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Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

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Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#61

Post by jiehong »

zargon wrote: post #55

Another frustrating thing with ebooks is that you can't get them in PDF format any more. So much time is spent making a nicely fomatted hardcopy edition, then the ebook is only available as a terribly auto-converted epub that throws away all the layout and style. Particularly cookbooks, as well as anything technical, I just can't stand how lazy, ugly, and difficult to read the epubs are. All the tooling already exist…

I think it's a great point!

Perhaps authors could also produce PDFs designed for common tablets as well, and therefore get the exact expected format.

I do agree with the author that paged format are difficult with browsers to this day, and I also hope this can improve.

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#62

Post by Tepix »

zargon wrote: post #55

Another frustrating thing with ebooks is that you can't get them in PDF format any more. So much time is spent making a nicely fomatted hardcopy edition, then the ebook is only available as a terribly auto-converted epub that throws away all the layout and style. Particularly cookbooks, as well as anything technical, I just can't stand how lazy, ugly, and difficult to read the epubs are. All the tooling already exist…

For me, it's the opposite. Whenever i have the choice, i want EPUB, not PDF. The problem with PDFs is that you don't have a device that is the same size as the original page size in most cases.

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#63

Post by WalterBright »

hydrolox wrote: post #47
WalterBright wrote: post #25

If I was designing an ebook reader, the display would look like a book's display. None of the ereaders I know of do this. 1. Have a background image that looks like paper. No, a solid white or tan background doesn't look like paper. Paper has imperfections in it, dirt, a grain, and you can faintly see the other side of the page. Except for the latter, this is easy to achieve. Simply scan a bunch of blank pages, and u…

To be honest I don't know what ereader you've looked at or what books you read. The way eink works, if you look closely there is a slight grain very reminiscent of paper. Similarly, the font/letters can have small imperfections as well, and it all looks just like a new book might.

I have probably 8 or so Amazon ereaders over the years, of different models. I also use the Apple ipad, and the pdf readers on many other devices. I've bought a couple ereaders from other companies, but they didn't "take" with me. My current favorite ereader is the retina ipad, though its battery life is short.

Modern paper books have much more precise printing than books printed 20, 40, 60 years ago. I find the irregularity of the older ones rather charming, the new ones are also sterile - being too perfect.

I suppose it is like my indifference to autotuned singers. Too perfect. Doesn't sound human.

P.S. have you ever visited a medieval village in Europe? I find them wonderful, as there are no straight lines anywhere. It's all pleasingly crooked. I considered building my house slightly crooked, but that turned out to be far too expensive as everything would have to be custom made.

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#64

Post by nosianu »

WalterBright wrote: post #57
nosianu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One advantage of ereaders is that the fonts an be set to any size convenient for device and the person reading it. A fixed pixel size image of something you want to read does not go well together with rendered text at all. It's okay for photos, but very definitely not for formulas, which are basically mostly text. I'm not even talking about the aesthetics, different fonts because they too can be set by the user, and…

On my tablet I can use two fingers to zoom. But I pretty much never need to do that with a full size tablet. That's why I bought one with the retina display.

But zooming scales the fonts only. For pixel images you have the pixels that are in it and that's it. Scaling those either up or down does not produce good text.

Now I'm just waiting for the inevitable "AI image scaler" that handles text inside images.

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#65

Post by Ma8ee »

Tepix wrote: post #62
zargon wrote: post #55

Another frustrating thing with ebooks is that you can't get them in PDF format any more. So much time is spent making a nicely fomatted hardcopy edition, then the ebook is only available as a terribly auto-converted epub that throws away all the layout and style. Particularly cookbooks, as well as anything technical, I just can't stand how lazy, ugly, and difficult to read the epubs are. All the tooling already exist…

For me, it's the opposite. Whenever i have the choice, i want EPUB, not PDF. The problem with PDFs is that you don't have a device that is the same size as the original page size in most cases.

It depends on what kind of book it is. Fiction EPUB all day. Technical books with figures, tables or code listings, PDF!

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#66

Post by carlosjobim »

Tepix wrote: post #62
zargon wrote: post #55

Another frustrating thing with ebooks is that you can't get them in PDF format any more. So much time is spent making a nicely fomatted hardcopy edition, then the ebook is only available as a terribly auto-converted epub that throws away all the layout and style. Particularly cookbooks, as well as anything technical, I just can't stand how lazy, ugly, and difficult to read the epubs are. All the tooling already exist…

For me, it's the opposite. Whenever i have the choice, i want EPUB, not PDF. The problem with PDFs is that you don't have a device that is the same size as the original page size in most cases.

One question: Why do people make PDFs in A4 format? Wouldn't it make better sense to start making them in A5 or A6, so that they could be better read on e-readers, phones, and on part of a computer screen (which is landscape oriented)?

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#67

Post by Liftyee »

WalterBright wrote: post #63
hydrolox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I don't know what ereader you've looked at or what books you read. The way eink works, if you look closely there is a slight grain very reminiscent of paper. Similarly, the font/letters can have small imperfections as well, and it all looks just like a new book might.

I have probably 8 or so Amazon ereaders over the years, of different models. I also use the Apple ipad, and the pdf readers on many other devices. I've bought a couple ereaders from other companies, but they didn't "take" with me. My current favorite ereader is the retina ipad, though its battery life is short. Modern paper books have much more precise printing than books printed 20, 40, 60 years ago. I find the irre…

> I considered building my house slightly crooked, but that turned out to be far too expensive as everything would have to be custom made.

That's the efficiency of standardisation at work...

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#69

Post by okasaki »

WalterBright wrote: post #25

If I was designing an ebook reader, the display would look like a book's display. None of the ereaders I know of do this. 1. Have a background image that looks like paper. No, a solid white or tan background doesn't look like paper. Paper has imperfections in it, dirt, a grain, and you can faintly see the other side of the page. Except for the latter, this is easy to achieve. Simply scan a bunch of blank pages, and u…

A lot of pirated ebooks are scans of physical books stored as page images in DJVU or PDF. I do agree they have a certain charm to them.

Re: Pagination widows, or, why I'm embarrassed about my eBook (2023)

#70

Post by warpspin »

While everyone here seems to talk about the epub angle to the story, there's also simply the deeper story here, that "the web's" handling of paged media and the CSS paged media specs (to which his epub problem is related) is a never ending shitshow. Not only for epubs, for everybody who actually wants to print to real paper, too, ideally with a working cross browser solution.

Mistake is largely not in the specs, but in the lack of support for them. Page breaking controls, weirdly breaking tables, lack of access to area outside the page box to influence headers/footers without weird hacks etc. etc. For printing, the 1990ies never ended.

This leads to the bizarre situation where basically everyone who has semi complex printing needs in web applications will create PDF and then print that - and for creating those PDFs, often HTML to PDF conversion is used, just with actually implemented CSS for paged media. Which again proves that the spec is at least 99% there, if somebody would just kindly implement it in a browser, too.

Won't be more complex than having the latest WebGL whatever thing in your browser engine ;-)

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