Hopefully this will change in the near future. I know that at least one book publisher is working on a subsidized ebook reader because printing costs are so high and so many books lose money. Now that Amazon is planning to use cheap ebooks as a loss leader and bring in money with subscriptions to other content I expect to see more publishers jump on board. If we suddenly have competing cabals of companies that actually understand typography all trying to best Amazon and each other we’ll hopefully see better ebook typography, and maybe some really great typefaces commissioned for ebook screens.
I'm not convinced they'll address this any time soon. The type on the Sony is very poor (at least on the first generation) - fake italics, fake small caps, and no reviewers commented on the type. Kindle is a step in the right direction (16-level grayscale issue aside), but no one in the eBook world cares about type.
sii said:
> no one in the eBook world cares about type.
not entirely true.
i'm here specifically as an e-book programmer who
is soliciting feedback on a wide variety of issues...
i can't say you guys are using the opportunity wisely,
not so far anyway, but i am nothing if not persistent.
as to the particular matter of type -- that is _fonts_ --
the wired article misses the point in a substantial way...
one of the primary tenants of e-book philosophy is that
the end-user should have control over the fonts used...
so the investment of a lot of design considerations over
that particular aspect of the typography would be wasted.
the very same situation applies, of course, to web-pages.
this applies to some other typographical aspects as well...
should the text be justified or ragged-right? user decides.
how tight should the leading be? however the user likes it.
how big are the margins? as big as the user wants 'em to be.
the challenge to an e-book programmer, thus, becomes how
to offer the end-user the options in an easy-to-use interface,
and how to best present a display based on the user's choices.
this requires a _sensitivity_ to the practices of the typographer,
an awareness that i am continuously attempting to cultivate...
I'm not so concerned about the choice of types as I am by the lack of sensible H&J schemes in e-books. Maybe it has been solved since I last read a book on Kindle in November. But that was for me the most jolting part of the experience. Perhaps for any text there will be an optimum size that allows for good H&J for that text. But when the type size is adjusted for individual eyes or reading conditions, any optimum goes away.
Displaying Kindle texts as FL/RR won't help this. There will still be far too many instances in which the machine cannot handle hyphenation, and will throw unsightly white space where it ain't supposed to be.
Figure this out and I'll be more likely to buy an e-book device. Well, figure out the economy so I can afford one, too. Right now the library wins out, hands-down.
the kindle doesn't do hyphenation at all.
not currently, anyway. it's unclear that
the chip can handle the computations
so that they can be done in real time...
The processor is powerful enough to mispronounce the presidents’ name so I doubt that’s the problem. However if it is, then soft-hyphens could be inserted into the content as some kind of pre-process. That way the processor would not need to do anything, just use them (optionally) if the word were to fall at the end of the line.
sii said:
> Phew, well I’m glad no one is proposing the
> Kindle be used for newspaper content then! :-)
i do believe it's already got newspaper content on it.
(i do not believe that content is broken into columns,
however, since there would be little reason to do that.)
> soft-hyphens could be inserted into the content
> as some kind of pre-process. That way the processor
> would not need to do anything, just use them (optionally)
> if the word were to fall at the end of the line.
in some cases, that will affect the number of lines used
by each paragraph, which will in turn affect pagination,
so it's not that easy.
This focus on user control seems to lose sight of the fact that design choices are neither arbitrary nor insignificant. If there's something that the author wants to do that requires a certain artistic control to best express it, then I, as a reader, want to be able to see what they want to show me. I certainly don't want them to think, "Oh well, it would have been a neat idea, but I'd better leave it out because it wouldn't work in the e-book." Things ranging from the Mouse's Tail in Alice in Wonderland to the nice little black boxes indicating the game clues in Prisoner of Trebekistan would simply start disappearing from the art of literature.
E-books will never be an adequate substitute for print until they can do everything print can do. My ideal e-reader would be able to display any PDF as it is, and optionally interpret it as plaintext so that if I feel the need to change it all to 26pt Georgia ragged right, I can... but if I don't feel like choosing what formatting to impose on a book I haven't even read yet, I don't have to.
"It’s unclear that
the chip can handle the computations
so that they can be done in real time"
Right...because hyphenating text is the epitome of computer processing complexity?
I'm guessing not.
More likely, people don't give a damn. Sad, frustrating, but likely true.
We praise print, but tend to forget a good chunk of the paperbacks have some pretty crappy small type with paper akin to toilet paper in terms of ink gain.
cerulean said:
> This focus on user control seems to lose sight of the fact
> that design choices are neither arbitrary nor insignificant.
i'm sorry if it hurts your feelings. but users want the control.
when the choice becomes your design versus their preferences,
their preferences win out. and it's not even much of a contest...
> to think, "Oh well, it would have been a neat idea, but I’d
> better leave it out because it wouldn’t work in the e-book."
actually, e-books offer authors the chance to include all kinds of
stuff that doesn't work in print, including audio and video content.
> Things ranging from the Mouse’s Tail in Alice in Wonderland
> to the nice little black boxes indicating the game clues in
> Prisoner of Trebekistan would simply start disappearing
> from the art of literature.
not really. illustrations are still viable. indeed, e-books make it
much easier, on the publishing end, to include lots of illustrations.
and if .svg takes on, even text-based illustrations will be simple...
> E-books will never be an adequate substitute for print
> until they can do everything print can do.
that's not really how innovations happen... horses can still do
lots of things that automobiles can't, but we know how that one
turned out. and, like horses, print will never totally disappear...
> My ideal e-reader would be able to display any PDF as it is,
> and optionally interpret it as plaintext so that if I feel the need
> to change it all to 26pt Georgia ragged right, I can... but if I
> don’t feel like choosing what formatting to impose on a book
> I haven’t even read yet, I don’t have to.
sounds pretty much like my system is designed to work.
Sounds very much like the current e-books suffer the same problems as the web did, back in 1993. (Well, yeah, okay, some of those problems are still with us.) I never thought e-books would seriously threaten the status of the printed book for the forseeable future. Unless and until they allow decent custom typography, they certainly won't.
aluminum said:
> Right...because hyphenating text is the epitome of
> computer processing complexity? I’m guessing not.
you guess wrong.
it would be much simpler to do hyphenation in the web-browser,
where there is usually a _much_ more capable chip in play, and
the amount of text that needs to be processed is smaller, and
you have the luxury of the use of a scrolling field rather than
more-difficult pagination.
but even in those browsers, hyphenation is rarely supported,
and then only when soft-hyphens have been pre-inserted,
a practice which kicks up some other unpleasant side-effects,
such as interference with the search capability...
