Preferred Font Size in eBooks

[ahi]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if we has LaTex hyphenation support and kerning, that sample that Harry posted would look better. It would look less computerish. I know the only way to get proper hyphens is with a dictionary, but I think the LaTex way will be good enough.

If. And maybe.

[ahi]

LaTeX's "good enough" typesetting and hyphenation fails to find an optimal solution to typesetting a given paragraph precisely 270 times in this 80 page (when typeset for a 6 inch page) eBook I am presently working on.

Fails, as in, it looks worse than Harry's blatantly computer-typeset text... fails until I, in the role of the typesetter, tell it what the hell to do. Once that is done, it will look spectacular.

Technology is not a form of magic, JSWolf. What's more, the limitations of specific pieces of technology are eminently knowable/discoverable... as long as one cares to know/discover them.

Of course, doing so can lead to inconvenient conclusions.

- Ahi

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ahi

I'm just not convinced the best that can be achieved via this methodology is going to make me any less regretful that I am not reading a PDF customized for my device and font-size preference.

I you've hit on the core issue: "best that can be achieved" vs. "what's likely to be available."

I prefer to read PDFs customized for my device & font preferences. No publisher makes those, and I don't expect any publisher to do so in the future. I like humanist fonts, which are rare in the publishing world. When I make ebooks for myself, I use Fontin, 9 or 10 points (haven't settled yet), condensed by .1 point, with .25" indents on new paragraphs, 12 or 13 point bold chapter titles. 7 pt small text (footnotes and other small elements) where relevant. I place the margins at .1"; my Reader already has a margin--that's the part where the buttons are.

If I can't get PDFs in that, I'm much happier with ePub than someone else's idea of font sizing for PDFs. (Especially as most people seem to want larger starting fonts.)

I haven't seen any indication that publishers are going to start producing PDFs in customer-preferred layouts & fonts. For that matter, I haven't seen any indication that publishers are going to produce tagged PDFs with bookmarks, options that take moments per book (for most book; tags for textbooks are more complex if the source app didn't create them) and require no design consideration.

The issue isn't, "would you rather have a perfect PDF or a perfect ePub?" It's, "in the real world, which is more likely to get you results you want to read?"

Saying that PDFs would be as good or better than ePub, because of potential superior typographic design (which I'll freely grant) IF publishers designed them to ebook reader sizes, IF they had proper metadata, IF they had bookmarks/linked TOCs, IF they came in a range of font sizes, IF they were designed with the right fonts (basic serif, basic sans, humanist, calligraphic, etc.) to suit the reader's preferences...

That's an awful lot of ifs.

Granted, most people are oblivious to the impact of typography on their reading experience. And you're right, it still has an impact. But after years of reading HTML files on LCD screens, most people who'll buy ebook readers are fairly inured to poor typography. They'll tolerate Verdana with auto-kerning and no hyphenation.

You've yet to mention why it's more likely we'll have market-wide well-designed PDFs in the future, than reading devices that let the owner choose a font & point size for all the ePubs read on it. That function only has to be designed once; "good PDFs" have to be done individually, by hundreds of different publishers.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by ahi

LaTeX's "good enough" typesetting and hyphenation fails to find an optimal solution to typesetting a given paragraph precisely 270 times in this 80 page (when typeset for a 6 inch page) eBook I am presently working on.

I only mentioned TeX algorithm in relation to paragraph breaking (into lines) and hyphenation in a single paragraph. When pagination comes into play, the asynchronous method of (La)TeX is indeed not perfect, and there are quite a few things that don't work right, finding out how to optimally fit a given text in a number of pages is one of them.

[comtrjl]

From the single page samples below, is it possible to conclude what produced them? The middle and right both ended up with exactly the same number of pages for the whole book, the left had 25 less. All were set up with Bookman 10 on 12 with a .1" margin on a 6 x 9cm page and otherwise basic settings.
One comes from Word, one from a pc version of Latex and one from Indesign but which is which?

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by comtrjl

One comes from Word, one from a pc version of Latex and one from Indesign but which is which?

I'd say the middle one's from LaTeX. There is a wider space after some punctuation, that's right after an end-of-sentence fullstop, but not after abbreviations like "Mr." The source should have used "Mr.\@ Bingley".

I have never used InDesign, so I can't tell. But the left picture seems to have a more uniform distribution of letters on the page, and I guess InDesign would do that. Therefore, I vote InDesign is left and Word is right.

[comtrjl]

Spot on! The spacing in the right-hand one seems more variable, and now you point out the too-wide space after Mr. and Mrs. in the middle one, I can see what you mean. Haven't got too much experience with Latex :-( I like the look of the lefthand one although it seems more 'dense'.
Anyway, well done.
bob

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by comtrjl

and now you point out the too-wide space after Mr. and Mrs. in the middle one, I can see what you mean. Haven't got too much experience with Latex :-(

It's one of the fine points in (La)TeX that can be problematic. It can be deactivated with \frenchspacing if one does not wish to find every fullstop and decide whether it is an abbreviation or not. (And every ? and ! an decide whether it's the end of a sentence or not).