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 morecompletely 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 hyphenating lessannoying thenbadly 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
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
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
I fear the day when my eyesight goes and I can't use teeny tiny fonts anymore
― OH NOES, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.addamsfamily.com/addams/tickertape2.jpg
― brownie, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:40 (twelve years ago) link
I've got three books open on my desk. One of them is 1Q84; it's got +/- 44 lines of text per page, +/- 100 characters per line. There are 0-3 hyphens per page, and only prominent – immediately noticeable - weird spacing due to justification. The text is fairly dense, and it easily absorbs a lot of spacing issues w/o seeming too deliberate. I have yet to see an ereader/electronic screen that can display that amount of information in a way that is not overwhelming or eyestrain inducing...
― remy bean in exile, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:41 (twelve years ago) link
there's also stuff like - pretty much all faber poetry is typeset the same way. it's a part of how the meaning and the weight of the words you read are constructed. i'm not sure i like the idea of taking that away from the interaction you have with the text. (there's an argument that having personae reduced to the same standards as a self-published .epub of poetry about vampires is a democratic step forwards and a good thing but i think it's an argument that's basically wrong.)
xpost yeah that's another thing -- pretty sure that a lot of ppl who read a lot will use this things with smaller text; screenshots always seem to have like a 35-45 character wide line. (this is in part bcz if you want a screenshot that works on a monitor which is most likely going to have a smaller dpi you need to not use the smallest text size.)
― thompp, Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:41 (twelve years ago) link
only ONE prominent - immediately noticeable – spacing due to justification.
hyphenating bothers me a lot more than weird spacing. I only notice weird spacing in extreme cases. Not being able to read a whole word without moving my eyes from one side of a page to the other is way worse. I notice it every time even after 20+ years of reading books.
― silverfish, Thursday, 22 December 2011 19:10 (twelve years ago) link
hyphenating to facilitate a line break is a crude last resort, compared to deft leding
― Aimless, Thursday, 22 December 2011 19:20 (twelve years ago) link
ur thinking of kerning/tracking
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Thursday, 22 December 2011 19:27 (twelve years ago) link
Woot's got refurbished Kindle DXs for $199 today.
― jaq, Thursday, 22 December 2011 21:01 (twelve years ago) link
Main problem with the Sony one - or my first gen one at least - is that it has a separate socket for charging and won't charge through the USB socket. Which sucks if you forget to charge it beforehand and to bring the right cable when you go home for Xmas.
― ledge, Saturday, 24 December 2011 14:11 (twelve years ago) link
Weird thing about the syncing is that in my experience the Kindle iPhone app will try to sync to the last page read on the actual Kindle, but not vice-versa.
― zat you, wrinklepaws? (James Redd), Sunday, 25 December 2011 15:59 (twelve years ago) link
Just got me one of these things today. Trying to figure out how to hack it.
― kingfish sandbox bonaparte, Sunday, 25 December 2011 17:02 (twelve years ago) link
Had a look at my dad's kindle. Not the latest gen, has a keyboard, but page turning still a lot faster than my v old Sony, and can see the use in having a keyboard for searching. Wifi connection handy too although my uncle wanted to know how much the new Clive Cussler would cost so i took a look at the price, then went back to the home screen - or so I thought. Turned out I'd bought the damn thing, although I never clicked the 'buy' button and certainly didn't see any confirmation screen :|
― ledge, Sunday, 25 December 2011 17:12 (twelve years ago) link
one of my law partners is obsessed with reading books on his cell phone and -- even moreso -- audiobooks. i have no interest in either option. i want to feel a book in my hands. it's weight, packaging, the pages themselves add something to the experience for me that an efficient machine (or the assistance of a narrating voice) will never match.
― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 25 December 2011 17:16 (twelve years ago) link
I love reading books on my phone on the train while commuting
― OH NOES, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:12 (twelve years ago) link
ditto, it's amazing.
― moonbop, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:28 (twelve years ago) link
C'mon people don't really give a shit about "the feeling of the paper"and stuff, is that really what you're thinking abt when you read?
― moonbop, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:30 (twelve years ago) link
I'm pretty sure my e-copy of Nixon has the same words in it as the physical copy
― moonbop, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
If reading text doesn't provide enough excitement by itself, maybe you hate reading
― moonbop, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:33 (twelve years ago) link
no. i like reading. i get no feel or excitement from the technology. feels very cold to me.
― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:36 (twelve years ago) link
i can read!
read a book just last year, in fact.
― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:37 (twelve years ago) link
bizarre.
― Jeff, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:37 (twelve years ago) link
true story.
I just don't get this hypersensitivity, like is it impossible for you to read an ebook because you can't stop thinking about how "cold" it is?
― moonbop, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:58 (twelve years ago) link
The Internet is even colder
― moonbop, Sunday, 25 December 2011 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
it's really not hypersensitivity. i'm not adamantly against kindles and similar devices; i just prefer physical books.
― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 25 December 2011 20:05 (twelve years ago) link
i also prefer vinyl to compact discs, and compact discs to mp3s. but i've made the switch to mp3s because they're so much cheaper. if the price-gap with physical and electronic books reaches those levels, i'd likely go with a kindle-type device.
― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 25 December 2011 20:06 (twelve years ago) link
alright fine but you could have mentioned that in the first place before I started goin all hardman
― moonbop, Sunday, 25 December 2011 20:30 (twelve years ago) link
merry christmas!
― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 25 December 2011 20:32 (twelve years ago) link
(from a jew)