> More likely, people don’t give a damn.
well, that too. but people were never polled.
> Sad, frustrating, but likely true.
it's a bummer when others don't share your obsessions, isn't it?
"i’m sorry if it hurts your feelings. but users want the control.
when the choice becomes your design versus their preferences,
their preferences win out. and it’s not even much of a contest..."
I don't agree with this, the vast majority of people don't know what they want.
As a much more experienced and successful man said
" A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them." Steve Jobs,
so if people don't know what they want why don't we give them something as good as it can be as standard.
E-books are pretty much a niche product at the moment. What the current batch of users want my not be indicative of what a wider audience may want. Most people just want an easy life, they don't necessarily want to fiddle around with, or can be bothered to change default, settings. As designers it is our job to design products as easy to use and as visually appealing for the majority of people as possible.
The setting of a book is vitally important to how the text flows and thus how easy it is to read. Maybe when E-book technology is more mature and the emphasis on E-book construction has move from being developer-lead to designer-lead things may change and we may get E-books that look as good as they are as written.
barkeep said:
> the vast majority of people don’t know what they want.
that's an overstatement, but there's a lot of truth to it, yes.
> if people don’t know what they want
> why don’t we give them something
> as good as it can be as standard.
that's a very good approach. intelligent defaults are
probably the best thing you can do to help people out,
followed by an interface that seems "intuitive" to them
if they _do_ decide that they want to change something.
it's not always easy to decide what "as good as it can be"
actually _means_ when it comes to book-design, however.
even some of the "staples" break down amazingly quickly
when you start asking people what they actually prefer...
what percentage of the people prefer sans-serif fonts?
what leading multiple do most people choose if they can?
what typesize will be used by people if they can control it?
none of these questions are ones with "simple" answers...
and whether or not typographers "agree" on the answers,
there exists in the population a large degree of variability.
> What the current batch of users want my not be
> indicative of what a wider audience may want.
i agree entirely.
which is why it's important to give people the ability to
customize the tool to their own desires and preferences.
> Most people just want an easy life,
> they don’t necessarily want to fiddle around with
i agree entirely.
which is why it's not enough to give people the ability to
customize the tool to their own desires and preferences,
you've gotta make sure that the defaults are well-chosen.
> So as designers it is our job to design products
> as easy to use and as visually appealing
> for the majority of people as possible.
and that's why i -- as an e-book designer -- am here.
> Maybe when E-book technology is more mature
> and the emphasis on E-book construction has
> move from being developer-lead to designer-lead
> things may change
um, well, yeah, i don't think it's gonna come to _that_...
not unless you designers decide to learn programming.
in the absence of that, you're going to have to settle for
being advisors to us programmers who have decided
that we want to learn some design from typographers...
"um, well, yeah, i don’t think it’s gonna come to _that_...
not unless you designers decide to learn programming."
If E-books turn out to be as popular as they seem they might I am sure Adobe and Quark will release an update to allow you to "save for E-book", after all it's a perfect excuse for them to charge another whopping great upgrade fee! :-)
Hyphenation, small caps, old figures...all good things, but what Kindle really needs is proper unicode support. If only chinese, arabic and cyrillic characters were added, the user group would explode.
_____________________________________________
Personal Art and Design Portal of Ivan Gulkov www.ivangdesign.com
barkeep said:
> If E-books turn out to be as popular as they seem they might
> I am sure Adobe and Quark will release an update to allow you
> to “save for E-book”, after all it’s a perfect excuse for them to
> charge another whopping great upgrade fee! :-)
bingo! :+)
***
oprion said:
> Hyphenation, small caps, old figures...all good things,
> but what Kindle really needs is proper unicode support.
> If only chinese, arabic and cyrillic characters were added,
> the user group would explode.
just today, a publisher reported that amazon has sent out
a letter reminding publishers to update their region data,
which indicates they could be taking kindle international,
in which case they'll quickly learn that they need unicode.
‘bowerbird’, I don't have a problem with users determining key aspects of typographic design for reading purposes, such as choice of font, size of text and linespacing. The single biggest problem with every eBook device I have looked at is the lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm. The ‘page layout’ is a mess. Solve this, and I might even buy one of these things.
"As designers it is our job to design products as easy to use and as visually appealing for the majority of people as possible."
The error in logic is thinking that it's either/or. Either we dictate the design as designers, or we give people full control. The nice thing about the digital world, and, specifically, HTML and CSS is that it's not either/or. We can (and do) have both.
I admit, I rarely change settings on a particular web page to accommodate my particular tastes, but I've done it.
I can think of more than one printed book that drove me nuts to crazy line lengths, crappy paper or weird justification, though. ;o)
The best definition of UX/web design I've heard is that we're suggesters. We suggest our best solution, but don't prohibit the individual from not agreeing.
Also, I have to love Bowerbird arguing for end-user control while at the same time blocking it with inane hard-returns. ;o)
It's just another example of what I call "institutional ugliness". Altho not the worst case I've ever seen.
Think about it - ride a train, enter an office building, a doctor's office, a movie theater. Pick up a a local newspaper or a store circular. People have become inured to it. This wasn't always the case, a century ago even factories and warehouses had ornamentation and aesthetics. But as long as nobody but a few graphic designers complain, nothing will change.
You can attach as much typefaces as you like to your content but if your device is low res and you only have an x amount of pixels how much variation is there?
Type is always made specially for devices/printers/machines/typewriters etc. But that might change for a kindle if they put hires screens in there.
@brunobruno: ebooks run at around 150 DPI, so the text rendering is more detailed than on computer screens. It also tends to be displayed much larger because there’s more screen real estate due to a lack of menus, buttons, icons, etc.
john said:
> The single biggest problem with every eBook device I have looked at
> is the lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm.
> The ‘page layout’ is a mess. Solve this, and I might even buy one
gee, john, the interwebs must drive you absolutely nuts!
are you boycotting them as well? :+)
(or maybe you simply haven't noticed that web-browsers
don't do justification very often, and -- due to an absence
of any hyphenation, or even simple look-ahead routines --
the linebreaking is atrocious. is that it, you ain't noticed?)
***
aluminum said:
> Also, I have to love Bowerbird arguing for end-user control
> while at the same time blocking it with inane hard-returns. ;o)
it _is_ a conundrum, isn't it? :+)
or should i rather say that it's a _battle_,
between those authors who want control
versus the end-users who want control?
as an author, i'm gonna load the dice for my control.
but as their programmer, i load 'em for the end-user.
it ends up the best way to reformat my text
would be to load it into my viewer-program.
>E-books are pretty much a niche product at the moment.
I would agree with the statement that E-book dedicated devices are a niche product, forever.
