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It is the multitude of form factors on the internet that keeps absorbing and reducing the total value of books. For what subject is a 300-page collection of "pa
by protting99 9y ago
It is the multitude of form factors on the internet that keeps absorbing and reducing the total value of books. For what subject is a 300-page collection of "pages" still the best form factor? How can it compete, for example, with a StackOverflow page, when answering technical questions? Maybe a book is still useful for fiction, but how long will it take before people design better form factors even for novels?
- Koshkin 9y agoIndeed. Being stuck with the fixed page format is like being stuck in the "horseless-carriage" mentality. A4 or whatever paper sheet format should be completely abandoned in favor of dynamic text formatting - not unlike what browsers can do when displaying HTML.
- Shorel 9y agoThat only applies to PDF. Most e-books are in epub or mobi format, and those are essentially HTML.
- dragonwriter 9y agoActually, dynamically flowing text works great for novels. It's a lot worse for most technical content though, where diagrams, tables, etc. designed with both readability factors and the specific target page size in mind remain important. Which is why novels are popular in the HTML-based e-reader formats, technical content less so.