E-Readers (Kindle, Nook, using iPad for reading) yay or nay

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interesting thoughts here on how primitive and perhaps wrong-headed the epub format is, don't necessarily agree with his conclusions but errrrrrr makes you think...
http://crookedtimber.org/2011/12/21/e-books-and-ipads-and-pdfs-some-thoughts/

ledge, Thursday, 22 December 2011 09:37 (twelve years ago) link

I pretty much completely disagree with that article

ebooks becoming more like pdfs would be terrible

silverfish, Thursday, 22 December 2011 13:56 (twelve years ago) link

ha yeah that guy doesnt really get technology

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:27 (twelve years ago) link

"b b but why would you want to do it any other way?" = apple user.

You failed, you didn’t eat the whole pizza (NotEnough), Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:31 (twelve years ago) link

I don't get the problems he's talking about. Websites might show up with problems on certain devices, but ebooks are usu just text, right? And it's pretty readable? Idgi. What is he getting at?

Sandbox Jesse, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:33 (twelve years ago) link

lol its funny he has a whole long update clearly inspired by people telling him hes an idiot where hes all yeah i know ebooks need to be readable on lots of different devices but what this blog post presupposes is what if they dont

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:33 (twelve years ago) link

Aye you're right, there's nothing wrong with text that flows to fit whatever device it's on. "Layout" beyond chapters and paragraphs just isn't an issue for 99% of books.

ledge, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:36 (twelve years ago) link

hes right that ebooks tend to lack the polish of printed matter, but his solution is just silly, and he doesnt even particularly identify the specific qualities of the problem, like there are a lot of people working really hard on this doggie, lol pdf

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:41 (twelve years ago) link

Well I don't know that things are that easy. I think there is a place for both a variable, scaleable, context-/device-dependent format and a locked-down, .pdfish model. (Although something a little more sturdy and robust than .pdf would be nice...). In other words, I can see, say, comic book geeks really liking to read things w/ certain well-defined dimensions and presentation standards, while most books/articles will be seved equally well by being read as 160 words on a b&w iphone screen as enlarged on a 27" monitor.

remy bean in exile, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:44 (twelve years ago) link

yeah obvs 'books' thatre primarily images have a whole nother set of demands

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:45 (twelve years ago) link

This issue is v. prominent in adaptive/assistive/instructional info techology, where the divide b/w 'image' and 'text' is pretty fuzzy.... somebody's gotta come up with something better than a .pdf to allow input and the preservation of precise, functional formatting that is somehow useable on more than one type of device. HTML5 isn't a bad option, frankly, but it'll need wider acceptance/support.

remy bean in exile, Thursday, 22 December 2011 14:54 (twelve years ago) link

was just thinking abt ui design in adaptive/assistive technologies, not really something i know anything abt, but it seems p interesting

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 15:13 (twelve years ago) link

OK, so I guess I was understanding him to the extent that he was making sense.

But is flowing text "plug ugly"? It doesn't seem that way to me, a non-techy consumer.

Sandbox Jesse, Thursday, 22 December 2011 17:37 (twelve years ago) link

its just 'people talkin abt fonts for no good reason' m/l

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 17:38 (twelve years ago) link

But is flowing text "plug ugly"? It doesn't seem that way to me, a non-techy consumer.

c/f images upthread

thompp, Thursday, 22 December 2011 17:53 (twelve years ago) link

I meant, does it seem "plug ugly" to you, dear reader.

Sandbox Jesse, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:03 (twelve years ago) link

the problem with the crooked timber thing is that 'just use pdf!' is a ridiculously awful solution to the problem. but it's still a solution which would produce better looking results than the current paradigm

here's some text on the nook:

http://int64.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/badjustify.png

that's from an article which has the even better thesis at least if you have a nook you can dump your epubs into pdfs and redo the typesetting yourself and read that which i am guessing probably even more of a non-starter for most people

however i feel like this is right:

"My only real gripe is that, like al­most every other e-​read­er out there, it has such poor type­set­ting that you have to won­der if it was de­signed by soft­ware en­gi­neers who aren’t big read­ers"

which, you know, ding ding ding

xpost: yes.

thompp, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:04 (twelve years ago) link

I tried for like 5 minutes to be a typeface snob, but I realized that I don't detect any difference in value between similar typefaces. "Readability" is not an issue for me beyond actual illegibility.

Sandbox Jesse, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:11 (twelve years ago) link

Concur

Jeff, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:15 (twelve years ago) link

it's not the typefaces so much as the spacing

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/WindowsLiveWriter/AmazonKindlevs.KindleDXTheFinalWord_CE5C/screen_shot-35927_thumb.gif

lookit the paragraph starting "'Fangtasia,' Pam said" -- there's places where the gaps between words are larger than the words themselves -- now admittedly i. a small subset of people will care and ii. this appears to be from one of those true blood novels so w/e

i don't know, i assume the normal response is "why in the hell would that bother you" and then i say "you don't know it but it's crippling your reading experience" and then i turn into that guy who starts the dynamic range compression threads and refuse to go outside because i might hear some music that's not on my perfectly magnetically balanced insulated and feng shui-ed hi fi system

thompp, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:16 (twelve years ago) link

I honestly don't notice stuff like that, and I read a lot. That paragraph looks fine to me.

xxxp

silverfish, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:17 (twelve years ago) link

I get distracted by weird spacing. I can push through it, but it will take me out of the reading headspace, if that makes any sense. Like, it will remind me that I'm reading, and it takes a minute to get back to where I am no longer aware of the process of translating words into brain images.