People are, I think, reading and listening to books on undedicated devices like mad though, very nichelessly.
@ Sorkin: I changed it back myself. Thanks for the response. For future refrence, would Wardle be the right person to contact about things like this? I don't know where to find a list of moderators, admin's, tech support &c.
"No. of book sales in the Us 2007-311 million-According to Nielsen BookScan."
Source: Wall Street Journal, 9/10/2008
I did try to find more recent figure but I was unable to find them for free, given that just in the US 311 million "old fashioned books" were sold in 2007 I am still pretty confident to call E-books niche for the time being:-)
"The error in logic is thinking that it’s either/or. Either we dictate the design as designers, or we give people full control. The nice thing about the digital world, and, specifically, HTML and CSS is that it’s not either/or. We can (and do) have both".
Sorry Aluminium, I don't see it as either or, as a designer you make the choice or you do complete designs for all possibilities, if people want to change your choices then fine, but maybe you then need to rethink why they want to change you choices:-)
It my Birthday so I'm off for a nice pint have a good night all
Martin
"Sorry Aluminium, I don’t see it as either or, as a designer you make the choice or you do complete designs"
That sentence is confusing. You say it's not either/or then make an this or that statement.
As a visual designer, you do what you can to accommodate everyone. But often your demographic can be quite broad. The nice thing about digital design is that the end user can modify your suggested design to best accommodate their particular individual needs. If one person prefers 9pt type and the other, 14pt, I suppose 12pt would be a nice compromise on paper. Even better online as they can both tweak it a tad further to their preferences.
Barkeep said, "given that just in the US 311 million “old fashioned books” were sold in 2007 I am still pretty confident to call E-books niche for the time being."
When considering the numbers, keep in mind that one e-book can contain many titles. It's like comparing vinyl album sales to iPod sales. Which kind of points out that it wasn't very long ago that MP3 sales were the niche market.
Amazon has not been forthcoming about numbers as far as I have seen so I think it is best to treat this as hearsay unless somebody can show otherwise.
Also I don't think that e-books or whatever we want to call them are going to push out books as rapidly as mp3 did the CD. But electronic documents and devices (plural!) will definitely become increasingly important over time as will type's role on these devices.
Neither type people or e-book "designers" posturing on typophile or elsewhere will mean much. We either offer something useful or we don't. And I think that being measurably useful is increasingly what will count more than explanations. And certainly what John has said about lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm is absolutely bang on.
I would agree with the statement that E-book dedicated devices are a niche product, forever.
Maybe in the developed world that will be the case. But in rural Africa, Asia, and South America, where there are no bookstores or good roads to truck books in on, eBooks are going to explode once the price drops. They’ll be huge in cities like Japan and Mumbai where families live in apartments the size of closets. Paper books are going to be a luxury item for spoiled Americans, like SUVs and gigantic televisions.
We either offer something useful or we don’t.
The eBook side needs to offer up some documentation before the type world gets involved. Who out there is going to try reverse-engineering eBook text rendering with trial-and-error font design?
Eben is bang on if he says that "John has said about lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm is absolutely bang on". The same is true not only for e-books but also for web-browsers. (Essentially being the same.) With html/xml and css one may already define flexible layout that can adopt to the circumstances like resolution, display size, window size, desired type size, etc. The sole issue is the above-mentioned lack. Browsers/readers need to do exactly the same as the layout application of your choice does: proper text layout, hyphenation/linebreaking and justification. This would not even require alternative environments like WPF or plug-ins like Flash/AIR, at least not as long as we are talking about mere text ...
And I do not agree with e-book as niche product. The web is not a niche product either, despite sub-standard represenation of text. Improve browsers/readers and all will be fine.
eben said:
> Amazon has not been forthcoming about numbers
> as far as I have seen so I think it is best to treat this
> as hearsay unless somebody can show otherwise.
"a million units" is a round number, and it's certainly
in the ballpark. even the people who are arguing that
the kindle has not had much effect use _that_ estimate
to make their point... it's just 1 out of 350 americans,
which does make the point that it's a _niche_ product.
if you'd like to see more evidence for that estimate,
i'll provide it. but i was _accepting_ the stipulation.
it's hard to argue that e-books are _not_ "niche"...
> Also I don’t think that e-books
> or whatever we want to call them
are you suggesting that we _should_ call e-books
something else? aside from questioning the hyphen,
i do believe that people have settled on that term...
> Also I don’t think that e-books
> or whatever we want to call them
> are going to push out books
> as rapidly as mp3 did the CD.
i don't think anyone has seriously argued they would.
(at least, as james notes, not in the united states.)
the nature of a physical book is quite different from
the nature of a c.d., in that a physical book requires
no "player", except a human who reads the language.
quite significantly, no electricity is required at all...
> But electronic documents and devices (plural!) will
> definitely become increasingly important over time
> as will type’s role on these devices.
agreed.
> Neither type people or e-book “designers” posturing
what means "posturing"?
> Neither type people or e-book “designers” posturing
> on typophile or elsewhere will mean much.
> We either offer something useful or we don’t.
if "we" offer something useful, "we" will indeed "mean much".
> And I think that being measurably useful is
> increasingly what will count more than explanations.
if you're saying that running code speaks louder than words,
i agree totally.
> And certainly what John has said about
> lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and
> justification algorithm is absolutely bang on.
it's funny that most people never mention that at all.
now maybe it's one of those subconscious things,
and once we give it to them, they'll be happier and
not know why... that kind of stuff does happen...
but there's also the small problem that we cannot
-- at present -- give it to them, for the reasons
i've listed above. so it's kind of a moot point...
Great point Karsten. There is no reason ebooks need to be their own "pond". In fact it would be counter productive.
RE: if you’re saying that running code speaks louder than words, i agree totally
I am not saying code per se, although that would obviously be a part many solutions especially the one John brought up. I am saying that whatever improvements are offered will be increasingly prioritized on the basis of evidence. This includes font designs.
Moot for how long? If history is any guide, and I think it is - not long.
URW's hz program, which included paragraph level justification and linebreaking on which Adobe's InDesign composers are based, was developed for use in static publishing (in which the text becomes a fixed state prior to delivery to the reader), but in many respects it is particularly appropriate to dynamic publishing (in which live text is delivered to the reader, who may e.g. change the size, change the typeface, etc.). This is what is missing from the software driving eBooks: a justification and linebreaking model that is smart enough to provide, on-the-fly, something close to the standards of a well-typeset print edition for dynamic text.
eben said:
> Moot for how long? If history is any guide, and I think it is - not long.
who knows? :+)
obviously in 10 years there'll be enough firepower in the iphone,
and all of the other hand-held machinery we're carrying around...
in 5 years? probably. but maybe not.
in 1 year? perhaps. i've been led to believe that there might be
some new iphones announced in july, and that they might have
a 600mhz processor rather than the current 400mhz processor,
and that they might have 256mb of memory instead of 128mb,
all of which might well help solve the problem.
