First Impressions of the M218A Ebook Reader

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by tompe

Of course it depends a bit on the typ size. But what they have done is sacrificed the right justification for specific lines if you cannot justify without getting holes.

but in that case, isn't it the same thing as left-aligned text ? why not just do that from the start ? that way, you can use the typeface you want, at whatever size you want, and you have no worries about holes in the text.

Well, for the standard TeX font for example you need 600dpi at least since it has thin hairlines (or what you call them). It does not look prefect using 300 dpi.

what uses is this font designed for ? professional printers offer 300dpi ; it's the industry standard. i have never had a reason to look for higher, so i don't know if it's even available, but i really cannot imagine a case where 300dpi would not be good enough, with the exception of printing the "invisible (or at least illegible) to the naked eye" serial numbers or names which are sometimes used for authentification or security purposes (i read about it somewhere). seriously, 1/300 of one inch is so minuscule as to be effectively invisible, by itself. you can print photographs at 300dpi and they are almost indistinguishable from an argentic film print.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

but in that case, isn't it the same thing as left-aligned text ? why not just do that from the start ? that way, you can use the typeface you want, at whatever size you want, and you have no worries about holes in the text.

No. Most of the text is aligned. Only one line on some pages is not aligned. It works surprisingly well.

what uses is this font designed for ? professional printers offer 300dpi ; it's the industry standard. i have never had a reason to look for higher, so i don't know if it's even available, but i really cannot imagine a case where 300dpi would not be good enough, with the exception of printing the "invisible (or at least illegible) to the naked eye" serial numbers or names which are sometimes used for authentification or security purposes (i read about it somewhere). seriously, 1/300 of one inch is so minuscule as to be effectively invisible, by itself. you can print photographs at 300dpi and they are almost indistinguishable from an argentic film print.

It was designed when things was printed using photo typesetter and they had at least 1200 dpi. A book now aday is printed with higher resolution than 300dpi (or lpi might be more correct). Photographs does not requires so much resolution to get a good result. A text needs more.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

but in that case, isn't it the same thing as left-aligned text ? why not just do that from the start ? that way, you can use the typeface you want, at whatever size you want, and you have no worries about holes in the text.


what uses is this font designed for ? professional printers offer 300dpi ; it's the industry standard. i have never had a reason to look for higher, so i don't know if it's even available, but i really cannot imagine a case where 300dpi would not be good enough, with the exception of printing the "invisible (or at least illegible) to the naked eye" serial numbers or names which are sometimes used for authentification or security purposes (i read about it somewhere). seriously, 1/300 of one inch is so minuscule as to be effectively invisible, by itself. you can print photographs at 300dpi and they are almost indistinguishable from an argentic film print.

Printers are certainly higher for arbitrary graphics and printing but for viewing on a screen you can't find 300 ppi without paying two arms and a leg. When the screen fonts are designed for the ppi value and all movement of fonts are always on pixel boundaries there is no need for higher values except for graphics IMHO. Aliasing makes even 100 ppi or so pretty good for text unless you use a magnifying glass.

Dale

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

166dpi is not low when referring to LCD. My laptop screen tops out at just over 100dpi (guesstimate).

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

actually, Nate is right, 160dpi resolution is quite good. print resolution is 300dpi (this is "high res"), and web (computer screen) is 72dpi. 160 for text is completely respectable and noticeably better than a computer moniter.

We are talking about typography here, and more specificaly we are discussing wether some typical typography conventions can be applied to a 6" e-onk screen.
From the point of view of computer displays 166 dpi is great
From the point of view of what is needed for reading from the screen, 166 is very good.
But when we discuss if the 166 dpi is enough to render nice smooth outlines of a small letter in a serif font, 166 is definitely not enough and the font does apear as if having jagged edges.
A good dot matrix printer has the maximum resolution 160 dpi and you would not call this "high resolution", would you?

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

300dpi is low ??? what do you consider high ???? i ask that in all sincerity ; when i treat an image for a print job, i work in 300dpi.

Yes, it is low.

You are talking about two separate issues.
One is Letters on the page - the typeface, and I will return to this issue a little bit later.
The other is CMYK or GrayScale bitmaps.

