i Loathe ePub...

[Apache]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I can manage it on a treadmill. But outside? With uneven terrain and obstacles? It'd be the hospital (if not the morgue) for me if I attempted it.

I do not think I could even walk on a tread mill while reading. My brain is literally disconnected from my physical body, except for the involuntary processes.
Apache

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Allow me to clarify that I like both a first line indentation (1.5em is my default setting) and a small separation.

My preference is a small separation (around 1/2 of a line) between the paragraphs with no first-line indent since it clearly indicates what is a paragraph. However, I don't have a problem with the common first-line indent but I dislike it when combined with a separation between the paragraphs. For me, it is one or the other but not both since that is redundant.

I think a reason the first-line indent has been used is to reduce the number of pages in a book. With physical books this is a consideration, as is the number of pages. My understanding is that due to the requirements of printing the number of pages in a book is always some factor of four, so formatting that results in one extra printed page ends up with an additional three blank pages. With e-book the number of pages is not an issue, thus formatting that increases the number of pages isn't a concern.

[radius]

Originally Posted by Dutchbook

This is simply not possible with ePub.

I am in totally in agreement with you that many publishers don't seem to care enough about typesetting, but surely you admit this statement is completely over the top?

Also, your work flow could really be collapsed into:
- download
- edit with Sigil
- view on device

One issue with embedded fonts in epubs, I find, is that many readers don't display them very attractively. Comparing against an iPad, Apple's font rendering blows away every eink reader I've ever seen. Unfortunately, iBooks is a little too simple as a reading app for my taste (and of course, there is the whole LCD vs eink thing).

[radius]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

You mean that when you die, you'll still look around for an ebook reader?

Why else store all your books in "the cloud"?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by radius

I am in totally in agreement with you that many publishers don't seem to care enough about typesetting, but surely you admit this statement is completely over the top?

Also, your work flow could really be collapsed into:
- download
- edit with Sigil
- view on device

One issue with embedded fonts in epubs, I find, is that many readers don't display them very attractively. Comparing against an iPad, Apple's font rendering blows away every eink reader I've ever seen. Unfortunately, iBooks is a little too simple as a reading app for my taste (and of course, there is the whole LCD vs eink thing).

I have an iPad and I disagree about Apple's font rendering being the best. Kobo's font rendering is also very good. My H2O renders very well. The one thing LCD is better at is some fonts that are too light on eInk but work on LCD. Some fonts don't work well on LCD or eInk and Adobe Garamond Pro is one of those fonts that get embedded that don't work well on LCD or eInk.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm talking about people letting things like font-choices, or indent-sizes, hyphenation/justification choices trip them up. I simply can't relate. Clearly delineated paragraphs and a minimum of syntactical and/or spelling errors are all I require to give great ideas and memorable stories/characters safe passage to my brain.

Almost no publisher in the past 20 years would settle for that low of a bar for a hardback print book, so why do we have to settle for an ebook?

Font choice is the #1 thing that I feel that publishers screw up. They shouldn't actually choose a body font, as the reader software allows the user to pick that, but if they do, they need to choose with the same care they did for print books. That doesn't mean the same font...differences in the rendering device means different criteria in picking a font.

Instead, most pick the first free-to-distribute font they can find (usually Charis) and end it. It would be different if fonts were expensive, but they aren't. There are probably over 100K great fonts that license for less than $50 per ebook title they are embedded in, and still a large number for less than $20 per title.

As for the rest of your list, again, just use the same care and thought you used when creating the print book.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

Almost no publisher in the past 20 years would settle for that low of a bar for a hardback print book, so why do we have to settle for an ebook?

