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

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

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

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

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.

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.

yeah but then you have the hypen

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

I find hyphens dis
-tracting

maybe because you are using them incorrectly?

fine

I find hyphens dis-
tracting

I find hyphenating less
annoying           then
badly justified text.

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

no

a little distracting yes

what really bugs me is how shitty that sentence is

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

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.

one word at a time is a good way to read

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

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^^^^

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

I fear the day when my eyesight goes and I can't use teeny tiny fonts anymore

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

http://www.addamsfamily.com/addams/tickertape2.jpg

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...

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.)

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.

hyphenating to facilitate a line break is a crude last resort, compared to deft leding

ur thinking of kerning/tracking

Woot's got refurbished Kindle DXs for $199 today.

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.

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.

Just got me one of these things today. Trying to figure out how to hack it.

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 :|

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.

I love reading books on my phone on the train while commuting

ditto, it's amazing.

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?

I'm pretty sure my e-copy of Nixon has the same words in it as the physical copy

If reading text doesn't provide enough excitement by itself, maybe you hate reading

no. i like reading. i get no feel or excitement from the technology. feels very cold to me.

i can read!

read a book just last year, in fact.

bizarre.

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?

The Internet is even colder

it's really not hypersensitivity. i'm not adamantly against kindles and similar devices; i just prefer physical books.

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.