You need at least 300 dpi for bitmaps [250dpi is bare minimum for good quality], because in a typical magazine (or book) offset print you print the image at the resolution of 125 lpi. It means you print the image as a series of small colored dots that have 1/125 inch distance between them. But you have to create those dots with a "printer" - fotosetter that creates those transparent foils that are used to create etched steel rolls used to print an actual page. So the fotosetter that creates those sheets of clear film has *at least* 1200dpi to be able to print those dots with good enough accuracy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_to_film
Nowdays, you have machines that use laser to "draw" dots or images directly on the sheets of metal covered with a photosensitive layer. Those sheets are then developed, just like an old fashioned photograph would and then etched in acid and used on "printing"(**) rolls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_to_plate
An example of such machine: http://www.heidelberg.com/www/html/e...r_family,specs
Please notice the resolution: 2,032/2,400/2,540/3,200/3,386 dpi

(**) we are talking about offset printing here, so the paint is transfered from that "printing" roll on another roll made from rubber and then it is transferred on paper.

When you create a file to be used to print those transparencies the fonts and the vector graphics (those Corel of Illustrator images) are represented in vectors. And those vectors are RIP-ed (Raster Image Processed) and printed with the same resolution as dots for bitmaps - 1200 to 3600 dpi. And THAT is what I call high resolution.

Even a laser printer has nowdays at least 600dpi and even then, when it prints vector graphics (fonts) it uses various clever tricks (like RET) to make the outline of the font apear even crisper and smoother than 600dpi.

Also keep in mind that on the computer screen there are lots of tricks applied to make text look nice. Like antialiasing, hinting (aligning to the pixel borders) and other black magic. Computer screen can make up the lower resolution by using lots of shades [of grey] - antialiasing. The printer, on the other hand, can only print completely black areas. A defined area on the page is either covered by a paint (a baked-in toner, a die, wax, thermotransfered plastic goo or whatever) or it isn't.

Disclaimer: Most of the things I have written about have proper english terms (that I do not know ). I have used descriptions because I did not use English when I worked in DTP.

[zelda_pinwheel]

ha ok, i see we were talking about different things. and i don't know enough about the mechanics of printing to really compare all this. when i make an image for print in 300dpi, i consider this high resolution ; i did not realize you need a machine at 1200 to make 300.

however, i still think that 160 should be a reasonable resolution (assuming that you don't want to display your text at 6pts in serif !), because i think antialiasing and hinting (as you mentioned) can be used on these screens, since they have 4 or 8 level greyscale, depending on the model (is that correct ?). this should be enough to render a serif font cleanly, at least if you don't use a magnifying glass. i don't (yet !!) have an e-ink screen, so i really don't know, but it was my impression at least that this was true (and of course resolution which is already good will only improve as the technology is further refined). this seems to be one of the advantages of these screens.

so to reply to your question, yes, i still think that a lot of typesetting conventions can be applied to ebooks (including body text in serif font), with some important modifications in deference to the reflowable text. in fact, i think it is quite *important* to retain most of these typesetting conventions, even when they must be partially adapted for reflowable text / lower resolution. most of them have become conventions for good reasons, as we have discussed. i only wish that *everyone* knew these conventions, and why they exist, before they tried to make ebooks...

i would be curious to see the result of the justification which "breaks" (takes one or more lines out of full justification) to avoid rivers and holes ; isn't it distracting ? when i read a fully-justified text and i see a shorter line, i unconsciously expect that line to be the end of the paragraph, and if it were not i can imagine that being a bit confusing. tompe, is there any way you can make a screenshot / photo ?

[Walk Broad]

Nate;

Did you ever update this from your first impressions? Do you still have the device? Still like it? Notice anything now that you've had it a little longer?

Inquiring minds would like to know especially with the jetBook available for US users and they look to be the exact same thing.

[nathan]

Upgrade M218A firmware v87
1.you can set up the device start up password (NEW)
2.you can set up folder password protection (NEW)
3.optimize a function of EBA,EBAML,TXT zoom in/out
4.optimize a function of PDF zoom in/out,user can adjust rate of zooming in/out
5.optimize PDF document for saving bookmark,lacking font,hyperlink.
6.supports encrypting PDF documents

v87 download

[LiveCoool]

Very informative thread, keep it up guys.

