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Books Won't Die

theparisreview.org

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61–70 of 93 posts

Re: Books Won't Die

#61

Post by meerita »

WalterBright wrote: post #35
meerita wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably PDF is not the best format. EPUB can be quite good. I'm an EPUB reader and I never found any impediment. Most of the examples you mention, like "cannot display pages side by side in full screen (you know, like a book can)" are not really useful for reading, but more for admiring an illustration or a diagram. The rest of the points I think are improvements to ebook experience that can be achieved but has litt…

> but more for admiring an illustration or a diagram Consider the aspect ratio of most monitors. It's ideal for side-by-side viewing of pages. Also, most books that have mixed illustrations, pictures, and text are designed for side-by-side viewing. This, and all of the other shortcomings I mentioned, are technically very easy to accomplish. For example, Foxit does support side-by-side display, but if you switch it to…

Yes, I agree, but they're just lack of features, has little to do with the nature of an ebook vs paper book. People is nostalgic biased and that quickly goes away once you give them the convinience.

Re: Books Won't Die

#62

Post by shkkmo »

tomkat0789 wrote: post #32

What will the books of the future be made from? Will people living on Mars or in space stations pay dearly to ship books made from dead trees all the way from Earth?

They will probably use a paper like substance created using biochemical factories and print locally.

Re: Books Won't Die

#63

Post by shkkmo »

reaperducer wrote: post #27
marvindanig wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> History proves that nothing is more resilient than dead trees. That claim appears suspicious to me. Is there some data to back you up on that? > …trees are at least renewable, compared to all the e-waste in landfills now. While I agree that books tied to plastic hardware is bad, but felling trees isn't less evil either… it is only more so.

That claim appears suspicious to me. Is there some data to back you up on that? Libraries with books that are hundreds of years old. but felling trees isn't less evil either New trees literally grow on trees.

> Libraries with books that are hundreds of years old.

Scrolls and tablets pre-date books by quite a bit. History would seem to actually show that properly baked clay tablets are the most durable. Books are far more vulnerable to fire, water and air.

edit: Looking towards the future, broadcasting an e-book to the stars is probably the most durable (and hardest to recover) form of storage.

Re: Books Won't Die

#64

Post by TeMPOraL »

kosievdmerwe wrote: post #58
TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I have the reverse preference. Recreational books are read sequentially, like tape, so they suit e-book readers well. Also, they're usually plaintext. Reference/education books - with those I need fast random access, which mostly rules out the usual digital form, and extra formatting and media used (tables, images, figures, equation) make them problematic on e-book readers.

Same for me. I would say an electronic book has the advantage in searchability, but a well curated index might actually beat a naive text search most of the time.

On desktop, maybe, but I haven't used a decent enough reading software (like most web stuff, Amazon cloud reader is barely fit for purpose, and while I don't know what's "state of the art" in epub/PDF readers on desktop, the few I tried didn't facilitate reliable search and fast navigation either), and most technical e-books I keep as PDFs anyway, because the formatting almost always matters.

On e-book readers like Kindle, a profound disagreement. I can easily find what I'm looking for in a 1000 page book even without using an index in less time than it takes to type in a search query into Kindle's searchbox (especially since I switched from the old keyboard Kindle to touch-only Paperwhite). If there's a well-curated index at the end of the book, it's only that much better.

I think software could get somewhat closer to paper experience, but it needs to be faster. As long as random page access takes more than ~100 ms from selecting the page to full render (and in my experience, it's often close to 300-500 ms), you cannot really flip through an e-book the way you would through a paper book.

(Tangent: it's another of many cases where performance actually matters, because the difference between lighting fast and fast enough to tick boxes on your sprint plan is entire family of use cases.)

Re: Books Won't Die

#65

Post by wibble10 »

gregjotau wrote: post #59

After using the Onyx boox max (all versions up to 3 which was released recently), I am convinced books will die.

Can you elaborate on your experience with it? Is that thing really worth €820? I like the idea of a giant e-reader but that’s really quite a lot of money for such a device.

Re: Books Won't Die

#66

Post by blondin »

JohnFen wrote: post #18
libraryatnight wrote: post #12

I've tried every format and device and I can't read e-books. Nothing, to me, beats a real book. I don't enjoy the experience for one, it strains my eyes (yes even e-ink). But also, and this is something I wouldn't have considered back when I was younger and it seemed like books surely must die in their dead-tree form, I actively seek ways to not be interacting with electronics and books are sublime for this purpose.…

For me, it depends on the book. For recreational reading, I strongly prefer real, printed ones. For reference materials, I strongly prefer electronic ones (stripped of DRM and converted into a non-proprietary format). I can keep my entire technical library on my phone and I can grep through the entire set of books for something in particular that I need to find. I remember the days when my technical library was in pr…

weird but the back and forth here made me realize something about ebooks. they provide some kind of privacy and confidentiality.

printed books on the other hand give away what you are reading -- unless you put them in those fancy covers. and that is if you can even find the right size.

you don't get the eyes and no one will ask you what you are reading on your phone. never thought about it that way before...

Re: Books Won't Die

#67

Post by hombre_fatal »

qaq wrote: post #56

In my personal case it is because there are no good e-ink devices. That gray background plus either bad size or horrible interface and horrible price are not doing it for me.

This comment kinda reeks of that "everything is amazing and nobody is happy" thing. I mean, "horrible" everything? Really? A device that lets you carry practically infinite books with you? Because the background color and all the available dimensions out there don't scratch your specific preference?

Re: Books Won't Die

#68

Post by [deleted] »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #67
qaq wrote: post #56

In my personal case it is because there are no good e-ink devices. That gray background plus either bad size or horrible interface and horrible price are not doing it for me.

This comment kinda reeks of that "everything is amazing and nobody is happy" thing. I mean, "horrible" everything? Really? A device that lets you carry practically infinite books with you? Because the background color and all the available dimensions out there don't scratch your specific preference?

[deleted]

Re: Books Won't Die

#69

Post by jhbadger »

Koshkin wrote: post #40

I am sure the Babylonians thought tablets to be superior to papyrus.

Yeah, papyrus can burn to ash. If you burn a tablet, it just gets more permanent. In fact, a lot of cuneiform tablets that have survived are ones that were in fires.
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