Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book General > General Discussions

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 02-01-2013, 01:47 PM   #16
VaultBoy
Addict
VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.VaultBoy ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
VaultBoy's Avatar
 
Posts: 206
Karma: 1683142
Join Date: Nov 2012
Device: Kindle of many shapes, PIPBoy 3000
Mature enough, but plenty of room for improvement.
VaultBoy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2013, 03:53 PM   #17
Jozawun
Fanatic
Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Jozawun ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Jozawun's Avatar
 
Posts: 519
Karma: 2693434
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Australia
Device: Cybook Gen 3, Pocketbook 902, Sony 650
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zetmolm View Post
You want the dust jacket scanned? Why? An ebook needs no protection from dust.
As long as we think of ebooks in terms of copies of pbooks and not as an independent medium they will never be mature.
Which, of course, is why the so-called "cover" is nothing but a useless waste of space.
Jozawun is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2013, 04:40 PM   #18
4691mls
Wizard
4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.4691mls ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 2,776
Karma: 30081762
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: US
Device: ALL DEVICES ARE STOCK: Kobo Clara, Tolino Shine 2, Sony PRS-T3, T1
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jozawun View Post
Which, of course, is why the so-called "cover" is nothing but a useless waste of space.
I don't need fancy "covers" for ebooks. I only ever see them as thumbnails on my eink black-and-white reader. I've had a few library ebooks that just have the author and title as the cover page, and that worked fine for me.
4691mls is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-01-2013, 05:05 PM   #19
Ripplinger
350 Hoarder
Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Ripplinger ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Ripplinger's Avatar
 
Posts: 3,574
Karma: 8281267
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Midwest USA
Device: Sony PRS-350, Kobo Glo & Glo HD, PW2
I agree with HarryT. All of the examples are due to poor standards, lack of adequate proofing and corrections.

I don't think it's a case of ebooks not reaching maturity yet as much as publishers not reaching maturity yet in how to handle ebooks and create them as meticulously as they should be created.

Edit: I enjoy a nice-looking cover, even if it's in black and white because I set the cover image as my standby screen on my reader, which I really like to see when I pick up my reader. Those images can be compressed nicely though without showing any quality loss as long as the publisher gets someone to do it who knows what they're doing and doesn't either include a huge image that's 300KB in size and is a waste of space, or a badly pixelated image that looks horrid.

Last edited by Ripplinger; 02-01-2013 at 05:09 PM.
Ripplinger is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-02-2013, 09:03 PM   #20
mnha
Junior Member
mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.mnha calls his or her ebook reader Vera.
 
Posts: 9
Karma: 64614
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Germany
Device: Kindle 4S; Paperwhite 2012; Nexus 7.2; Galaxy Note 10.1 2014
Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin View Post
I respectully disagree that the format has any issues at all. In fact, the format is so mature that those who feel that they have to improve it to justify their existence are trying to shoehorn more and more useless crap in to it, to make it more like a multi-media web page (yeah, I'm looking at you, EPUB3).
You know, I'm a serial lurker and really shouldn't go controversial in my very first post, but ... I'm not into introductions and have to disagree. I actually think there isn't a single layer of the whole ebook publishing format (meaning as in "channel format"[1]) which doesn't have issues.

Competing open and proprietary file formats, built on top of ever-changing standards, with multiple proprietary drm schemes and mathematical typesetting somehow quirked on--that's a makeshift solution. It undoubtedly works and is fine for volatile media, but I'm not so sure it's adequate for books, which tend to outlast the average twitter junk of the day. Slightly.

On the device side: limited support for proper microtypography, not even trying to avoid cardinal sins like widows and orphans. The result is readable, but very little else. The dead tree books are far more refined. Doesn't mean I don't like ebooks, just that some minor flogging in the right places might improve the experience.

Worse, it's in the publishers' best interest to "enrich" content, because static text is just sooo hard to sell to the masses. Given your obvious love for epub3, I suspect you might agree this is an upcoming issue with the ebook publishing format, especially with the brick and mortar type publishers slowly going extinct. For bibliophiles, anyway.

Cheers.
--mario
_______
[1]: Sorry, non-native speaker, sometimes hard to be precise without annotations.
mnha is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-02-2013, 09:12 PM   #21
DarkScribe
Apprentice Curmudgeon.
DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.DarkScribe ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
DarkScribe's Avatar
 
Posts: 427
Karma: 3286968
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Runaway Bay, QLD, , Australia
Device: Kindle DX Graphite, Touch, Paperwhite, Sony, and Nook.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Julius Caesar View Post
I think eBook format is far from mature due to current problems I noticed:

1. Books that contain pictures and diagrams may be poorly transferred at low resolution and may cause ugly pixelated graphics for mathematical notation (even very simple stuff like "¼").

