11-15-2019, 05:45 PM | #1201 | |
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Not that I’m terribly surprised given your replies to David. Keep insisting that technical specs can make the word should mean must and other such absurdities. |
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11-15-2019, 07:28 PM | #1202 | |
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Please leave that barrow of red herrings at the door. |
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11-15-2019, 08:54 PM | #1203 | ||
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11-15-2019, 10:28 PM | #1204 | ||
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And please stop doing exactly what you accuse me of doing. You are interpreting "should" in this matter as "must". As I stated, I completely understand what "should" means. And I stand by my crude interpretation. I mean, it actually says this in the the definition of "should": Quote:
And it comes down to, what is a "valid reason". I have no real idea why Kobo decided not to do this, but, I assume they had what they considered were valid reasons. Whether I would agree is a separate matter. It's time to stop wasting our time arguing about this. You think I am reading this to weakly, and I think you are reading it to strongly. But, it isn't me you need to convince of this. If you really think this is a bug, you need to convince Kobo to fix it. |
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11-15-2019, 11:40 PM | #1205 | ||
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That’s the context of these documents. That’s the environment and the mindset for the people formulating them. No, it’s not an absolute “must” – but it’s considerably stronger than “get a note from Mom and we’ll let you slide.” When you (and others) water that down to “meh, it’s not absolutely required, so it’s technically optional,” you misrepresent the intent of the specs. Programmers are extremely wary of absolutes. We tend to avoid them, even in our documentation, because we know it’s a big wide world out there with a lot of weird situations. On occasion, exceptions need to be made, and 2119-should allows for that. No reputable programmer of my acquaintance would even consider breaking a should-level rule unless there really is no other option. Nothing about leaving monospace support out of a dedicated e-reader approaches that level. See, I look at those should-not-must exceptions I’ve cited and think, “what if someone’s writing an EPUB reader for an old PalmPilot?” Well, different fonts probably wouldn’t be an option there. Such an app would have to undergo some brutal cutting to be feasible, and in that context… yeah, map everything to the one available system font and ignore embeds. Sucks to do it, but there you go. How about non-visual rendering engines, like voice or Braille? Hard to speak in monospace or serif, but even then, I’d look into using different voices or inflections before caving and saying that there’s no way to obey the rule. Those are the sorts of “valid reasons in particular circumstances” that “should” means. Serious technical limitations… and those simply don’t exist in this case. Last edited by Rev. Bob; 11-15-2019 at 11:49 PM. |
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11-16-2019, 03:16 AM | #1206 |
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@Rev. Bob: I'm giving up. You are the one who is being insistent on following these standards. You are the one who is quoting what "should", which clearly allows for exceptions and insisting on the meaning. My opinion after reading this, Kobo are completely in their rights to decide how to implement this or whether to at all. They have their reasons, and unless they want to come here and tell us, we won't know what it is. The only thing I know is that it is a deliberate decision. And of course, they have actually implemented rendering of classes with "monospace" as their font face. Which is a "must". What they haven't done is to include an actual monospace font, which is allowed under the "should"
Personally, this is not a bug. At the most it is missing function. And, in my opinion, a pretty unimportant function. If you have more to say about this, please take it up with Kobo. Or with whoever controls these specs so that can go after Kobo for claiming support for EPUB and EPUB3 without actually following the specs. |
11-16-2019, 06:18 AM | #1207 | ||
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Please keep calm. Here we are all civilized people and there is no need to give an outburst.
