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It comes down to resources and throwing them at the highest return. For all the people complaining about typography in ebooks, if they were indeed hand set for

by 8ig8 15y ago

It comes down to resources and throwing them at the highest return. For all the people complaining about typography in ebooks, if they were indeed hand set for the new format, you'd have people complaining that certain books aren't available in an electronic format fast enough. It's impossible to please everyone.

larrik 15y ago
Nonsense. It is months between when the physical book is typeset and it hits the stores. Plenty of time to tweak the ebook version.
- capnrefsmmat 15y ago
  Surely the majority of the typesetting would be done by the e-reader software itself, anyway. Hyphenation, justification, and spacing can be handled almost entirely in software, except perhaps hints for strange words or difficult situations. LaTeX can certainly handle it without help, at least.
  - 8ig8 15y ago
    I agree, but in this post, the author says: > With a little effort, the makers of The Publisher’s digital incarnation could have one-upped the printed book by positioning these photographs to accompany relevant bits of Brinkley’s text, illustrating, e.g., a description of Henry Luce’s childhood with a photo of Luce as a toddler. I don't know anything about typesetting, but this specific example seems difficult to automate with software. A human would need to decide where best to place these photos. Again, a guess, but it seems that this book started life in a pre-electronic book production process. To get it right would require more manual effort for the e-book. Just like websites are evolving to be adaptive/responsive, I think book production will follow. We're just not there yet. Websites are still being launched today that are close to impossible to read on a mobile phone.
    - wtallis 15y ago
      In LaTeX, switching between putting all the figures on their own page or putting them inline takes the equivalent of an #ifdef. It's really easy, and doesn't require any special knowledge of typesetting. Remember, TeX started out with the goal of being able to automate the typesetting of a very large, very complicated multi-volume book (The Art of Computer Programming). Novels are almost too easy, and adding a few pictures to a biography is mostly trivial.
- 8ig8 15y ago
  Not time, but resources. In this case paying someone to manually set the book's E-edition. My point is that with anything, the publishers decide if paying to manually set the ebook has a better return than spending elsewhere (or not at all). I think going forward, the publishers will plan for typesetting the print and electronic versions together so the delineation of costs that I mention won't exists. It will all be rolled into the production cost of the book. My comment is aimed at publishers with piles of books that were set before the existence of ebooks (or with production processes that are slower to change, books in transition). Should the backlog of books be converted to e-books as quickly as possible using a less than ideal processes or should the books be manually re-set with humans thereby delaying their availability? I think the publishers are trying to optimize based on highest return between typography and availability. BTW, I would love to see better typography, I don't disagree with that point. I'm just speculating on why it's not happening.
deleted 15y ago
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by 8ig8 15y ago

larrik 15y ago

Nonsense. It is months between when the physical book is typeset and it hits the stores. Plenty of time to tweak the ebook version.

capnrefsmmat 15y ago
Surely the majority of the typesetting would be done by the e-reader software itself, anyway. Hyphenation, justification, and spacing can be handled almost entirely in software, except perhaps hints for strange words or difficult situations. LaTeX can certainly handle it without help, at least.
- 8ig8 15y ago
  I agree, but in this post, the author says: > With a little effort, the makers of The Publisher’s digital incarnation could have one-upped the printed book by positioning these photographs to accompany relevant bits of Brinkley’s text, illustrating, e.g., a description of Henry Luce’s childhood with a photo of Luce as a toddler. I don't know anything about typesetting, but this specific example seems difficult to automate with software. A human would need to decide where best to place these photos. Again, a guess, but it seems that this book started life in a pre-electronic book production process. To get it right would require more manual effort for the e-book. Just like websites are evolving to be adaptive/responsive, I think book production will follow. We're just not there yet. Websites are still being launched today that are close to impossible to read on a mobile phone.
  - wtallis 15y ago
    In LaTeX, switching between putting all the figures on their own page or putting them inline takes the equivalent of an #ifdef. It's really easy, and doesn't require any special knowledge of typesetting. Remember, TeX started out with the goal of being able to automate the typesetting of a very large, very complicated multi-volume book (The Art of Computer Programming). Novels are almost too easy, and adding a few pictures to a biography is mostly trivial.
8ig8 15y ago
Not time, but resources. In this case paying someone to manually set the book's E-edition. My point is that with anything, the publishers decide if paying to manually set the ebook has a better return than spending elsewhere (or not at all). I think going forward, the publishers will plan for typesetting the print and electronic versions together so the delineation of costs that I mention won't exists. It will all be rolled into the production cost of the book. My comment is aimed at publishers with piles of books that were set before the existence of ebooks (or with production processes that are slower to change, books in transition). Should the backlog of books be converted to e-books as quickly as possible using a less than ideal processes or should the books be manually re-set with humans thereby delaying their availability? I think the publishers are trying to optimize based on highest return between typography and availability. BTW, I would love to see better typography, I don't disagree with that point. I'm just speculating on why it's not happening.

deleted 15y ago

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