2. Scanning may make a mistake that doesn't exist in the printed format. For example 1" being replaced with "i", words may get chopped off and combined with other words.

3. Many books contain end notes and foot notes that are not properly linked. You have to manually flip back and forth which is very cumbersome for an eBook.

4. Original artwork from the cover are often replaced by an ugly generic cover.

5. Dust jacket and back covers are not scanned.

6. The fact that there is no single acceptable format that works for every e-reader. The most common format, ePub, does not work for the Kindle. Books bought from an online book store may not work with another eReader without hacking.

eBook has been in the market for 5 years if not longer. How much longer can we expect before eBook format becomes fully mature?

I know not all eBooks have this problem. Newer eBooks published in 2012 and later may have less problems but what really irritates me is publishers are often rushing to make a profit by scanning their books quickly, selling them quickly without bothering to check for errors. And there is no guarantee that contacting them would do any good.
There are some eBooks that are flawless in presentation. That should make it apparent to anyone with a functioning intellect that the problem is not with the format but with the connection between the chair and the keyboard.

The majority of published eBooks comes from amateur writers, not experienced publishing houses. You might as well complain that the cakes you bought at a school fete are not equal to those from the best Patisserie in Paris.
DarkScribe is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-02-2013, 10:50 PM   #22
Freeshadow
temp. out of service
Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Freeshadow ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 2,787
Karma: 24285242
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Duisburg (DE)
Device: PB 623
Quote:
Originally Posted by mnha View Post
You know, I'm a serial lurker and really shouldn't go controversial in my very first post, but ... I'm not into introductions and have to disagree. I actually think there isn't a single layer of the whole ebook publishing format (meaning as in "channel format"[1]) which doesn't have issues.

Competing open and proprietary file formats, built on top of ever-changing standards, with multiple proprietary drm schemes and mathematical typesetting somehow quirked on--that's a makeshift solution. It undoubtedly works and is fine for volatile media, but I'm not so sure it's adequate for books, which tend to outlast the average twitter junk of the day. Slightly.

On the device side: limited support for proper microtypography, not even trying to avoid cardinal sins like widows and orphans. The result is readable, but very little else. The dead tree books are far more refined. Doesn't mean I don't like ebooks, just that some minor flogging in the right places might improve the experience.

Worse, it's in the publishers' best interest to "enrich" content, because static text is just sooo hard to sell to the masses. Given your obvious love for epub3, I suspect you might agree this is an upcoming issue with the ebook publishing format, especially with the brick and mortar type publishers slowly going extinct. For bibliophiles, anyway.

Cheers.
--mario
_______
[1]: Sorry, non-native speaker, sometimes hard to be precise without annotations.
Exactly. Currently a huge amount of - especially typographical - techniques is blissfully ignored by both device and file format deciders.
Freeshadow is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-02-2013, 11:11 PM   #23
toddos
Guru
toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.toddos ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
toddos's Avatar
 
Posts: 695
Karma: 822675
Join Date: May 2010
Device: Kobo Aura, Nokia Lumia 920 (Freda)
Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkScribe View Post
The majority of published eBooks comes from amateur writers, not experienced publishing houses. You might as well complain that the cakes you bought at a school fete are not equal to those from the best Patisserie in Paris.
More precisely, the majority of published ebooks come from amateur writers without professional editing and typesetting (yes, this is still needed for ebooks). Most of the rest are back catalog books that are rush-scanned and not edited (where you get 1 <-> l swaps, inserted page numbers mid-paragraph, odd line breaks, etc) or by lazy shops that just publish the PDF that they'd otherwise send to the printer rather than formatting for ebook (thankfully this is happening less and less often, though it's still the norm for technical books).

As you say, it's certainly possible to make high quality, gorgeous-looking ebooks. Unfortunately, that costs time, and time = money.
toddos is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2013, 06:48 AM   #24
kennyc
The Dank Side of the Moon
kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
kennyc's Avatar
 
Posts: 35,872
Karma: 118716293
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Denver, CO
Device: Kindle2; Kindle Fire
Quote:
Originally Posted by DustyDisks View Post
Then it is my mistake and ignorance, you have removed the 'veil' from my eyes!
Careful, this might get moved to the P&R forum....
kennyc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2013, 07:09 AM   #25
fjtorres
Grand Sorcerer
fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.fjtorres ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 11,732
Karma: 128354696
Join Date: May 2009
Location: 26 kly from Sgr A*
Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000
Quote:
Originally Posted by mnha View Post
On the device side: limited support for proper microtypography, not even trying to avoid cardinal sins like widows and orphans.
eBook typography rules and controls belong in the reading app, not in the file format, simply because the file knows nothing of the rendering device (Screen size, resolution, aspect, etc).