[Fred Doolie]

Well! This looks like just the one I want but I'd like to ask a couple questions:

1) The *MAIN* reason I want an ebook reader is for PDFs. To be specific my digitized magazine PDFs. I have (or will have) magazine collections on DVDs*. These are PDF files containing hyperlinked entries and the pages are digitized magazine page images: not text. Can the M218 handle these well? I know they will be pixilated when zommed of course but can the M218 resize embedded images and handle the hyperlinked menus, entries and stuff?

2) How does a 16-level grayscale display handle photos? Does it dither those 16,000,000 colors into 16 grey shades? Are the pretty girls on the pages going to look all posterized and stuff?

Thanks




*OK, only one so far (Absolutely MAD) but I'm buying the Playboy collections too.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Fred Doolie

Well! This looks like just the one I want but I'd like to ask a couple questions:

1) The *MAIN* reason I want an ebook reader is for PDFs. To be specific my digitized magazine PDFs. I have (or will have) magazine collections on DVDs*. These are PDF files containing hyperlinked entries and the pages are digitized magazine page images: not text. Can the M218 handle these well? I know they will be pixilated when zommed of course but can the M218 resize embedded images and handle the hyperlinked menus, entries and stuff?

2) How does a 16-level grayscale display handle photos? Does it dither those 16,000,000 colors into 16 grey shades? Are the pretty girls on the pages going to look all posterized and stuff?

Thanks




*OK, only one so far (Absolutely MAD) but I'm buying the Playboy collections too.

First of all, I don't recommend this device as a reader. If you want to read old magazines, then I think you should look at a sub-laptop like the eee701 or the MobilePro 900c. One is new and not that expensive, the other is old and cheap.

It's late for me. I'll answer your questions tomorrow.

[Walk Broad]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

First of all, I don't recommend this device as a reader.

Nate, I'd be curious to learn more about why you don't recommend this as a reader

Is it because of a lack of supported formats? You said it was the best for reading pdfs, is that only because they have to be non-DRm'd?

I'm only asking because I am interested in a five-inch model which is why I am waiting to see what Astak does, but I also liked the small lcd size.

Anyway, I'd appreciate if you could elaborate more on your experience as an owner.

[Nate the great]

I don't like this device because it's 2 years old and only provides buggy support for a limited number of formats (WOLF, TXT, & PDF).

The M218A does not display text properly, and it has this problem in both TXT and WOLF. The first and most annoying bug is that quotation marks are ignored. The second bug is the misinterpretation of characters next to a parenthesis. For instance, "(a" will be shown as some Chinese character. I frankly do not understand how they could release this device and not catch these bugs. What's worse is that I have a later firmware, (I think the 5th firmware) and the bugs are still there!

There is also a problem with PDFs. It will not bookmark a PDF page. This is the one function that I absolutely require in an ebook reader. Without it, the device is not an ebook reader.

The final reason I don't recommend this as a reader is that the Cybook can match most PDF functions as well as provide a widely accepted ebook format. The Cybook is a better device and only costs around $100 more. I think it's worth it.

P.S. If someone wants to get this as a toy, go ahead. But if you want to get it as a reader, I wish you the best of luck.

P.P.S. I have exchanged a few emails with the manufacturer. I told them that if and when they ported real reader software (I want FBReader), I will reconsider this device. Until then, yech.

[Walk Broad]

Thank you Nate.

Just what I was looking for to know the specifics why NOT to purchase this device.

I do like the form factor but will continue to wait for the Astak 5 inch model.

[JSWolf]

Remember, if you go for the 5" model, it will be even worse for PDF then the 6" eink devices out now. The 9.7 will be the best for PDF if they do the software correctly.

[Walk Broad]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Remember, if you go for the 5" model, it will be even worse for PDF then the 6" eink devices out now. The 9.7 will be the best for PDF if they do the software correctly.

It's a question of price, which is why I will be waiting to see what Astek does with their 5 inch model.

I like a nice big display as much as the next person, but in these economic times, splurging on an e-reader is enough of an indulgence without completely breaking the bank by going for a big display.

I don't need/read PDFs enough to warrant the extra money.

Besides, going from a Windows Mobile phone screen to a five inch will be a BIG step up.

For everything else, I still have my Tablet