do have i this right? 6 inch screen?

[netseeker]

Originally Posted by exo

For those who have 5 inch readers...now here is a sad picture...
...
Same size as a tiny notepad.

Sad? Why? Sorry but i don't get it. It's just the size of the display, not of the whole device. 5 inch pure reading area, almost no margins. What should be sad about that? Please go into a shop and take a look at devices with 5, 6 and 9 inch displays. Try to read a little bit with each of them...

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Why would I want a margin? Every pbook I read now, I find the margin a waste of space...

Margins, and especially vertical margins, serve a valuable function in proper typesetting. The abysmal standards of ebook readers don't change that.

[poshm]

Each to their own.

I read ebooks on my iPod touch, PocketBook 360 (5"), Sony Touch (6"), and my 10" laptop - they all have plus and minus points but the one I use for the majority of my reading is the 5" PB so small is good for me.

Without actually using all the different devices, I would probably (and wrongly) guessed that a bigger screen was better. Best to try and then have an opinion.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Margins, and especially vertical margins, serve a valuable function in proper typesetting. The abysmal standards of ebook readers don't change that.

I never saw a function in them, except to give me some room to hold the book and to give room for the binding... Very annoying when the text is hardly visible due to the binding...

[Latinandgreek]

I don't like large margins in my ebooks, but I imagine that some readers reading on devices with stylus note-taking ability like the added space to write notes in.

[Lo Zeno]

That guy is simply trolling.
He say that a screen is "too small to read on" even if he hasn't even tried one. As if there have never been books with 4", 3" and even 2" diagonal printed through the history of publishing (I remember a series of "pocket thrillers" published in Italy that could fit the small pocket of your jeans, and people indeed bought and read them).

The last picture he posted, also, smells like trolling from a mile. What is "sad" about having a device 5" diagonal?

The market allows you to choose among 9" devices, 8" devices, 7.1" devices, 6" devices and 5" devices. You are free to choose what suits you best, you just have to decide if you value reading space more than portability or vice versa. Do you want to read on large screens? The kindle DX is there for you, go buy one.

If you call me sad for my choice, I call you intellectually impaired for your lack of education.

(My reading device actually has a 6" screen and not a 5" screen, but I am considering buying a smaller one for increased portability)

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I never saw a function in them, except to give me some room to hold the book and to give room for the binding... Very annoying when the text is hardly visible due to the binding...

One of the most important functions of a vertical margin is to add a visual buffer when eliminating widows and orphans. With no margins, either they are eliminated with a visually jarring gap at the bottom of the page, or they are ignored and the book becomes polluted with widows and orphans.

Your ignorance and low standards do not change this. It's a general habit in the ebook community to not only not care about quality, but to justify and prefer its absence.

In order to compensate for the lack of margin while removing widows and orphans, the two most effective techniques I can think of are to subtly shift the line spacing, or to strategically manipulate individual lines to either increase or reduce the number of lines on a page. Neither of these are particularly easy or effective with the wider orientation of the screen, as you get much more optical forgiveness when a block of text is tall. As a result, both strategies become a bit too conspicuous to be useful.

And yes I'm aware you don't care about this stuff. As far as most ebook readers are concerned, it's is just a nuisance, a snobbish conceit that only exists due to typesetters wanting validity and vindication in the old obsolete paper realm where text couldn't be reflowed to the whims of the reader.

However, there are still some people in the world who care about things like quality. My hope is that they don't become completely extinct on these fora.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

One of the most important functions of a vertical margin is to add a visual buffer when eliminating widows and orphans. With no margins, either they are eliminated with a visually jarring gap at the bottom of the page, or they are ignored and the book becomes polluted with widows and orphans.

I still don't see how a margin can help with that. A visual buffer? I've never seen a jarring gap at the bottom of a page, except when a chapter is much shorter than the page. And how would a fixed margin (fixed within a book) help with widows and orphans throughout the entire book?


I do understand the artistic value of a well sized vertical margin. A text with a wide margin can give an entire different feeling to the reader as the same text with a narrow margin (on the same booksize). But that's one thing you'll never be able to reproduce on ebook readers, if only because every reader has a bezel (at least now, they have). It will detract from the overall look. Which is why, on ereaders, I don't mind the lack of margin at all.

And because I don't mind the lack of margins on my ereader doesn't mean I could care less about quality. But if I buy a book to simply read, be immersed in the story, I don't care how it looks. Which is why I used to buy those book in mass market paperbacks and now in electronic form. If I really want a book, to show and enjoy the artistic parts of the product (which does include, but not exclusively, the story!), I'll buy a hardcover or trade paperbacks.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I still don't see how a margin can help with that. A visual buffer? I've never seen a jarring gap at the bottom of a page, except when a chapter is much shorter than the page. And how would a fixed margin (fixed within a book) help with widows and orphans throughout the entire book?

Your ignorance of it does not change it. In some ways I should be jealous, as it would cause much less frustration when setting books.

And because I don't mind the lack of margins on my ereader doesn't mean I could care less about quality. But if I buy a book to simply read, be immersed in the story, I don't care how it looks. Which is why I used to buy those book in mass market paperbacks and now in electronic form. If I really want a book, to show and enjoy the artistic parts of the product (which does include, but not exclusively, the story!), I'll buy a hardcover or trade paperbacks.

(emphasis mine)
That's simply justifying a lack of concern for quality. I don't expect that to change at all, and it's extremely common here, so I know I'm inviting a nice angry mob for pointing out the low standards of the community. Doesn't change what it is though.

Even crappy mass market paperbacks are light years ahead of ebooks in quality.

Addendum: This is sad. I'm not half the snob that Ahi is. Why should I have to do all this typographic snob stuff?

