other, shall we say- "nefarious" - ways to enjoy newer titles.

I know that some people read at night; however, I now use my bed for sleeping and for recreational activities that do not involve metal and plastic.

This, in my opinion, is simply the best device on the market. It's an absolute joy to use. I need to emphasize to everyone on this board that I'm an avid reader AND a collector of books.

When I go into Borders, along with my Reader, I notice all the newer fiction titles (what I predominently read), and wishing that they were available right now for the Reader. If Sony is able to work through the contractual/legal issues of adding newer major publishers (I'm think Knopf), then I will unfortunately be giving Sony about $100 a month for life.

Cheers,
Don

[RWood]

What Dr. Drib said.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by NormB

Yes an excuse can be true but is generally thought of as something the person or party had the capability of changing or avoiding if they had wanted.

And that's the real question, isn't it? Are these things that Sony controls? Does it control the way other folks make their PDF files? Does it control the way PDF works? Does it control the actual creation of the books that are in the ConnStore?

It seems to me that the answers to the two PDF questions are pretty clearly 'no.' Others may have differing opinions, of course.

The last item is perhaps less clear -- logically they should have at least some influence there. I do seem to recall (I wasn't taking notes so....) an off-hand remark from one of the Sony folks who was at the Texas Book Festival last October to the effect that they were trying to get their 'book' suppliers to bump the font sizes up to their satisfaction, and some minor grumblings about typos and such, and having a bit of difficulty getting those addressed. Of course, I think these were Sony marketing folks at the Festival, so salt to taste.

At the same time, though, if I buy a book at, say Barnes & Noble and find a bunch of typos on every page, I don't really consider B&N responsible for that, because they didn't publish the book, they're just selling it. Again, in my opinion, it seems that Sony is more in the role of retailer here than publisher. More Barnes & Noble than say, Random House, or Rosetta Books. As such, I think it's reasonable to expect them to complain to their suppliers (just like I'd expect B&N to let a pub know that the books they printed were badly proofed), but not to actually fix the text, just like I wouldn't realistically expect B&N to fix typos in their texts -- it's simply a matter of neither being set up to do that job.

Most of that, of course, is just my opinion, built mostly off of the bits of information I mentioned and what seems logical to me. So take that salted to taste too.

Trying not to be a Sony fanboi here (because I'm not. They generally are on my "Do Not Buy" list.) but they have a bad position here no matter how it goes. If they try and make a PDF program completely compliant with Adobe standards will it be used? Out of 2 gigs of PDFs here and at work, NONE of them are really anything more than page snapshots. Any documents that need page changes, style alterations or graphic inputs are saved in HTML with CSS sheets or as a RTF with stlye settings. Why? Just the way we get them. I'm assuming it's because more office and design people understand Office better than Acrobat.

So should Sony have just left PDF out? Well, probably not. Documents actually formatted FOR the reader look great. The problem there is most documents already in existence are not formatted for something that small. All that may change soon with so many readers coming out in this particular size. This particular display and storage format is just starting to work its way into business and will still take time before people start making either reflowable docs (which few know how yet) or just make a second "portable" version sized for these newfangled thingamajigs all these new bucks are carrying.

Could Sony have made a better PDF interpreter? Again, probably not. I say that because some innovations are just better left to smaller groups and not committees and "innovation teams". How many years has Sony been working on this reader (especially if you consider the foundation already laid with the Libre)? And yet within a few months of release some non-commercial, no-name, non-profit people are already massively increasing the usability of the reader. (Hmmmm, wonder who those people would be?)

Sonys best bet might just be to provide basic tools and hardware and stand back. In my opinion, that is almost ALWAYS best now. Most of us can't build a reader but more than a few of us can sure alter it and that is what is happening right now. A group with an actual interest in the device is shaping its growth and path instead of leaving it entirely in the hands of someone whose only (understandable) interest is their bottom line.

The problem that will soon come to pass is will Sony be able to resist their normal impulses to lock down the hardware so it can't be altered? They do love to make sure great hardware can't be used in ways they didn't design. Hopefully they will take the Roomba approach on this matter. (For those of you who don't know, Roomba makes a line of robotic floor vacuums that have sold fairly well. Some people took to altering them and using the units as robotic starting points for projects. So what did Roomba do? Find some way to protect their product from being misused or altered? Err, no, they saw a demand and filled it. They offer a different version of the vacuum without the actual vacuum, just the body, motor and robotics and market it cheaper to those people wanting it. For some reason it went over very well.)

