Why I want a big screen ereader

[Robertb]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Interesting. But I assume that is September in "RobertB" time? So, we just don't know what year you mean.

BOb

Oh, low blow, Pilot Bob. Geez, you have to realize that people are trying to stay on schedule. Problems do develop and need to be addressed. I could play it safe and not give timelines... but what help would that be.

The EZ Reader was exactly out on time and the Mentor Lite is within a month or so of the forecast.

Robert B

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Robertb

Oh, low blow, Pilot Bob. Geez, you have to realize that people are trying to stay on schedule.

I know. Did you not see my smilie?

BOb

[jakeluck]

I personally would like to see is something that solves this problem in another way: higher resolution. With white space cropping, i usually read pdfs in 6 pt size, and higher DPI will make those alot more readable than what the current 160dpi offers.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

I agree with most of what you said. I've said some of the things you said before regarding why I prefer the PDF format....

I must say, that ideally, something like PDF will have to come along to make ebooks be like books. Unless I am missing something, all other current formats are more akin to DOS, compared to OS X.

Currently, with PDF the reader is able to see on their PC screen the page the way the publisher intended it: with proper fonts, formatting, and design. It needs to be the same with ereaders.

With some standardization of screen sizes, reflow shouldn't be a problem.

But it would be great to be an open format, with no DRM.

[awi]

Originally Posted by jgray

This brings up a point that has been bugging me for quite some time. Why is it that none of the PDF reading software has an option that lets you display a full page without the whitespace margins? This alone would make reading a PDF on smaller screens much easier. I shouldn't have to crop the pages and save them as a new PDF. I thought computers were supposed to automate things for us.

On the iliad it is possible to zoom in on any pdf file to get rid of white margin. This way it is quite agreeable to read titles like "..... for dummies" series and computer books.

[catsittingstill]

I would like a large screen e-book reader too. I'm not so much about reproducing the original printed page exactly, with all it's "period feel" (though I have nothing against that, and especially not if it expands the big-screen market to the point where there's a chance of actually seeing one of these readers hit the market.)

No, what I really want is something I can read, annotate, and search pdfs of scientific journal articles on. I know pdf isn't a great format, but it's what the articles all come in, darn it. No, I don't want to mess around with changing formats. No, I don't want to mess around with cutting pages in half and displaying them in landscape mode. No, I certainly don't want to put everything into the equivalent of six point type; I'd have to use a magnifying glass. I just want to read the articles with minimum messing about. I want to be able to search a stack of 200 articles for "murine RNR" with a few keystrokes. I want to be able to write "Paydirt!" on the head of an article, and to be able to pull it up three weeks later by searching for that annotation. I want to be able to carry a file cabinet's worth of articles in one hand. If it also had the ability to go online with a minimal web browser to download the articles wirelessly, that would be tops.

I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good enough--good enough is already out there in the form of several e-book readers (I really like the Kindle myself, though ymmv) and more on the way. Now I want good enough for science reading too.

So yes, I'm keeping an eye on developments with Astak and Plastic Logic and others. If they hit a price point / capability combination that's good enough, I'll have 2 e-book readers, and happy to do it.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by Daithi

I want an ereader that can display a full page PDF.

It's great having an ereader that can display the text of a novel, but I would like something that can display PDFs of full sized pages. Some books just can't be appreciated on the same level without things like the illustrations. For example, a book like Alice in Wonderland is simply far better as a PDF than as reflowing text. Even when the illustrations are included in the ebook the PDF version would still be far better. In the PDF version the text flows around the images that are in the book, and in one section of Alice in Wonderland the text is written in such a way that it looks like a mouse's tail. It curves around the page and it uses a font that gets smaller and smaller. Ereaders like the Kindle can try imitating this mouse tail effect but they do a poor job of duplicating it without displaying the text as an image.

Another example is the Kelmscott Chaucer. This is arguably the greatest printed book ever produced. It is absolutely beautiful. It contains a ton of illustrations; many of the pages contain elaborate borders; the drop caps are all individually designed with some being outright exquisite. Even the font used for displaying the normal text was designed by William Morris and it is very fancy. This font is an important aspect of the book and any recreation that didn’t use this font would be pointless. A book like the Kelmscott Chaucer simply can't be duplicated on an ereader like the Kindle or Sony.

