Firmware update for PRS-500 available - EPUB!

[Abecedary]

You guys are funny. All this talk about why justification on most readers is terrible and not a single one of you experts has mentioned the single largest factor -- most readers don't have hyphenation algorithms (the H in H&J -- there's a reason why they go together). Being able to move blocks of 2, 3, 4+ letters to short lines would make a huge difference in the word spacing problem.

Also, many of you seem to be hung up on kerning. While kerning would come into play in some instances, tracking would have a much larger influence on the overall appearance (kerning refers to spacing between individual letter pairs, while tracking refers to the spacing over whole lines or blocks of letters).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Abecedary

You guys are funny. All this talk about why justification on most readers is terrible and not a single one of you experts has mentioned the single largest factor -- most readers don't have hyphenation algorithms (the H in H&J -- there's a reason why they go together). Being able to move blocks of 2, 3, 4+ letters to short lines would make a huge difference in the word spacing problem.

Also, many of you seem to be hung up on kerning. While kerning would come into play in some instances, tracking would have a much larger influence on the overall appearance (kerning refers to spacing between individual letter pairs, while tracking refers to the spacing over whole lines or blocks of letters).

You funny too!

I certainly don't know the technical terms from the printing world (kerning may not be the right term), but I do know that the control of spacing and "smoothing" the flow of the lines (in order to obtain full justification) has been optimized in print books but is far from it on e-readers. This inconsistent spacing when the software attempts to fully justify text is atrocious on every reader I've seen.

[MikeRo]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Resolution is not the only factor contributing to visual quality, there is anti-aliasing ("blurring" the staircase edge to make them look smooth), hinting (making sure all vertical lines in a font look the same, if that is what the designer meant), dithering (for images), etc. These are controlled by software (or maybe hardware chips), not by the screen.

Anti-aliasing and hinting were developed to deal with true low resolution devices. My point is that a device that has 200 dpi being read at 18 inches these fixes should not be necessary. Holding the PRS-300 2 inches from my eyes I could barely make out a hint of stair-casing at the smallest font in an LRF document. This was not in ideal lighting conditions - I'll try it in sunlight at some point.

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by Abecedary

You guys are funny. All this talk about why justification on most readers is terrible and not a single one of you experts has mentioned the single largest factor -- most readers don't have hyphenation algorithms (the H in H&J -- there's a reason why they go together). Being able to move blocks of 2, 3, 4+ letters to short lines would make a huge difference in the word spacing problem.

Also, many of you seem to be hung up on kerning. While kerning would come into play in some instances, tracking would have a much larger influence on the overall appearance (kerning refers to spacing between individual letter pairs, while tracking refers to the spacing over whole lines or blocks of letters).

In my defense, I mentioned it and then deleted it. Really! No, really!! It was originally part of my "fit as many words on a page" statement.

I don't know how books are printed, to be honest. Do they employ variable kerning or tracking? It doesn't look like it to me, but that could just mean they're doing a good job at it.

Pagemaker let you set tracking/kerning/font size/etc. anywhere, but I only changed the former two when I overflowed the column space in the Zine I worked on (font changes stuck out like a sore thumb). Changing kerning/tracking tended to look... obvious... against the rest of the article. Or changing it too much and applying it to the whole article also caused severely negative results.

Again, I am exceptionally skeptical of the claims about the causes of eye strain. But, as I said earlier, I am not going to deny that someone experiences it from a Reader if they say they do. It may be that some people are very sensitive to certain artifacts, and others aren't at all. Look up "DLP TV Rainbow" for a case study in how some people can enjoy a certain technology, while others can't.

I far prefer the LRF reading experience over the ePUB, particularly in the justified text arena. I don't think anyone claimed this, but I think it's implied that justification was left out due to eye strain. And I very much doubt they left out justification to mitigate eye strain... citations in my last post for causes of strain would bear this out.

-Pie

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by MikeRo

Anti-aliasing and hinting were developed to deal with true low resolution devices. My point is that a device that has 200 dpi being read at 18 inches these fixes should not be necessary. Holding the PRS-300 2 inches from my eyes I could barely make out a hint of stair-casing at the smallest font in an LRF document. This was not in ideal lighting conditions - I'll try it in sunlight at some point.

I pulled out a magnifying glass on PRS-500 to check this. The magnification is probably 10x (good magnifying glass!).

I can see both stair stepping and very mild anti-aliasing. Neither of these are visible to my naked eye (I have perfect vision in the one ). I was actually surprised to see the anti-aliasing because I find it so objectionable on my computer, I have it completely turned off. Glad to say I cannot see it when reading on my Reader!

All this to say that I did indeed verify that the two aforementioned artifacts do indeed exist on the Reader (PRS-500 in this case).

-Pie

[valkyriesound]

Sorry if I'm confused... is this update supposed to include support for adobe DRM so I can check out library books online like the new Sony readers can?