A good reading app *should* have embedded algorithmic rules for white space, line spacing, widows/orphans, and even formatting style (Via templates). But that stuff is *hard* to code. So, at best, we get hyphenation and user-set margins and spacing and at worse none of the above or one-size fits all typography.

Going back to the days of the now-deprecated but still mourned MS Reader app we can find better embedded typographic rules than in most modern reading apps.

Now, that is just the theoretical typographical purist critique.
The real world reality is that mainstream consumers don't care about typographical issues as long as they can set reasonable font sizes and the available font families aren't aggresively ugly.

For the ebook market of today, the formats are mre than adequate and the reading apps acceptable. There might be an opportunity for one of the payers to gain a minor competitive advantage by offering quality dynamic typography in their reading app but impact is likely so small there are higher-priorities at Amazon and Apple.

What we have isn't perfect but it's good enough for the market.
fjtorres is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2013, 02:46 PM   #26
taustin
Wizard
taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 1,358
Karma: 5766642
Join Date: Aug 2010
Device: Nook
Quote:
Originally Posted by mnha View Post
Worse, it's in the publishers' best interest to "enrich" content, because static text is just sooo hard to sell to the masses. Given your obvious love for epub3, I suspect you might agree this is an upcoming issue with the ebook publishing format, especially with the brick and mortar type publishers slowly going extinct. For bibliophiles, anyway.
To me, "enriched content" means "it's not a book any more." It's a web page. A multimedia web page. I have zero interest in a book with animated GIFs and blinking text, and music that plays automatically. Especially there is no chance that those will not be used predominately for advertising.

Turning ebooks in to multimedia web pages will only amount to abandoning the book market. At which point independent publishers (mostly self-published authors, I suspect) will rush to fill. Poorly, for the most part, but hey, Sturgeon was an optomist.
taustin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2013, 02:50 PM   #27
taustin
Wizard
taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.taustin ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 1,358
Karma: 5766642
Join Date: Aug 2010
Device: Nook
Quote:
Originally Posted by toddos View Post
Most of the rest are back catalog books that are rush-scanned and not edited (where you get 1 <-> l swaps, inserted page numbers mid-paragraph, odd line breaks, etc) or by lazy shops that just publish the PDF that they'd otherwise send to the printer rather than formatting for ebook
I'd be happy if the OCR errors at least involved a spell checker. I just finished a book where every single instance of "little" (the book used the word "little" a lot) ended up "litde." While that was the most common error, it was not the only one by a long shot.
taustin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2013, 02:51 PM   #28
kennyc
The Dank Side of the Moon
kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.kennyc ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
kennyc's Avatar
 
Posts: 35,872
Karma: 118716293
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Denver, CO
Device: Kindle2; Kindle Fire
Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin View Post
To me, "enriched content" means "it's not a book any more." It's a web page. A multimedia web page. I have zero interest in a book with animated GIFs and blinking text, and music that plays automatically. Especially there is no chance that those will not be used predominately for advertising.

Turning ebooks in to multimedia web pages will only amount to abandoning the book market. At which point independent publishers (mostly self-published authors, I suspect) will rush to fill. Poorly, for the most part, but hey, Sturgeon was an optomist.
Agreed.
kennyc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2013, 07:18 PM   #29
solitarywolf
Ink Drinker
solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.solitarywolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
solitarywolf's Avatar
 
Posts: 217
Karma: 347666
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: San Francisco, CA
Device: Kindle Scribe, Kindle 2021, Ipad Pro, iPhone Pro
What I would like to see is some standardization of page numbering, translations by ... corrected and the proper publication dates of when the book was physically printed and/or converted into ebook format. I get frustrated when I am looking for a specific translation of a classic work.
solitarywolf is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2013, 07:21 PM   #30
JSWolf
Resident Curmudgeon
JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.JSWolf ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
JSWolf's Avatar
 
Posts: 73,660
Karma: 127838196
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts
Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freeshadow View Post
Exactly. Currently a huge amount of - especially typographical - techniques is blissfully ignored by both device and file format deciders.
You cannot blame the format for typographic techniques being ignored. You have to blame the software used for reading.
JSWolf is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
mature in age, new to vox maggiek Introduce Yourself 5 12-02-2011 01:12 PM
Ebook in PRC format will not convert to any other format Katelyn Calibre 0 10-01-2010 07:02 PM
Master Format for multi-format eBook Generation? cerement Workshop 43 04-01-2009 12:00 PM
Paper No Longer A Mature Technology? Bob Russell News 1 08-12-2005 09:15 PM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 12:50 AM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.