Another version of Chaucer that some people might want to have is William Caxton's version. Caxton was the first printer in England and if you want a copy of Caxton's Chaucer or his version of Aesop's Fables then you don't just want a reflowable computer text version. You want to see the minute variations in the letters on the printed page. You want to see all the woodblock images from the original Caxton's Aesop Fables. You want to see something that looks like a photo of the original page.

Likewise, historical scientific books like Newton's Principia or Boyle's Sceptical Chymist are far better as PDFs than simply reflowable computer text. If you want to know a synopsis of the ideas of historical science then a reader like the Kindle or Sony is fine. But, if you want to see the original text of what these authors wrote then there is nothing like viewing the originals. Computer generated text of books like these just loses something. Also, keep in mind that just because a book is a PDF doesn't mean that the text is unavailable for features like searching and annotating.

Illustrated works are really where PDF versions shine. It is possible to produce illustrated versions on current ereaders, but the illustrations are often not as large as the originals, and it takes a lot of work to produce illustrated versions so in many cases the task is never performed. When given the choice of an illustrated classic and a non-illustrated version which one would you choose? I much prefer to have versions of Charles Dickens works with all of the original illustrations. I want Jane Austen’s work with the illustrations by Hugh Thomson. If I’m going to have one version of Shakespeare then I want it to be The Pictorial Shakespeare by Charles Knight with over 1,000 images. If I have one version of the Bible then I want either the 1846 Harper's Illuminated Bible with over 1,600 engravings or a Bible with Gustave Dore's illustrations which are outright masterpieces. In fact, I want all the books Dore illustrated – Cervante's Don Quixote, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Pardise Lost, Poe’s The Raven, Perrault’s Fairytales – these are all masterpieces. I want Dumas' The Three Musketeers with all 250 illustrations by Maurice Leloir. I want Hugo's Les Misérables with all of Emile Bayard’s the illustrations.

Some books absolutely require the illustrations to get the full impact of the book. This is especially true of children’s books, but it also applies to some adult books as well. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is inseparable from the illustrations provided by Hammatt Billings. The original 1852 edition only contained 7 images but the next year an illustrated version was produced with well over a hundred images by Billings, and these images had as much to do with changing people’s perception of slavery as did the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The same can be said to a slightly lesser extent about the images that appeared in other books like Huckleberry Finn and the engravings found in Jules Verne’s books (he wrote a little over 50 books and these books contain over 4,000 images in total). Most of these illustrated books are already available in PDF form, and I’ve only touched on a few illustrated treasures – there are lots more that I didn’t mention.

Lastly, there are some books that aren't even illustrated and that don't contain fancy or historical fonts that are still better in a PDF form than they are in a reflowable computer text form. If you read a book like Frankenstein or Dracula then you may find the PDF version more enjoyable. In the reflowable computer text form the book’s fonts and each line of text is absolutely uniform and completely straight. In the books original printed version this is not the case. The process of printing with ink and paper causes slight variations were the ink bleeds through paper, or were the color of the paper manages to break through the ink, or where type setting causes minute shifts of height to a line of text. These subtle variations add character and help to convey the age of the material being read. They add to the atmosphere and help provide for a more enjoyable reading experience – even when the book isn’t a horror book like Dracula. For any book written prior to 1850 I’d prefer to have a PDF version.

This isn’t a knock on current ereaders. If I have trouble seeing then I want the ability to resize the text. On a PDF this may cause the page to become larger than the display area, so the current ereaders are better if you want to resize text. A small ereader that is easily carried also has its benefits in portability and comfort. An ereader capable of displaying PDFs with full sized pages would be rather large. Ultimately, I want both, but since I already have the smaller ereader I am really jonesing for the big ereader that can display PDFs.

Anyway, I just had to get this off my chest.

Get an IRex Reader ... I'm saving for one.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by Daithi

This is probably true.

I'd love to have a library with first editions of Dicken's books bound in leather and maybe one the Kelmscott Chaucers that was printed on vellum.

However, I also like ereaders. An ereader gives you the ability to carry an entire library in the palm of your hand, and as far as I am concerned that is just magical (literally). I can also use search functions in the ereader to find passages of text within that library in my hand. I couldn't be happier if my butt was a flashlight. Yet, I still want my ereader to provide as many benefits of the printed page as possible.