(did you notice a lot of occurrences of "might" in that sentence?)
so it might well be possible to do the job in real-time with them.
but then, of course, you have to wait for the "legacy" hardware to
go away completely before you can _depend_ on the capabilities.
and who knows how long that will take?
i mean, seriously, it's 2009, and a substantial amount of people
are still using internet explorer v6, with little upgrade intention.
(if they ain't done it by now, there's no reason to expect 'em to.)
as for the kindle, i have no idea what their capabilities might be.
same for android phones. (and with them, and probably the next
iphone o.s. update as well, there's the issue of multi-tasking and
background processes. on the one hand, the ability to shove this
task to the background might be a neat way to solve the problem.
on the other hand, if your app has to fight for processing cycles
with a big slew of other background processes, it might well make
the whole problem much worse. and until you have running code,
you just plain don't know.)
so, will the problem go away? definitely. when? nobody knows.
in the meantime, e-books are going forward without hyphenation.
and very few civilians seem to notice or care. and that's the truth.
:in the meantime, e-books are going forward without hyphenation.
and very few civilians seem to notice or care. and that’s the truth."
As designers we do seem to forget that most of the population don't seem to really care, if it's good they don't notice as it works and does its job, but if it's bad it's a different matter, as one of my old tutors said to us (the class that is),
"good design generally goes unnoticed, it works, does its job and people don't mention it, but bad design people notice and tell you, again and again and again" (bit of a para phrase there it was a while a go).
At the moment most people are pobaby still just in awe of digital books, it still has the cool factor, so they ignore the limitations and bad design. But as with everything the more mainstream and common it becomes the more investment will be poured into it and the more polished and professional it will be.
Personally I can't wait until designers have the tools to set this stuff correctly as the possibilities of digital books are endless.
On a separate note those choices, transfer that idea to E-books and you could have a story that never really ends.
@ Aluminium- cheers was a very nice pint, brewed 2 miles down the road and the owner of the brewery was in the bar and got me one when he found out it was my birthday:-), a great way of building brand loyalty.
Martin
“not unless you designers decide to learn programming.
in the absence of that, you’re going to have to settle for
being advisors to us programmers who have decided
that we want to learn some design from typographers...”
I think that is such an unconstructive mindset. Programmers are programmers because that is what they are passionate about and what to be. Vice versa with typographers. For the life of me, don’t understand how people could enjoy coding things, but I am glad there are people who do. It is this passion that allows them to a better job than I ever will. It doesn’t make sense for programmers to learn some design from typographers and expect to produce a better solution than when they work directly in collaboration with people who have true expertise in the subject.
The only thing that the hz program offers that would not be important is the ability to compose to whole pages. Also the line space adjusting would be something I would have concerns about without another uptick in rez. What's your take on this John?
>I simply can not agree. Even my mom has one now. ;o)
>Amazon has sold a million...
Peanuts, (not your mom of course). Those kindle numbers are paltry and peaked.
>The only thing that the hz program offers that would not be important is the ability to compose to whole pages.
Why not? Just because web pages are dynamic, that does not mean there are not static states involved... eventually.
And since it is then that pages are read, and not in their 'dynamic' state, all of HZ is important, I think.
Then again, maybe I'm just saying this 'cause an associate owns patents in this area. :)
barkeep -- Personally I can't wait until designers have the tools to set this stuff correctly as the possibilities of digital books are endless.
It were be funny to have a layout application that allowed one to visually design with variables, rather than visually placing this exactly here and that exactly there.
The real issue, in my opinion, is not tools but designers. They have been trained to work within the constraints of layout applications (PageMaker, XPress, InDesign) which follow the "this here and that there" paradigm, and seem unable to approach design from the structure side (as the old fellows did, see Tschichold's or Caflisch's book design sketches). Design as illustration. There is almost a fear of "mere" structure. It would take a whole new generation not infected by the "this here and that there" virus. Here and now, maybe web designers are better prepared than print designers.
dberlow -- Then again, maybe I’m just saying this ’cause an associate owns patents in this area. :)
I've had graphic design friends beg for an app that would do that. Alas, CSS can't be built *well* that way.
It certainly can be done, though. There are frameworks designed specifically or that, such as BluePrintCSS.
Alas, those methods tend to work purely on a layout metaphors and don't always mesh with the semantic content.
Good CSS design requires a reverse angle of attack compared to the QuarkXPress days.
All that said, we've had discussions of using CSS for print-based formatting of things like books. I know there was that software product out of Australia that did that (Ring a bell anyone? I Can't recall the name of the product.)
18 May 2009 — 8:47am
Hopefully this will change in the near future. I know that at least one book publisher is working on a subsidized ebook reader because printing costs are so high and so many books lose money. Now that Amazon is planning to use cheap ebooks as a loss leader and bring in money with subscriptions to other content I expect to see more publishers jump on board. If we suddenly have competing cabals of companies that actually understand typography all trying to best Amazon and each other we’ll hopefully see better ebook typography, and maybe some really great typefaces commissioned for ebook screens.
18 May 2009 — 10:08am
I'm not convinced they'll address this any time soon. The type on the Sony is very poor (at least on the first generation) - fake italics, fake small caps, and no reviewers commented on the type. Kindle is a step in the right direction (16-level grayscale issue aside), but no one in the eBook world cares about type.
18 May 2009 — 10:46am
sii said:
> no one in the eBook world cares about type.
not entirely true.
i'm here specifically as an e-book programmer who
is soliciting feedback on a wide variety of issues...
i can't say you guys are using the opportunity wisely,
not so far anyway, but i am nothing if not persistent.
as to the particular matter of type -- that is _fonts_ --
the wired article misses the point in a substantial way...
one of the primary tenants of e-book philosophy is that
the end-user should have control over the fonts used...
so the investment of a lot of design considerations over
that particular aspect of the typography would be wasted.
the very same situation applies, of course, to web-pages.
this applies to some other typographical aspects as well...
should the text be justified or ragged-right? user decides.
how tight should the leading be? however the user likes it.
how big are the margins? as big as the user wants 'em to be.
the challenge to an e-book programmer, thus, becomes how
to offer the end-user the options in an easy-to-use interface,
and how to best present a display based on the user's choices.
this requires a _sensitivity_ to the practices of the typographer,
an awareness that i am continuously attempting to cultivate...
