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Having two font settings to choose from is a degraded user experience. You're also missing the margin and line spacing settings, as well as font style. Also T

Having two font settings to choose from is a degraded user experience. You're also missing the margin and line spacing settings, as well as font style. Also TTS sucks with PDFs but works excellent with reflowable formats (this one is important to me personally.) > the usual format for [any ebooks] looks [...] like webpages. Because they basically are, and to most people who use these files, that's a feature. Attempts to subvert that are misguided. > math This is legitimately a pain point for ebooks, I agree on this point. However I think embedding formula as images with alt-text is a better solution than offering dozens of PDF variations.

leephillips 6y ago
What’s TTS? Poor typography is a degraded user experience. If a Kindle is to be an electronic replacement for a paper book, it is nice if it also has decent typesetting, like a real book. There are tradeoffs. If some things are more important to you, I would hesitate to accuse you of being “misguided”. EDIT: It hit me: text to speech. You are right about this, of course. But if you have a system for generating a selection of PDFs, including a text version would be trivial.
- liability 6y ago
  Sorry, that's my bad for using an initialism without clarification. > EDIT: It hit me: text to speech. You are right about this, of course. But if you have a system for generating a selection of PDFs, including a text version would be trivial. The problem with plain text is you lose the styling and images. A lot of people who use text to speech (TTS) still have some vision or even full vision, and would like to see the pictures or bolded/italic text. If there were a richer format that included those things but worked well with TTS, wouldn't that be worth offering for download? And isn't an epub exactly that sort of format? Active users of ereader devices predominantly use them to read reflowable formats. If the aesthetics or functionality of the reflowable experience offended those users, they probably wouldn't remain users/owners of such a device for long. I'm sure there are some exceptions. Offering a PDF, or even many PDFs, is fine. Some people prefer PDFs and their opinion is no less valid the preference for reflowable formats. In my opinion, a reflowable format should always be offered to those who want it, but certainly not forced on everybody. I think authors like Douglas R. Hofstadter who insist on strict fixed formatting are within their rights to do so, but are misguided. I own a paperback copy of how book; I wish I could also own an epubs copy, but unfortunately that seems impossible due to the imposed preferences of the author.

leephillips 6y ago

What’s TTS? Poor typography is a degraded user experience. If a Kindle is to be an electronic replacement for a paper book, it is nice if it also has decent typesetting, like a real book. There are tradeoffs. If some things are more important to you, I would hesitate to accuse you of being “misguided”. EDIT: It hit me: text to speech. You are right about this, of course. But if you have a system for generating a selection of PDFs, including a text version would be trivial.

liability 6y ago
Sorry, that's my bad for using an initialism without clarification. > EDIT: It hit me: text to speech. You are right about this, of course. But if you have a system for generating a selection of PDFs, including a text version would be trivial. The problem with plain text is you lose the styling and images. A lot of people who use text to speech (TTS) still have some vision or even full vision, and would like to see the pictures or bolded/italic text. If there were a richer format that included those things but worked well with TTS, wouldn't that be worth offering for download? And isn't an epub exactly that sort of format? Active users of ereader devices predominantly use them to read reflowable formats. If the aesthetics or functionality of the reflowable experience offended those users, they probably wouldn't remain users/owners of such a device for long. I'm sure there are some exceptions. Offering a PDF, or even many PDFs, is fine. Some people prefer PDFs and their opinion is no less valid the preference for reflowable formats. In my opinion, a reflowable format should always be offered to those who want it, but certainly not forced on everybody. I think authors like Douglas R. Hofstadter who insist on strict fixed formatting are within their rights to do so, but are misguided. I own a paperback copy of how book; I wish I could also own an epubs copy, but unfortunately that seems impossible due to the imposed preferences of the author.