AARRrrggghhh! Even though the reader is an excellent hippo and ninja deterrent, it still has a ways to go to prevent "excessive opinionated run-on messaging" syndrome. Maybe in the next release.....

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by stxopher

And yet within a few months of release some non-commercial, no-name, non-profit people are already massively increasing the usability of the reader.

Such as what, for example? Other than a few tools for creating books, I haven't seen anything that "massively increases the usability of the Reader"! Perhaps I've missed something?

I honestly think you're exaggerating the influence of the "hacker market" on the Reader. I'm sure the overwhelming majority of people who buy the Reader at Borders or wherever just happily use it with either free of commercial e-books and have not the slightest interest in "improving" it.

[yvanleterrible]

Although I'm a strong advocate for eink, I am not a Sony fanboy. You only have to lookup my posts for that. I would have prefered the Iliad for it's other uses but it failed in too many categories to let me be comfortable with it. The PRS-500 on the other hand does exactly what it is intended to do with 'brio'. I am a very happy user. These are no easily accessible eink devices worldwide yet. I am still waiting for a better machine. As many of us wish, an affordable, worldly popular A4 color, writing input capable machine is what we would like to see. In the meantime the Sony is the one to keep us in a reading dreamstate... focused on the better future.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

As many of us wish, an affordable, worldly popular A4 color, writing input capable machine is what we would like to see.

Not me, for two reasons:

1. I don't want an A4 screen - it would be far too big to easily carry around as I can carry around the Reader. For reading technical books or magazines, it would be great, but not for reading fiction, which is what the Reader's primary market is.

2. A colour screen has inherently only 1/3 the resolution of a black and white screen. I would imagine that the "pixel density" on the Reader's screen probably represents the current limit of the technology, and I wouldn't want a colour screen with 1/3 the resolution of the Reader. Colour is of limited use for fiction reading - most books are very successfully printed in B&W. There are certainly good uses for colour, but a much lower resolution screen would be too high a price to pay for for me personally.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not me, for two reasons:

1. I don't want an A4 screen - it would be far too big to easily carry around as I can carry around the Reader. For reading technical books or magazines, it would be great, but not for reading fiction, which is what the Reader's primary market is.

2. A colour screen has inherently only 1/3 the resolution of a black and white screen. I would imagine that the "pixel density" on the Reader's screen probably represents the current limit of the technology, and I wouldn't want a colour screen with 1/3 the resolution of the Reader. Colour is of limited use for fiction reading - most books are very successfully printed in B&W. There are certainly good uses for colour, but a much lower resolution screen would be too high a price to pay for for me personally.

I do share your reservations Harry. When I get the A4, most of the novels, if not all the novels I read will be on the PRS.

But I do read comic books, this is where I need colo(u)r *. I also need it for pictures as I do a lot of photography, and eink is a must for my old eyes.

A4 is also a must for textbooks and the catalogs I have. Having to fire up the PC to find a machine part is simply wrong.

Pdf would also be at ease on such a machine and it would simplify some of my presentation work.

Mostly, I DO want keyboard input and the drawing possibilities the Iliad features.

Altogether this would be a totally different beast, ridden in parallel to a dedicated reader, of which the Sony is the better representative today



* Intended to our overpond readers, just like is done in French for gender.

[NatCh]

A4 & writable would also allow the device to be much more useful for office & academic settings: "fill out this form ..."; "I need to grade these compositions ..."; "I need to read these legal briefs ..."; "let me see that patient's chart ...."

So much professional work is inexorably built around the A4/Letter sized piece of paper. An A4 e-ink device that allowed markup would allow a whole lot more of that to be handled electronically.

In spite of that, however, most books are most definitely not A4, because that's just not a handy size for reading.

There would seem to me to be ample use for both sizes, and probably a few sizes in between.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by HarryT

...
2. A colour screen has inherently only 1/3 the resolution of a black and white screen. I would imagine that the "pixel density" on the Reader's screen probably represents the current limit of the technology, and I wouldn't want a colour screen with 1/3 the resolution of the Reader. Colour is of limited use for fiction reading - most books are very successfully printed in B&W. There are certainly good uses for colour, but a much lower resolution screen would be too high a price to pay for for me personally.

Agreed. In fact I had a paperwhite monochrome monitor for my PC well into the VGA days. I only added color to my PC when the affordable resolution got to ~1280 x 1024. Before then b+w was a lot easier on the eyes (and the cashbox.)