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So the lack of support for monospace text is a bug. kobo can destroy well tested software, has the freedom of bugging the equipment, ignore the universally accepted rules and produce mediocre devices. But they must warn the buyer about the real value of his products. An "epub reader" is a device whose purpose is to render in a standard way any standard epub, and every person in good faith understands the sense of the standard. (font-family: monospace is standard) Kobo devices don't render standard ebooks, so they are not "epub reader" (but something else) or they are bugged. If someone needs a proper "ebook-reader", it is better to consult other manufacturers. For the record, two weeks ago I sent to kobo a formal report about monospaced font, but (till today) without any feedback. Last edited by PenguinCEO; 11-16-2019 at 06:24 AM. |
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11-16-2019, 07:09 AM | #1208 | ||||||
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11-16-2019, 09:13 AM | #1209 | |||||
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Last edited by PenguinCEO; 11-16-2019 at 09:16 AM. |
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11-16-2019, 09:46 AM | #1210 | ||||
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EPUBs are fundamentally simple things, although the details can and do get complex. They’re web pages wrapped up in a special package, with a few extensions and omissions for spice. I’ve been dealing with those standards for damned near a quarter-century. I’ve got my campaign ribbons from the Browser Wars, and I ran (read: maintained and rebuilt) a corporate website for nearly seven years. One of the first things any web geek learns is that there is no One True Rendering. The same document can look different on different platforms, or even on the same platform with different users, even if all of them are completely compliant with the standards. As a trivial example, Helvetica, Times, and Courier look different from Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New. A Mac using the former set will display a page differently than a Windows box using the latter, but both triples fall well within the CSS standard for sans-serif, serif, and monospace fonts. Neither set is “wrong” and many more compliant sets exist… all of which are “right.” Even if a designer controls for that by specifying and embedding specific fonts, there are countless other ways that multiple platforms can both be fully compliant with the standards AND yield different results. This is precisely why there are two basic schools of thought on web design. One school looks at CSS and says, “Great! Now I can control everything, right down to the pixel! My pages will look the same everywhere!” The other, to which I adhere, takes the opposite approach. In our view, it is best to respect the differences between compliant platforms, honor the choices made by individual users as much as possible, and serve them a page that works no matter what options they’ve changed… so long as those changes are within the specs. That latter viewpoint shines through over and over again in the specs that define the web (and, therefore, EPUBs). It is precisely because such wide variety exists that the fallbacks become really important, not to be broken lightly and preferably not to be violated at all. I know I’ve quoted it, so go back and look at how the CSS spec talks about the generic font families. Don’t just hunt for a phrase to support your viewpoint – read the paragraph. Notice the high value it places on preserving the author’s intent, and (yes, I’m about to say it again) consider the use of “should” over “may” in that context. That paragraph is telling developers to make their best efforts to implement this, and while some situations may make compromises unavoidable, for God’s sake be careful with them! And that’s why I say that Kobo’s omission of a monospace font is a bug. They licensed an engine which includes such a font: the Adobe RMSDK. Their hardware is demonstrably capable of rendering monospace. Their devices have ample memory to store the font. Even if it were a matter of licensing fees, there are monospace font families which are free for commercial use; a quick search yields several. Surely at least one of them is aesthetically acceptable and reasonably complete. Therefore, from a programming perspective, there is no justifiable reason for this omission. Therefore, given the RFC 2119 definition of “should” and the weight placed on conforming to authorial intent in the CSS 2.0 and 2.1 specs (for EPUB 2 and 3, respectively), this aspect of Kobo’s rendering engine is deficient to the point that it qualifies as a bug. As unusual as it may be for me to agree with JSWolf, he does get this right: Quote:
1. Existing Software X correctly accomplishes Task Y. 2. Manufacturer R licenses Software X for implementation on Platform K. 3. On Platform K, Software X fails at Task Y. 4. Therefore, Manufacturer R broke Software X when implementing it on Platform K. This breakage must be either deliberate or accidental. I am thoroughly unconvinced that a rational manufacturer would deliberately cripple this one aspect of their device; why would they? What purpose does it serve? Who benefits from the change, and how? That leaves only accidental breakage, otherwise known as… a bug. Last edited by Rev. Bob; 11-16-2019 at 09:50 AM. |
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11-16-2019, 11:53 AM | #1211 | |
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11-16-2019, 03:15 PM | #1212 | |
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11-16-2019, 05:47 PM | #1213 | ||
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Extra cost would certainly be a reason on devices with already thin profit margins, at least to a business. To the end consumer maybe not, but we're not the one making the decision. |
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11-16-2019, 08:17 PM | #1214 | |||
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And, we obviously aren't going to agree on this, so lets stop. |
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11-16-2019, 09:04 PM | #1215 | |||||||
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But, I am usually coding in a corporate environment where I tend to not code to standards like this. Except as a consumer of API or data packet of some sort and need to work out what is in it, what is supposed to be in it and how to handle the fact that nothing seems to actually follow standards. Or deliberately use the loopholes. And this includes corporations that publish specs of what theirs software or devices do but don't actually stick to it. Quote:
And to the mods, I'll stop after this post. Quote:
And honestly, don't you think the Kobo developers know all this? They made the decision years ago not to do this. They obviously haven't seen a reason to change that decision. Quote:
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Last edited by davidfor; 11-17-2019 at 08:11 AM. |
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