5 ms·
When I tell people the UI of paper books is in most ways superior to ebook readers, this is the kind of thing I mean. They do take up a shitload less space, wh
by vundercind 2y ago
When I tell people the UI of paper books is in most ways superior to ebook readers, this is the kind of thing I mean.
They do take up a shitload less space, which is a pretty big advantage, though.
- haroldp 2y agoI would disagree strongly with this. :) The e-reader UI is generally so much better than paper, if a book is not available for kindle, I'll usually find something else to read. Pale Fire is a special case book where you want two have bookmarks where you are currently working. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on paper, and an e-reader would definitely have ruined it. Technical books with a lot of charts, diagrams, monospaced code examples, etc can highlight the weaknesses of e-readers. PDFs are almost always better on a tablet. But for like, words-in-a-row novels that don't mind being re-wrapped, there is no comparison, for me. e-Reader every time.
- vundercind 2y agoYes, they are fine for books with no features but body text and no important formatting or layout, and that the reader progresses through entirely linearly. Those are the sorts of books they’re best-suited to.
- haroldp 2y ago> Those are the sorts of books they’re best-suited to. Which is 98% of novels. e-Readers are even great for books with lots of end notes or foot notes. It's great for flipping between those. I had no problem reading Infinite Jest, for example. I guess if my copy of Pale Fire had hyperlinked all the poem line mentions, I would have been fine. :) Now I'm wondering if I could write a quick script to annotate mine thusly...
- adammarples 2y agoIe. 99% of fiction books
- the_af 2y ago100% agreed. I'm the kind of reader that goes back and forth when reading a novel. I like to go back and re-read when a character was introduced, or simply go back a few pages. The UI of the Kindle sucks for this. It excels at finding a specific sentence, of course, but not for the kind of flipping pages I enjoy doing.
- ubermonkey 2y agoI prefer paper as an experience, but there are absolutely ways that (e.g.) a Kindle can be superior. * Control of text size * Weight I forget what it was, but at some point I was excitedly reading a new hardback -- and found it so heavy to read in bed that I bought the Kindle edition in addition to the paper one. This also applies for travel, doubly so.
- vundercind 2y agoThey do replace the need for printing separate large-print editions, which is nice.