-bowerbird
18 May 2009 — 11:32am
I'm not so concerned about the choice of types as I am by the lack of sensible H&J schemes in e-books. Maybe it has been solved since I last read a book on Kindle in November. But that was for me the most jolting part of the experience. Perhaps for any text there will be an optimum size that allows for good H&J for that text. But when the type size is adjusted for individual eyes or reading conditions, any optimum goes away.
Displaying Kindle texts as FL/RR won't help this. There will still be far too many instances in which the machine cannot handle hyphenation, and will throw unsightly white space where it ain't supposed to be.
Figure this out and I'll be more likely to buy an e-book device. Well, figure out the economy so I can afford one, too. Right now the library wins out, hands-down.
powers
18 May 2009 — 11:50am
the kindle doesn't do hyphenation at all.
not currently, anyway. it's unclear that
the chip can handle the computations
so that they can be done in real time...
-bowerbird
18 May 2009 — 1:37pm
>the kindle doesn’t do hyphenation at all.
Phew, well I'm glad no one is proposing the Kindle be used for newspaper content then! :-)
18 May 2009 — 1:41pm
The processor is powerful enough to mispronounce the presidents’ name so I doubt that’s the problem. However if it is, then soft-hyphens could be inserted into the content as some kind of pre-process. That way the processor would not need to do anything, just use them (optionally) if the word were to fall at the end of the line.
18 May 2009 — 2:26pm
sii said:
> Phew, well I’m glad no one is proposing the
> Kindle be used for newspaper content then! :-)
i do believe it's already got newspaper content on it.
(i do not believe that content is broken into columns,
however, since there would be little reason to do that.)
> soft-hyphens could be inserted into the content
> as some kind of pre-process. That way the processor
> would not need to do anything, just use them (optionally)
> if the word were to fall at the end of the line.
in some cases, that will affect the number of lines used
by each paragraph, which will in turn affect pagination,
so it's not that easy.
-bowerbird
18 May 2009 — 4:29pm
This focus on user control seems to lose sight of the fact that design choices are neither arbitrary nor insignificant. If there's something that the author wants to do that requires a certain artistic control to best express it, then I, as a reader, want to be able to see what they want to show me. I certainly don't want them to think, "Oh well, it would have been a neat idea, but I'd better leave it out because it wouldn't work in the e-book." Things ranging from the Mouse's Tail in Alice in Wonderland to the nice little black boxes indicating the game clues in Prisoner of Trebekistan would simply start disappearing from the art of literature.
E-books will never be an adequate substitute for print until they can do everything print can do. My ideal e-reader would be able to display any PDF as it is, and optionally interpret it as plaintext so that if I feel the need to change it all to 26pt Georgia ragged right, I can... but if I don't feel like choosing what formatting to impose on a book I haven't even read yet, I don't have to.
18 May 2009 — 7:34pm
this requires a _sensitivity_ to the practices of the typographer
Yeah, well, how about using italics instead of adding underscores around the words you want to stress, huh?
18 May 2009 — 8:12pm
"It’s unclear that
the chip can handle the computations
so that they can be done in real time"
Right...because hyphenating text is the epitome of computer processing complexity?
I'm guessing not.
More likely, people don't give a damn. Sad, frustrating, but likely true.
We praise print, but tend to forget a good chunk of the paperbacks have some pretty crappy small type with paper akin to toilet paper in terms of ink gain.
18 May 2009 — 11:04pm
cerulean said:
> This focus on user control seems to lose sight of the fact
> that design choices are neither arbitrary nor insignificant.
i'm sorry if it hurts your feelings. but users want the control.
when the choice becomes your design versus their preferences,
their preferences win out. and it's not even much of a contest...
> to think, "Oh well, it would have been a neat idea, but I’d
> better leave it out because it wouldn’t work in the e-book."
actually, e-books offer authors the chance to include all kinds of
stuff that doesn't work in print, including audio and video content.
> Things ranging from the Mouse’s Tail in Alice in Wonderland
> to the nice little black boxes indicating the game clues in
> Prisoner of Trebekistan would simply start disappearing
> from the art of literature.
not really. illustrations are still viable. indeed, e-books make it
much easier, on the publishing end, to include lots of illustrations.
and if .svg takes on, even text-based illustrations will be simple...
> E-books will never be an adequate substitute for print
> until they can do everything print can do.
that's not really how innovations happen... horses can still do
lots of things that automobiles can't, but we know how that one
turned out. and, like horses, print will never totally disappear...
> My ideal e-reader would be able to display any PDF as it is,
> and optionally interpret it as plaintext so that if I feel the need
> to change it all to 26pt Georgia ragged right, I can... but if I
> don’t feel like choosing what formatting to impose on a book
> I haven’t even read yet, I don’t have to.
sounds pretty much like my system is designed to work.
-bowerbird
19 May 2009 — 12:49am
Sounds very much like the current e-books suffer the same problems as the web did, back in 1993. (Well, yeah, okay, some of those problems are still with us.) I never thought e-books would seriously threaten the status of the printed book for the forseeable future. Unless and until they allow decent custom typography, they certainly won't.
/Måns
19 May 2009 — 10:32am
aluminum said:
> Right...because hyphenating text is the epitome of
> computer processing complexity? I’m guessing not.
you guess wrong.
it would be much simpler to do hyphenation in the web-browser,
where there is usually a _much_ more capable chip in play, and
the amount of text that needs to be processed is smaller, and
you have the luxury of the use of a scrolling field rather than
more-difficult pagination.
but even in those browsers, hyphenation is rarely supported,
and then only when soft-hyphens have been pre-inserted,
a practice which kicks up some other unpleasant side-effects,
such as interference with the search capability...
> More likely, people don’t give a damn.
well, that too. but people were never polled.
> Sad, frustrating, but likely true.
it's a bummer when others don't share your obsessions, isn't it?
-bowerbird
19 May 2009 — 3:29pm
"i’m sorry if it hurts your feelings. but users want the control.
when the choice becomes your design versus their preferences,
their preferences win out. and it’s not even much of a contest..."
I don't agree with this, the vast majority of people don't know what they want.
As a much more experienced and successful man said
" A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them." Steve Jobs,
so if people don't know what they want why don't we give them something as good as it can be as standard.
E-books are pretty much a niche product at the moment. What the current batch of users want my not be indicative of what a wider audience may want. Most people just want an easy life, they don't necessarily want to fiddle around with, or can be bothered to change default, settings. As designers it is our job to design products as easy to use and as visually appealing for the majority of people as possible.