wore glasses and said things (thejenny), Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:18 (twelve years ago) link

the main offense of that formatting is the that text is justified rather than aligned, aka itd be more readable were it jagged along the right margin

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:19 (twelve years ago) link

its p unconscionable tbqh, is there a setting for that or something

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:20 (twelve years ago) link

i mean its like a super easy fix

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:20 (twelve years ago) link

I don't know why all these things use whatever random just-above-MS-Word-quality line-breaking algorithms when they could be using something closer to the TeX line-breaking algorithms, which are pretty much the gold standard of doing this sort of thing automatically.

xps the Sookie Stackhouse novels are in first person? ick

silby, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:21 (twelve years ago) link

having just said that, though, reading it in my head, that "'Fangtasia,' Pam said" did come out slower than it should have. So maybe I guess I do notice this stuff.

xp to myself

silverfish, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:21 (twelve years ago) link

I like the ability to change the font for each book I read. The more "formal" the book, the more likely I am to want a serif font, for some reason.

Kids book = sans serif
Classic lit = serif
Pop science/history = sans serif

I appreciate a typesetter advising me with which font to use*, but now the tech exists to change it, I would be mighty annoyed if it was taken away.

And justifying the paragraph so it fills up the entire line is some bullshit, dnw. I'm one of those who notice this and would really prefer it didn't happen.

*that first sentence's grammar got me confused, so apologies for the clumsiness.

You failed, you didn’t eat the whole pizza (NotEnough), Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:22 (twelve years ago) link

years and years and years of publishing precedent argue against left justification, is the problem

OH NOES, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:23 (twelve years ago) link

I totally get why that spacing issue would bother some people, and sometimes when it's very obvious, it bothers me too. What did bother me about that text was that it was fully justified (which accounts for the spacing problem). I like ragged right edge.

I'm the same with audiophilia - I am usually OK with getting the "gist" of the music I'm hearing. Though I appreciate why it would be different for other people.

You know what irks me though? Is the way some "audiophiles" and "font snobs" seem to care about those things (and care very vocally) b/c it makes them seem refined and sensitive. Again, SOME of them.

many xps

Sandbox Jesse, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:24 (twelve years ago) link

years and years and years of publishing precedent argue against left justification, is the problem

― OH NOES, Thursday, December 22, 2011 1:23 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Permalink

yeah idgi is that really the default setting on the nook

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:25 (twelve years ago) link

I mean justified text blocks pretty much empirically look better and read better when they are carefully tweaked by hand and hyphenated and whatnot. One of the big reasons that a lot of these justified blocks look bad is that they are averse to automatic hyphenation of words, whereas TeX is all about automatic hyphenation. You can't fill up lines in a pleasing fashion without being able to auto-hyphenate, since really all you're doing in that case is taking the ragged-right paragraph layout and stretching all the interword spaces until each line is justified.

silby, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:26 (twelve years ago) link

as an example, in the Fangtasia excerpt, this paragraph:

"Fangtasia," Pam said, as if she were bored more
completely than anyone had ever been bored.

would look better if it were set like this:

"Fangtasia," Pam said, as if she were bored more complete-
ly than anyone had ever been bored.

because a lot of that extra interword space in the first line would go away.

silby, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:29 (twelve years ago) link

yeah but then you have the hypen

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:30 (twelve years ago) link

yes but that's why hyphens were invented, so justified text blocks could have aesthetically pleasing amounts of interword space!

silby, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:31 (twelve years ago) link

I find hyphens dis
-tracting

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:32 (twelve years ago) link

maybe because you are using them incorrectly?

OH NOES, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:32 (twelve years ago) link

fine

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:33 (twelve years ago) link

I find hyphens dis-
tracting

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:33 (twelve years ago) link


I find hyphenating less
annoying then
badly justified text.

You failed, you didn’t eat the whole pizza (NotEnough), Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:33 (twelve years ago) link

Do you actually find hyphens distracting? like I promise you every book you've ever read has about three words that are hyphenated across a line break per page, are you distracted by them every single time? xp

silby, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:33 (twelve years ago) link

no

є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:34 (twelve years ago) link

a little distracting yes

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:35 (twelve years ago) link

what really bugs me is how shitty that sentence is

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:35 (twelve years ago) link

all books should just be printed on one long fortune cookie fortune

Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:36 (twelve years ago) link

I don't think the issue is either hyphenating or bad justification -- it's that the column width on most readers is so small that either one would need to do massive overtime to correctly set the text, and intrude pretty obnoxiously.

remy bean in exile, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:36 (twelve years ago) link

one word at a time is a good way to read

є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:36 (twelve years ago) link

there's a left-justified example of the lorem ipsum paragraph in the link. it doesn't look v good either tbh

these are actually sub ms-word algorithms they're using; kerning is somewhat better in word since the last big redo. i don't really get why something that ought to be a core technology on these is so slapdash.

i find this a deeply odd argt.:

I appreciate a typesetter advising me with which font to use, but now the tech exists to change it, I would be mighty annoyed if it was taken away.

bcz typesetting is a craft with half a millenium of experience and weight behind it; there are people who are just good at this - ! otoh i did just go look up the physical version of that novel on amazon and that's pretty shoddily set too tbh so

thompp, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:37 (twelve years ago) link

I don't think the issue is either hyphenating or bad justification -- it's that the column width on most readers is so small that either one would need to do massive overtime to correctly set the text, and intrude pretty obnoxiously.

thank you for articulating what was really bothering me, there we go^^^^

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:37 (twelve years ago) link

maybe that's why I don't like reading on e-readers, the page is too small!

flexidisc, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:38 (twelve years ago) link


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