Simple. Because many of us don't consider it "settling" for anything. Let alone think of it as some sort of "bar" being set. It's fine that others are wont to dwell on these details and consider them somehow intrinsic to their enjoyment of a particular piece of work, but I fail to see how those same people can't seem to grasp the concept that many others simply don't—and are not illiterate, intellectually-challenged cretins for not doing so. I consider the ability to ignore formatting (fonts, indent, line-spacing and the like—not rampant misspellings and/or grammatical errors) while focusing on the story to be quite the blessing, actually. One less thing to get in the way of an enjoyable story (which has always been the only part of a book that holds any intrinsic value for me). I have never consoled myself with the knowledge that a book I didn't like "sure looked purty." *shrug*

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by Dutchbook

Hello all,

As you might or might not be aware, I'm quite new to the joys of E-ink. However, I immediately remembered why I didn't bother before: ePub

I like to download a book, formatted by the specification by the writer or publisher, and just read it.

This is simply not possible with ePub.

Not even mentioning the DRM that makes buying an ebook from an independent store as pleasant as shoving a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire up there, it also makes for a ridiculous adventure trying to format the damn thing.

Example:
This is an excerpt from the PDF preview of the book. Notice the soft serif font? the size of the letters, formatted perfectly with the rest to create a readable and pleasant viewing experience?
https://imgur.com/kk8J9Wl

Murdered by the Kobo App...
https://imgur.com/jOUEmAI

After half an hour of work, and Kobo's proprietary "TsukuMin" font, I got something which was reasonable out of it
https://imgur.com/FSCgAm8

But then, Calibre struck!
https://imgur.com/Ga5WrdZ

Another hour fiddling with Calibre...
https://imgur.com/wL9mv52

Just look how far that is from what the publisher intended.

But ok, it is somewhat legible, so lets use the 'Print to PDF' option.

And the end result: https://imgur.com/PoPWkcS

Really? REALLY?

In the past, Kobo offered to download a PDF of ebooks, but now I'm stuck with a book collection that requires me to format every.effing.book.myself and try to make it readable. Who in their right mind came up with such a horrible system?

Boy, I really wonder why e-reader sales collapsed!

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see what is wrong with any of those images. Some of them, I can see differences, but they are all perfectly readable to me.

The only thing that bugs me with my books is that for some reason my Kobo doesn't like using my monospace don't for code samples in tech books. Even that, I've been living with so far, but it is annoying. (I have a few workarounds in Calibre, but they are a bit of work, so I don't always bother with them, especially since some workarounds have to be applied each time the device updates, and it appears that another step might need to be redone sometimes after Calibre updates....

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

Almost no publisher in the past 20 years would settle for that low of a bar for a hardback print book, so why do we have to settle for an ebook?

Font choice is the #1 thing that I feel that publishers screw up. They shouldn't actually choose a body font, as the reader software allows the user to pick that, but if they do, they need to choose with the same care they did for print books. That doesn't mean the same font...differences in the rendering device means different criteria in picking a font.

Instead, most pick the first free-to-distribute font they can find (usually Charis) and end it. It would be different if fonts were expensive, but they aren't. There are probably over 100K great fonts that license for less than $50 per ebook title they are embedded in, and still a large number for less than $20 per title.

As for the rest of your list, again, just use the same care and thought you used when creating the print book.

What the publishers are trying to do is duplicate the print version as best they can and so they use the same fonts. Granted that most of the fonts used in print don't work well with eInk. But that doesn't seem to concern the publishers. Usually I leave the fonts except for the main font and just use my choice. Sometimes you see the font families in the CSS without the actual fonts being embedded. I remove those as sometimes they can cause the reading software to not work to change the font.

[Hellmark]

The problem isn't with the format, but the implementation by the publisher.

You can have really nice looking epubs if you know what you're doing. Some publishers don't even really try (you especially notice on older books that were recently digitized). Hell, I can't tell you the number of books that I've bought that had tons of OCR errors. Hell one book was a reference book, and every place that had a scanned image of a historical text was a place holder image saying that the image wasn't allowed due to copyright concern (despite the newest scanned document included in the book being over 300 years old). I reach out to the publisher, and no response. I tracked down the author, and he was able to rip into the publisher and get them to produce a version that wasn't useless (between a third to a half of the book was all reference images, and everything else referred to those images).

You're at the mercy of the publisher, and hope they give a damn about quality.