The setting of a book is vitally important to how the text flows and thus how easy it is to read. Maybe when E-book technology is more mature and the emphasis on E-book construction has move from being developer-lead to designer-lead things may change and we may get E-books that look as good as they are as written.
Martin
19 May 2009 — 3:45pm
barkeep said:
> the vast majority of people don’t know what they want.
that's an overstatement, but there's a lot of truth to it, yes.
> if people don’t know what they want
> why don’t we give them something
> as good as it can be as standard.
that's a very good approach. intelligent defaults are
probably the best thing you can do to help people out,
followed by an interface that seems "intuitive" to them
if they _do_ decide that they want to change something.
it's not always easy to decide what "as good as it can be"
actually _means_ when it comes to book-design, however.
even some of the "staples" break down amazingly quickly
when you start asking people what they actually prefer...
what percentage of the people prefer sans-serif fonts?
what leading multiple do most people choose if they can?
what typesize will be used by people if they can control it?
none of these questions are ones with "simple" answers...
and whether or not typographers "agree" on the answers,
there exists in the population a large degree of variability.
> What the current batch of users want my not be
> indicative of what a wider audience may want.
i agree entirely.
which is why it's important to give people the ability to
customize the tool to their own desires and preferences.
> Most people just want an easy life,
> they don’t necessarily want to fiddle around with
i agree entirely.
which is why it's not enough to give people the ability to
customize the tool to their own desires and preferences,
you've gotta make sure that the defaults are well-chosen.
> So as designers it is our job to design products
> as easy to use and as visually appealing
> for the majority of people as possible.
and that's why i -- as an e-book designer -- am here.
> Maybe when E-book technology is more mature
> and the emphasis on E-book construction has
> move from being developer-lead to designer-lead
> things may change
um, well, yeah, i don't think it's gonna come to _that_...
not unless you designers decide to learn programming.
in the absence of that, you're going to have to settle for
being advisors to us programmers who have decided
that we want to learn some design from typographers...
-bowerbird
19 May 2009 — 3:53pm
"um, well, yeah, i don’t think it’s gonna come to _that_...
not unless you designers decide to learn programming."
If E-books turn out to be as popular as they seem they might I am sure Adobe and Quark will release an update to allow you to "save for E-book", after all it's a perfect excuse for them to charge another whopping great upgrade fee! :-)
19 May 2009 — 4:29pm
Hyphenation, small caps, old figures...all good things, but what Kindle really needs is proper unicode support. If only chinese, arabic and cyrillic characters were added, the user group would explode.
_____________________________________________
Personal Art and Design Portal of Ivan Gulkov
www.ivangdesign.com
19 May 2009 — 5:20pm
barkeep said:
> If E-books turn out to be as popular as they seem they might
> I am sure Adobe and Quark will release an update to allow you
> to “save for E-book”, after all it’s a perfect excuse for them to
> charge another whopping great upgrade fee! :-)
bingo! :+)
***
oprion said:
> Hyphenation, small caps, old figures...all good things,
> but what Kindle really needs is proper unicode support.
> If only chinese, arabic and cyrillic characters were added,
> the user group would explode.
just today, a publisher reported that amazon has sent out
a letter reminding publishers to update their region data,
which indicates they could be taking kindle international,
in which case they'll quickly learn that they need unicode.
-bowerbird
19 May 2009 — 6:14pm
‘bowerbird’, I don't have a problem with users determining key aspects of typographic design for reading purposes, such as choice of font, size of text and linespacing. The single biggest problem with every eBook device I have looked at is the lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm. The ‘page layout’ is a mess. Solve this, and I might even buy one of these things.
19 May 2009 — 6:44pm
"As designers it is our job to design products as easy to use and as visually appealing for the majority of people as possible."
The error in logic is thinking that it's either/or. Either we dictate the design as designers, or we give people full control. The nice thing about the digital world, and, specifically, HTML and CSS is that it's not either/or. We can (and do) have both.
I admit, I rarely change settings on a particular web page to accommodate my particular tastes, but I've done it.
I can think of more than one printed book that drove me nuts to crazy line lengths, crappy paper or weird justification, though. ;o)
The best definition of UX/web design I've heard is that we're suggesters. We suggest our best solution, but don't prohibit the individual from not agreeing.
Also, I have to love Bowerbird arguing for end-user control while at the same time blocking it with inane hard-returns. ;o)
19 May 2009 — 8:41pm
Yet another case for attaching typefaces to content, rather than licensing them for devices.
19 May 2009 — 8:48pm
It's just another example of what I call "institutional ugliness". Altho not the worst case I've ever seen.
Think about it - ride a train, enter an office building, a doctor's office, a movie theater. Pick up a a local newspaper or a store circular. People have become inured to it. This wasn't always the case, a century ago even factories and warehouses had ornamentation and aesthetics. But as long as nobody but a few graphic designers complain, nothing will change.
19 May 2009 — 8:59pm
You can attach as much typefaces as you like to your content but if your device is low res and you only have an x amount of pixels how much variation is there?
Type is always made specially for devices/printers/machines/typewriters etc. But that might change for a kindle if they put hires screens in there.
19 May 2009 — 9:08pm
@brunobruno: ebooks run at around 150 DPI, so the text rendering is more detailed than on computer screens. It also tends to be displayed much larger because there’s more screen real estate due to a lack of menus, buttons, icons, etc.
19 May 2009 — 9:51pm
I just noticed that somehow the case of the title fr this thread was changed from
"Why e-books look so ugly"
to
"Why E-books Look So Ugly"
Is this a bug, feature, or moderation/edit for some reason I am unaware of?
20 May 2009 — 1:02am
john said:
> The single biggest problem with every eBook device I have looked at
> is the lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm.
> The ‘page layout’ is a mess. Solve this, and I might even buy one
gee, john, the interwebs must drive you absolutely nuts!
are you boycotting them as well? :+)
(or maybe you simply haven't noticed that web-browsers
don't do justification very often, and -- due to an absence
of any hyphenation, or even simple look-ahead routines --
the linebreaking is atrocious. is that it, you ain't noticed?)
***
aluminum said:
> Also, I have to love Bowerbird arguing for end-user control
> while at the same time blocking it with inane hard-returns. ;o)
it _is_ a conundrum, isn't it? :+)
or should i rather say that it's a _battle_,
between those authors who want control
versus the end-users who want control?
as an author, i'm gonna load the dice for my control.
but as their programmer, i load 'em for the end-user.
it ends up the best way to reformat my text
would be to load it into my viewer-program.
-bowerbird
20 May 2009 — 2:15am
Christopher - it looks like it has been changed back from here. I have no clues about why in either case.