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

That guy is simply trolling.
He say that a screen is "too small to read on" even if he hasn't even tried one. As if there have never been books with 4", 3" and even 2" diagonal printed through the history of publishing (I remember a series of "pocket thrillers" published in Italy that could fit the small pocket of your jeans, and people indeed bought and read them).

The last picture he posted, also, smells like trolling from a mile. What is "sad" about having a device 5" diagonal?

The market allows you to choose among 9" devices, 8" devices, 7.1" devices, 6" devices and 5" devices. You are free to choose what suits you best, you just have to decide if you value reading space more than portability or vice versa. Do you want to read on large screens? The kindle DX is there for you, go buy one.

If you call me sad for my choice, I call you intellectually impaired for your lack of education.

(My reading device actually has a 6" screen and not a 5" screen, but I am considering buying a smaller one for increased portability)

Don't be so quick to call someone a troll. He's skeptical of the usability of such a device.

Further, e-ink screens are sufficiently low quality to make displaying the fine typefaces you get for pocket books quite a bit harder. I have successfully done a few books with 8 point typefaces, but getting much smaller is problematic visually, and the stout aspect ratio of the screen means that word spacing is harder to keep pleasant with small typefaces without a lot of additional hyphenation.

In trying to typeset for e-ink screens, I have bumped into a good number of frustrations myself. Forced margins in the display conflicts heavily with the device design, but lack of margins conflicts with widow-orphan removal. The squat aspect ratio means there's less room to play around with spacing, and short lines can be more irritating.

It's all a series of tradeoffs that have to be negotiated. Almost all net results are at a slight disadvantage though.

Further, with some languages, an open book is effectively a single page. When reading a vertically typeset Chinese book, for instance, 2 pages work together as effectively one broad page. This is really quite hard to simulate on a single-screen device like an ebook reader, and the screen overall is too small for a lot of publishing-quality books. Sure, it can be used...but it's so far from ideal that many people find it somewhat unpleasant.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Margins, and especially vertical margins, serve a valuable function in proper typesetting. The abysmal standards of ebook readers don't change that.

I have margins on my PRS-505 about 5pt around the entire screen then about 1/2 inch of silver surrounding that.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

I have margins on my PRS-505 about 5pt around the entire screen then about 1/2 inch of silver surrounding that.

Thus far I've found my best method has been to set a 2-4pt margin and employ different techniques to reduce the nasty gap that occurs when a widow or orphan emerges. Perhaps I'll take some screens for example.

The horizontal bezel works fine when the dominant function of the horizontal margin is to allow finger gripping. I usually leave an optical margin for things like punctuation, but otherwise use the whole width of the screen.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Further, with some languages, an open book is effectively a single page. When reading a vertically typeset Chinese book, for instance, 2 pages work together as effectively one broad page. This is really quite hard to simulate on a single-screen device like an ebook reader, and the screen overall is too small for a lot of publishing-quality books. Sure, it can be used...but it's so far from ideal that many people find it somewhat unpleasant.

Learn something new every day. If I understand you correctly something like the PRS-900 in landscape mode may be well suited to the reading needs of some of our Chinese friends.

It is clear you are versed in the art of typesetting. The one area where the ebook far exceeds the printed book for quality of reading is in its ability to change font size. I read 82 books last year. The year before maybe 8. The difference is the increased comfort I have experienced with flexible fonts in a standard book size package. For me, not having to wear my reading glasses far surpasses any gain from a beautifully formatted book with a 8pt font.

Large print editions are available but they are usually large books as well.

Thanks for your input

&

[Lo Zeno]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Don't be so quick to call someone a troll. He's skeptical of the usability of such a device.

My experience (but I admit that it can be a limited and "lucky" experience) is that skeptics ask questions, such as "but isn't it annoying to turn page a lot because of the small screen size" or "isn't the font too small to read comfortably" and similar questions. I have never seen someone who is skeptical about something (anything, not only reading devices) just throwing sentences like "a sad picture for those who have 5 inches devices".

As long as I read him ask things like "do I read this right? How is it possible to read comfortably on such small devices?", I simply considered him uninformed. Which is fine: everyone is uninformed until they find a source of information.
But the picture of the small notepad with the ruler on it, sounds to me like "hey look, in case no one of you ever noticed, you're just reading on a small notepad! And I noticed it even before trying." That, and the use of the word "sad", as if we should regret a carefully planned purchase.
Because, by reading this forum, I noticed that people spend a lot of time asking, searching, comparing and trying (when possible) devices before throwing a couple of hundred bucks (if not more) into a purchase.

But now he makes assumptions before even trying something: that's one step beyond skepticism, at the very least.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

The squat aspect ratio means there's less room to play around with spacing,

That's why I like my JE-100 actually. It's longer, so I'm playing with (especially) chapter headers for it. I have more room and thus more playing room.

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

It's all a series of tradeoffs that have to be negotiated. Almost all net results are at a slight disadvantage though.

Oh, I agree. Which is why I will still buy the hardcovers and trade paperbacks and bring the electronic version with me for reading. Maybe I read different kind of books than you, but I don't care one bit how my copy of, let's say, "Shogun" looks like. As long as I can read the story I love. All those tradeoffs you mentioned will never weigh more than the ease of use the electronic version gives me.

Originally Posted by =LDBoblo

That's simply justifying a lack of concern for quality

No, it's not a lack of concern for quality. It's a different form of quality. The emphasis in ebooks is not on typesetting, I agree, but on the story. In paper books it's on both. If I bought a paper book, with the lack of typesetting that is common for ebooks, I'd return it (if I had even bought it) even though I might have enjoyed the story greatly. But, for my electronic reading, I prefer ease of use over beautiful typeset books.