Have you ever moved with a large number of books? My back hurt over a week and my doctor had fun at my expense. Books have a more haptic experience but I think an e-book reader can give you some of the experience.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Daithi

I want an ereader that can display a full page PDF.

It's great having an ereader that can display the text of a novel, but I would like something that can display PDFs of full sized pages. Some books just can't be appreciated on the same level without things like the illustrations. For example, a book like Alice in Wonderland is simply far better as a PDF than as reflowing text. Even when the illustrations are included in the ebook the PDF version would still be far better. In the PDF version the text flows around the images that are in the book, and in one section of Alice in Wonderland the text is written in such a way that it looks like a mouse's tail. It curves around the page and it uses a font that gets smaller and smaller. Ereaders like the Kindle can try imitating this mouse tail effect but they do a poor job of duplicating it without displaying the text as an image.

Nothing that can't be done with current readers:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
Sylvie and Bruno

It's only a matter of creating the PDFs with smaller page size (A4 size is not the best for reading books, anyway).

[Cheez-It]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

I would like a large screen e-book reader too. I'm not so much about reproducing the original printed page exactly, with all it's "period feel" (though I have nothing against that, and especially not if it expands the big-screen market to the point where there's a chance of actually seeing one of these readers hit the market.)

No, what I really want is something I can read, annotate, and search pdfs of scientific journal articles on. I know pdf isn't a great format, but it's what the articles all come in, darn it. No, I don't want to mess around with changing formats. No, I don't want to mess around with cutting pages in half and displaying them in landscape mode. No, I certainly don't want to put everything into the equivalent of six point type; I'd have to use a magnifying glass. I just want to read the articles with minimum messing about. I want to be able to search a stack of 200 articles for "murine RNR" with a few keystrokes. I want to be able to write "Paydirt!" on the head of an article, and to be able to pull it up three weeks later by searching for that annotation. I want to be able to carry a file cabinet's worth of articles in one hand. If it also had the ability to go online with a minimal web browser to download the articles wirelessly, that would be tops.

I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good enough--good enough is already out there in the form of several e-book readers (I really like the Kindle myself, though ymmv) and more on the way. Now I want good enough for science reading too.

So yes, I'm keeping an eye on developments with Astak and Plastic Logic and others. If they hit a price point / capability combination that's good enough, I'll have 2 e-book readers, and happy to do it.

Exactly what I am looking for.

[oddity]

I want an A4 ereader for reading PDFs from scientific journals. They use tiny text, have lots of footnotes and references, and make heavy use of diagrams, so when you try to see the PDFs in small screen devices you can read nothing.

Fortunately Hanlin has pre-announced V9, a near-to-A4 ebook reader at 9.7". Unfortunately they seem to be delayed, and not sure whether we will be able to find them in EU. See it at http://www.jinke.com.cn/Compagesql/E...tail.asp?id=34

[Daithi]

It looks like I'm going to get my wish in two more days. The rumor is that on May 6th Amazon is set to announce the launch of a new large screen Kindle.

[Studio717]

Please let this new large-screen Kindle be compatible with PDFs! And let us transfer files ourselves. I really don't want to pay Amazon to 'convert' a Google Book PDF.

[Alisa]

Personally, I'm interested in the OLPC 2. If that new screen technology is as good as we hope and it's a dual-touchscreen design, it might work nicely for both large and small books.

http://blog.laptopmag.com/wpress/wp-...alignright.jpg

[SelinaK]

I'm waiting like forever for a large screen reader. Every time a new reader comes out, it has the frakkin' 6" screen again. The big Astak frustrates me like hell, why it gets delayed again and again? Kindle DX will be USA only (and no card slot and no folders... is it too much to ask?). iRex is totally overpriced. Maybe I should go on a hunger strike to get things moving?

BTW, I'm deaf, and the potential of e-ink readers for disabled people who can acquire information only in written form is enormous. The battery life and good readability (no eye strain) is very important. Big screen too, because often you need to read PDFs or even a scanned handwritten page. Give me a reasonably priced 9.7" inch device and I'm happy.