20 May 2009 — 3:00am
>E-books are pretty much a niche product at the moment.
I would agree with the statement that E-book dedicated devices are a niche product, forever.
People are, I think, reading and listening to books on undedicated devices like mad though, very nichelessly.
Cheers!
20 May 2009 — 7:57am
@ Sorkin: I changed it back myself. Thanks for the response. For future refrence, would Wardle be the right person to contact about things like this? I don't know where to find a list of moderators, admin's, tech support &c.
@ Everyone: Don't forget about "p-books."
*throws in a wrench*
20 May 2009 — 10:19am
>E-books are pretty much a niche product at the moment.
I simply can not agree. Even my mom has one now. ;o)
20 May 2009 — 11:31am
dedicated e-book-readers are a "niche" device,
in the sense that amazon has only sold about
a million kindles, with sony not too far behind.
but the rise of low-priced "netbook" machines
-- as well as smartphones like the iphone --
means e-books are ready for their close-up...
-bowerbird
20 May 2009 — 12:59pm
"No. of book sales in the Us 2007-311 million-According to Nielsen BookScan."
Source: Wall Street Journal, 9/10/2008
I did try to find more recent figure but I was unable to find them for free, given that just in the US 311 million "old fashioned books" were sold in 2007 I am still pretty confident to call E-books niche for the time being:-)
"The error in logic is thinking that it’s either/or. Either we dictate the design as designers, or we give people full control. The nice thing about the digital world, and, specifically, HTML and CSS is that it’s not either/or. We can (and do) have both".
Sorry Aluminium, I don't see it as either or, as a designer you make the choice or you do complete designs for all possibilities, if people want to change your choices then fine, but maybe you then need to rethink why they want to change you choices:-)
It my Birthday so I'm off for a nice pint have a good night all
Martin
20 May 2009 — 1:57pm
"Sorry Aluminium, I don’t see it as either or, as a designer you make the choice or you do complete designs"
That sentence is confusing. You say it's not either/or then make an this or that statement.
As a visual designer, you do what you can to accommodate everyone. But often your demographic can be quite broad. The nice thing about digital design is that the end user can modify your suggested design to best accommodate their particular individual needs. If one person prefers 9pt type and the other, 14pt, I suppose 12pt would be a nice compromise on paper. Even better online as they can both tweak it a tad further to their preferences.
Happy Birthday!
20 May 2009 — 2:28pm
Barkeep said, "given that just in the US 311 million “old fashioned books” were sold in 2007 I am still pretty confident to call E-books niche for the time being."
When considering the numbers, keep in mind that one e-book can contain many titles. It's like comparing vinyl album sales to iPod sales. Which kind of points out that it wasn't very long ago that MP3 sales were the niche market.
21 May 2009 — 7:04am
amazon has only sold about a million kindles
Amazon has not been forthcoming about numbers as far as I have seen so I think it is best to treat this as hearsay unless somebody can show otherwise.
Also I don't think that e-books or whatever we want to call them are going to push out books as rapidly as mp3 did the CD. But electronic documents and devices (plural!) will definitely become increasingly important over time as will type's role on these devices.
Neither type people or e-book "designers" posturing on typophile or elsewhere will mean much. We either offer something useful or we don't. And I think that being measurably useful is increasingly what will count more than explanations. And certainly what John has said about lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm is absolutely bang on.
21 May 2009 — 8:09am
I would agree with the statement that E-book dedicated devices are a niche product, forever.
Maybe in the developed world that will be the case. But in rural Africa, Asia, and South America, where there are no bookstores or good roads to truck books in on, eBooks are going to explode once the price drops. They’ll be huge in cities like Japan and Mumbai where families live in apartments the size of closets. Paper books are going to be a luxury item for spoiled Americans, like SUVs and gigantic televisions.
We either offer something useful or we don’t.
The eBook side needs to offer up some documentation before the type world gets involved. Who out there is going to try reverse-engineering eBook text rendering with trial-and-error font design?
21 May 2009 — 8:51am
Eben is bang on if he says that "John has said about lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and justification algorithm is absolutely bang on". The same is true not only for e-books but also for web-browsers. (Essentially being the same.) With html/xml and css one may already define flexible layout that can adopt to the circumstances like resolution, display size, window size, desired type size, etc. The sole issue is the above-mentioned lack. Browsers/readers need to do exactly the same as the layout application of your choice does: proper text layout, hyphenation/linebreaking and justification. This would not even require alternative environments like WPF or plug-ins like Flash/AIR, at least not as long as we are talking about mere text ...
And I do not agree with e-book as niche product. The web is not a niche product either, despite sub-standard represenation of text. Improve browsers/readers and all will be fine.
21 May 2009 — 9:58am
eben said:
> Amazon has not been forthcoming about numbers
> as far as I have seen so I think it is best to treat this
> as hearsay unless somebody can show otherwise.
"a million units" is a round number, and it's certainly
in the ballpark. even the people who are arguing that
the kindle has not had much effect use _that_ estimate
to make their point... it's just 1 out of 350 americans,
which does make the point that it's a _niche_ product.
if you'd like to see more evidence for that estimate,
i'll provide it. but i was _accepting_ the stipulation.
it's hard to argue that e-books are _not_ "niche"...
> Also I don’t think that e-books
> or whatever we want to call them
are you suggesting that we _should_ call e-books
something else? aside from questioning the hyphen,
i do believe that people have settled on that term...
> Also I don’t think that e-books
> or whatever we want to call them
> are going to push out books
> as rapidly as mp3 did the CD.
i don't think anyone has seriously argued they would.
(at least, as james notes, not in the united states.)
the nature of a physical book is quite different from
the nature of a c.d., in that a physical book requires
no "player", except a human who reads the language.
quite significantly, no electricity is required at all...
> But electronic documents and devices (plural!) will
> definitely become increasingly important over time
> as will type’s role on these devices.
agreed.
> Neither type people or e-book “designers” posturing
what means "posturing"?
> Neither type people or e-book “designers” posturing
> on typophile or elsewhere will mean much.
> We either offer something useful or we don’t.
if "we" offer something useful, "we" will indeed "mean much".
> And I think that being measurably useful is
> increasingly what will count more than explanations.
if you're saying that running code speaks louder than words,
i agree totally.
> And certainly what John has said about
> lack of a sophisticated linebreaking and
> justification algorithm is absolutely bang on.
it's funny that most people never mention that at all.
now maybe it's one of those subconscious things,
and once we give it to them, they'll be happier and
not know why... that kind of stuff does happen...
but there's also the small problem that we cannot
-- at present -- give it to them, for the reasons
i've listed above. so it's kind of a moot point...