Thanks!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by valkyriesound

Sorry if I'm confused... is this update supposed to include support for adobe DRM so I can check out library books online like the new Sony readers can?

Thanks!

Yes.


.

[radius]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Resolution is not the only factor contributing to visual quality, there is anti-aliasing ("blurring" the staircase edge to make them look smooth), hinting (making sure all vertical lines in a font look the same, if that is what the designer meant), dithering (for images), etc. These are controlled by software (or maybe hardware chips), not by the screen.

Of course this is true, but on the other hand, the more dots you have to play with, the less you need to do any of the things you mention...

For example, early laser printers didn't use anti-aliasing, and the output from them looks fairly good. The e-readers have a slightly harder time of it though, probably because their pixels are very obviously square instead of analog blogs of physical toner fused together.

[radius]

Originally Posted by Abecedary

You guys are funny. All this talk about why justification on most readers is terrible and not a single one of you experts has mentioned the single largest factor -- most readers don't have hyphenation algorithms (the H in H&J -- there's a reason why they go together). Being able to move blocks of 2, 3, 4+ letters to short lines would make a huge difference in the word spacing problem.

Also, many of you seem to be hung up on kerning. While kerning would come into play in some instances, tracking would have a much larger influence on the overall appearance (kerning refers to spacing between individual letter pairs, while tracking refers to the spacing over whole lines or blocks of letters).

Not sure why you are saying "many" since there seem to be only two or three of us on each side of the discussion

Anyways, I thought the justification issue was implied. My main complaint is not enough words on each line, leading to very inconsistent spacing between words for fully justified text, and of course hyphenation would improve that immensely.

I'd still prefer to use smaller text though.

[radius]

Originally Posted by MikeRo

Anti-aliasing and hinting were developed to deal with true low resolution devices. My point is that a device that has 200 dpi being read at 18 inches these fixes should not be necessary. Holding the PRS-300 2 inches from my eyes I could barely make out a hint of stair-casing at the smallest font in an LRF document. This was not in ideal lighting conditions - I'll try it in sunlight at some point.

Ah! I didn't notice before that you have a PRS-300... If I remember correctly, the 300 packs the same number of pixels into a slightly smaller screen than the 500/505. Maybe the increased pixel density is just enough to make you happy. I'll have to try one in the store.

But on my machine, small font sizes are bothersome. Because of the anti-aliasing, some letters are composed almost entirely of grey pixels with few black ones. Also, if you look at places where glyphs come to a point, they look annoyingly blocky (e.g. the bottom of straight quotes). You can also see sometimes that the upright portion of some letters has a very obvious grey edge. Finally, the thinner diagonal on letters like v, w, and y looks pretty stair-stepped to me.

If you create a book using a delicate font, this is even more apparent.

[radius]

Originally Posted by valkyriesound

Sorry if I'm confused... is this update supposed to include support for adobe DRM so I can check out library books online like the new Sony readers can?

Thanks!

Just remember to both register* your PC's copy of Adobe Digital Editions, and then register* your device with ADE. People often forget one step or the other.

*I'm sure the word actually used isn't "register", but I'm away from my home PC and can't look it up.

Then you'll need to learn how to remove epub DRM and edit XHTML so you can increase the puny text size, and remove the gigantic margins that commercial publishers put on their books

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by radius

*I'm sure the word actually used isn't "register", but I'm away from my home PC and can't look it up.

It is called "authorize".

BOb

[MikeRo]

Originally Posted by radius

Ah! I didn't notice before that you have a PRS-300... If I remember correctly, the 300 packs the same number of pixels into a slightly smaller screen than the 500/505. Maybe the increased pixel density is just enough to make you happy. I'll have to try one in the store.

Oops, yes. I had assumed the 500/505 were also 200 dpi but they're not. They are 167 dpi. You might notice a difference between them and the 300. I picked the 300 over the 600 based on playing with each for about 2 minutes. I found the 300 easier to read, although I believe the difference is more due to the extra layer for the touchpad on the 600 as opposed to the difference in 167 dpi versus 200 dpi (the 600 is also 167 dpi).

[EatingPie]

Be interesting to try my magnifying glass on the 300 then. The difference between 167 dpi and 200 dpi is almost 20%. The anti aliasing may disappear completely, since it was so slight I had to look for it to see it. The stair-stepping (pixelization or pixel pattern), was readily evident.

I demoed the PRS-300, PRS-600 and PRS-500 side by side. I am absolutely convinced all the "degraded resolution" of the 600 is due to the touch screen overlay. While I loved the speed of the 600, I would pick a 300 over it in a second.

However, the 600's overlay may prove be a benefit for those who can see the AA/pixelization with the naked eye. The touch screen will very likely end up blending the artifacts away, much like the paper/ink example previously given.

-Pie

[Hellmark]

I've played with the 505, 300, 700 and 600, and yeah it is in the overlay. I also can see the anti aliasing without assistance, but it doesn't bother me.