i Loathe ePub...

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

In the time it took you to write a bellyache, studded with profanity, about your own personal dislikes...

What else is the internet for?

I agree that all the images seemed readable to me. The failures seem to be the publishers, not the format. But that post seems rude to the OP, in my humble opinion.

[JSWolf]

To me it sounds like the OP is frustrated because he doesn't know HTML/CSS well enough.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

To me it sounds like the OP is frustrated because he doesn't know HTML/CSS well enough.

Is that really invalid? I'd be pretty frustrated if I ordered carryout Chinese and got a live chicken, a bottle of soy sauce and some chopsticks.

[SleepyBob]

Rant deleted.

[Katsunami]

To some extent, the OP is right.

When it comes to digital products:
- Many consumers are of the opinion that they should be free.
- Many producers are of the opinion that 'barely usable' is good enough.

Both aren't true. Would you accept a paper book printed on toilet paper held together by a few staples? No? But you can read it, can't you? Well, it's the same for an e-book. While I understand an e-book will never have the pretty layout of a print book (it shouldn't, and even couldn't, because it has to be usable on many different devices), I would at least expect a _decent_ layout. Some publishers, especially in the 2008-2012 years seemed to think that a Word-to-EPUB conversion is OK, whatever the result is, and that's just not good enough.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

and that's just not good enough.

It would appear that's not the pervasive opinion among ebook adopters ("collapse" of the e-reader market mentioned by the OP notwithstanding).

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

To some extent, the OP is right.

When it comes to digital products:
- Many consumers are of the opinion that they should be free.
- Many producers are of the opinion that 'barely usable' is good enough.

Both aren't true.

Exactly! Both are opinions. Opinions are neither true nor untrue, by definition.

The first ebooks I read were in plain text, long before there were commercial ebooks. There was absolutely no formatting of any kind other than spaces and new lines. They were read in a reader less capable by far than Notepad. They were simply scrolling lines of text. Initially the lines were each terminated with a newline because there was no word wrap. Fortunately the screens were all the same size.

I read a lot of books this way very happily.

By the way, Gutenberg.org, which was begun by the inventor of ebooks, distributed books in this format for years before more sophisticated methods became available.

Yes it's nice to have good formatting and I'm really glad we do. But any format will do for a good book. It's the content that matters.

Barry

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

It would appear that's not the pervasive opinion among ebook adopters ("collapse" of the e-reader market mentioned by the OP notwithstanding).

There are also those who don't care for quality, as long as the product is cheap. I know people who were delighted with a Bluetooth speaker streaming audio from their smartphone in their living room... until they listened to my audio system. That is just a medium range setup; It's good stuff (all be it 10 years old at the moment), but I'm not the kind of audiophile who throws away money on cables costing €500 a yard.

I don't need (or want, because of cost) the very pinnacle of quality, but I am of the opinion that a lot of products being sold are sub-par, by a lot, including e-books.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by barryem

...
Yes it's nice to have good formatting and I'm really glad we do. But any format will do for a good book. It's the content that matters.

I'd probably never have read a single book the way you did.

I even never use Gutenberg because of the lack of layout. I barely use IMSLP (Gutenberg's counterpart for Classical / Public Domain sheet music), because most editions that are up there are not good enough, print quality-wise, and with regard to correctness.

If the layout and/or quality of an electronic book is too bad, it detracts from reading the content.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I don't need (or want, because of cost) the very pinnacle of quality, but I am of the opinion that a lot of products being sold are sub-par, by a lot, including e-books.

But you're only qualified to make that determination for yourself. You declaring it "sub par" does not actually make it so. Nor does it mean others who don't agree with you value cheapness more than quality. It only means your definition of quality is different than others, not better. Favoring the quality of the content over the presentation of the content is not a flaw. In fact I believe it might often be an advantage. "Can't see the forest for the trees" comes to mind. Regardless ... typography sensitivity is obviously a hit or miss phenomenon among readers--avid or otherwise.

EDIT: I'm not talking about hideous incompetence when creating an ebook, by the way. 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.

[Philippe D.]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If the layout and/or quality of an electronic book is too bad, it detracts from reading the content.

Agreed - and what is acceptable, quite clearly, depends a lot on the individual reader.

Poorly-used (not necessarily bad) word processing software has, in a sense, changed many peoples' expectations when in comes to typographic quality in a written document.

[Cinisajoy]

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!

Hello, if it was me and I couldn't stand the way someone did something, I would do my best never to support them. I would not buy anything from them. You gave them money for what you consider a bad product. This means they can make more product and maybe they will cut more corners. By all means, please keep supporting them because they need your money worse than you do.
If you don't like something, don't buy it. If you don't give them money, maybe they will change their ways. Long as they are getting your money, they don't care what you think.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by HarryT

And what happens when you want to switch between reading on a 6" eInk device and a 10" tablet? You're stuck with a PDF that's optimised for either one screen or the other; you can't optimise it for both.

I prefer PDFs for my Egyptology reference works which I read on my 10.5" iPad, but a reflowable format is far better for fiction, to my mind.

Reflowable PDFs are possible as is renderer clients that handle them.

On an eink device the only possible change may to use landscape orientation.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

But you're only qualified to make that determination for yourself. You declaring it "sub par" does not actually make it so. Nor does it mean others who don't agree with you value cheapness more than quality. It only means your definition of quality is different than others, not better. Favoring the quality of the content over the presentation of the content is not a flaw. In fact I believe it might often be an advantage. "Can't see the forest for the trees" comes to mind. Regardless ... typography sensitivity is obviously a hit or miss phenomenon among readers--avid or otherwise.

EDIT: I'm not talking about hideous incompetence when creating an ebook, by the way. 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.

I think we actually agree. The things I require in an ebook are:

- A good TOC
- No spelling errors or strung-together words (missing spaces)
- Chapter headings (if any)
- Scene markers (white line, ***, a glyph, whatever)

So, the basics of what you would expect in a paperback. E-books are quite good nowadays, but up until 2014 or so, I've encountered my fair share of crap, even when buying a book from one of the big publishers.

Believe it or not, but one of the best publishers of e-books I've encountered is Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast, with their Forgotten Realms e-books. They've been top notch for years and years, at least as good as their paperbacks. When opening one of their files, it actually feels like a digital version of their paper book, instead of just a wall of text.

[Blossom]

I love epub. I started out with PDF, then moved to lit from there it was fb2 and finally mobi. Switching to epub was like going from b/w to full color. There was so much formatting I missed. I still prefer my own font but epub has drop caps which mobi never supported.

Sent from my XT1528