-bowerbird
21 May 2009 — 2:52pm
Great point Karsten. There is no reason ebooks need to be their own "pond". In fact it would be counter productive.
RE: if you’re saying that running code speaks louder than words, i agree totally
I am not saying code per se, although that would obviously be a part many solutions especially the one John brought up. I am saying that whatever improvements are offered will be increasingly prioritized on the basis of evidence. This includes font designs.
Moot for how long? If history is any guide, and I think it is - not long.
21 May 2009 — 6:30pm
URW's hz program, which included paragraph level justification and linebreaking on which Adobe's InDesign composers are based, was developed for use in static publishing (in which the text becomes a fixed state prior to delivery to the reader), but in many respects it is particularly appropriate to dynamic publishing (in which live text is delivered to the reader, who may e.g. change the size, change the typeface, etc.). This is what is missing from the software driving eBooks: a justification and linebreaking model that is smart enough to provide, on-the-fly, something close to the standards of a well-typeset print edition for dynamic text.
21 May 2009 — 10:45pm
eben said:
> Moot for how long? If history is any guide, and I think it is - not long.
who knows? :+)
obviously in 10 years there'll be enough firepower in the iphone,
and all of the other hand-held machinery we're carrying around...
in 5 years? probably. but maybe not.
in 1 year? perhaps. i've been led to believe that there might be
some new iphones announced in july, and that they might have
a 600mhz processor rather than the current 400mhz processor,
and that they might have 256mb of memory instead of 128mb,
all of which might well help solve the problem.
(did you notice a lot of occurrences of "might" in that sentence?)
so it might well be possible to do the job in real-time with them.
but then, of course, you have to wait for the "legacy" hardware to
go away completely before you can _depend_ on the capabilities.
and who knows how long that will take?
i mean, seriously, it's 2009, and a substantial amount of people
are still using internet explorer v6, with little upgrade intention.
(if they ain't done it by now, there's no reason to expect 'em to.)
as for the kindle, i have no idea what their capabilities might be.
same for android phones. (and with them, and probably the next
iphone o.s. update as well, there's the issue of multi-tasking and
background processes. on the one hand, the ability to shove this
task to the background might be a neat way to solve the problem.
on the other hand, if your app has to fight for processing cycles
with a big slew of other background processes, it might well make
the whole problem much worse. and until you have running code,
you just plain don't know.)
so, will the problem go away? definitely. when? nobody knows.
in the meantime, e-books are going forward without hyphenation.
and very few civilians seem to notice or care. and that's the truth.
-bowerbird
22 May 2009 — 5:57am
:in the meantime, e-books are going forward without hyphenation.
and very few civilians seem to notice or care. and that’s the truth."
As designers we do seem to forget that most of the population don't seem to really care, if it's good they don't notice as it works and does its job, but if it's bad it's a different matter, as one of my old tutors said to us (the class that is),
"good design generally goes unnoticed, it works, does its job and people don't mention it, but bad design people notice and tell you, again and again and again" (bit of a para phrase there it was a while a go).
At the moment most people are pobaby still just in awe of digital books, it still has the cool factor, so they ignore the limitations and bad design. But as with everything the more mainstream and common it becomes the more investment will be poured into it and the more polished and professional it will be.
Personally I can't wait until designers have the tools to set this stuff correctly as the possibilities of digital books are endless.
On a separate note those choices, transfer that idea to E-books and you could have a story that never really ends.
@ Aluminium- cheers was a very nice pint, brewed 2 miles down the road and the owner of the brewery was in the bar and got me one when he found out it was my birthday:-), a great way of building brand loyalty.
Martin
22 May 2009 — 7:50pm
“not unless you designers decide to learn programming.
in the absence of that, you’re going to have to settle for
being advisors to us programmers who have decided
that we want to learn some design from typographers...”
I think that is such an unconstructive mindset. Programmers are programmers because that is what they are passionate about and what to be. Vice versa with typographers. For the life of me, don’t understand how people could enjoy coding things, but I am glad there are people who do. It is this passion that allows them to a better job than I ever will. It doesn’t make sense for programmers to learn some design from typographers and expect to produce a better solution than when they work directly in collaboration with people who have true expertise in the subject.
________________
My Portfolio
23 May 2009 — 3:26am
The only thing that the hz program offers that would not be important is the ability to compose to whole pages. Also the line space adjusting would be something I would have concerns about without another uptick in rez. What's your take on this John?
23 May 2009 — 4:24am
>I simply can not agree. Even my mom has one now. ;o)
>Amazon has sold a million...
Peanuts, (not your mom of course). Those kindle numbers are paltry and peaked.
>The only thing that the hz program offers that would not be important is the ability to compose to whole pages.
Why not? Just because web pages are dynamic, that does not mean there are not static states involved... eventually.
And since it is then that pages are read, and not in their 'dynamic' state, all of HZ is important, I think.
Then again, maybe I'm just saying this 'cause an associate owns patents in this area. :)
Cheers!
23 May 2009 — 6:00am
barkeep -- Personally I can't wait until designers have the tools to set this stuff correctly as the possibilities of digital books are endless.
It were be funny to have a layout application that allowed one to visually design with variables, rather than visually placing this exactly here and that exactly there.
The real issue, in my opinion, is not tools but designers. They have been trained to work within the constraints of layout applications (PageMaker, XPress, InDesign) which follow the "this here and that there" paradigm, and seem unable to approach design from the structure side (as the old fellows did, see Tschichold's or Caflisch's book design sketches). Design as illustration. There is almost a fear of "mere" structure. It would take a whole new generation not infected by the "this here and that there" virus. Here and now, maybe web designers are better prepared than print designers.
dberlow -- Then again, maybe I’m just saying this ’cause an associate owns patents in this area. :)
I am curious.
23 May 2009 — 7:40am
"It were be funny to have a layout application that allowed one to visually design with variables"
CSS?
23 May 2009 — 8:58am
For example.
But CSS is just data. I mean an app to create these data visually. Are there any for creating CSS that way? Don't know.
23 May 2009 — 9:25am
I've had graphic design friends beg for an app that would do that. Alas, CSS can't be built *well* that way.
It certainly can be done, though. There are frameworks designed specifically or that, such as BluePrintCSS.
Alas, those methods tend to work purely on a layout metaphors and don't always mesh with the semantic content.
Good CSS design requires a reverse angle of attack compared to the QuarkXPress days.
All that said, we've had discussions of using CSS for print-based formatting of things like books. I know there was that software product out of Australia that did that (Ring a bell anyone? I Can't recall the name of the product.)