6 ms·

Not to mention the ugly/unusable rendering of mathematical formulate in ebooks on my Kindle, which is gatherig dust. Layouting is an art and a craft, and the f

by jll29 2y ago

Not to mention the ugly/unusable rendering of mathematical formulate in ebooks on my Kindle, which is gatherig dust. Layouting is an art and a craft, and the fact that it's automated by people who lack the specialized knowledge, or for whom it is not a priority (quarter century old bug reports, really?) suggests that in 2025, you should still avoid ebooks if you care about quality and aesthetics. This is a shame because e-ink is just becoming usable. Anyhow, long live the paper book!

WalterBright 2y ago
You could include the formulae as jpg's, not html.
- tagawa 2y ago
  The downside of that is screenreaders can't read them out.
  - pohuing 2y ago
    Alt texts are a thing on epubs. I would hope Amazon's format can do them as well.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Problem solved!
- _Algernon_ 2y ago
  Doesn't work well with theming.
- Skeime 2y ago
  I have not once seen a formulae-as-images solution that I would consider acceptable, aesthetically. Common problems are: - It almost impossible to align the baseline of the formula to the baseline of the surrounding text. - Often, images are only used for "complex" formulae, while simple ones are implemented using normal typesetting. This resolves the baseline issue for simple formulae, but now the fonts between simple and complex formulae don't match. (This requires extra concentration for the reader, as in other contexts, different font styles are frequently used meaningfully.) - The images often have sub-par resolution.
  - spookie 2y ago
    Furthermore, you would need to express them in text anyways for accessibility.
- nosianu 2y ago
  One advantage of ereaders is that the fonts an be set to any size convenient for device and the person reading it. A fixed pixel size image of something you want to read does not go well together with rendered text at all. It's okay for photos, but very definitely not for formulas, which are basically mostly text. I'm not even talking about the aesthetics, different fonts because they too can be set by the user, and layout, since what's inside the image is fixed and untouchable by the renderer that handles all the rest of the text.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    On my tablet I can use two fingers to zoom. But I pretty much never need to do that with a full size tablet. That's why I bought one with the retina display.
    - nosianu 2y ago
      But zooming scales the fonts only. For pixel images you have the pixels that are in it and that's it. Scaling those either up or down does not produce good text. Now I'm just waiting for the inevitable "AI image scaler" that handles text inside images.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        > Now I'm just waiting for the inevitable "AI image scaler" that handles text inside images. I'm surprised this isn't a thing already, as it seems doable with what people called "AI" 20 years ago. I mean, unless some unusual/non-default font was used, upscaling text on an image should be almost trivial. Ligatures notwithstanding, "printed letters" have a fixed shape, so: 1. Identify the typeface, size, weight, etc. by looking at the pixels of the text; 2. OCR the text (which should be 100% reliable); 3. Blank out the original text pixels; re-render the content (from step 2.) at a larger size (using parameters from step 1.). I'm hedging here; it feels to me that OCR-ing normal text that never left the digital realm should be 100% reliable, but I'm not a specialist in that subfield so I surely must be missing something...
- auggierose 2y ago
  That attitude leads to the shitty epubs we currently have. You either do a fixed-size PDF layout, or you have a proper dynamic solution. For technical/mathematical content, I am not interested in anything in between, given that PDF just works for me, and is easily achieved with tools today.
- rjmunro 2y ago
  JPEG is the absolute worst possible solution here. If MathML or similar is not supported, use an SVG or PDF so that it's zoomable and not made of pixels. It's also slightly readable by screen readers (although you probably want some sort of alt-text for those anyway). If no vector formats are supported, use PNG, or another "lossless" format not JPEG. JPEG's compression is designed for photos where the probability of 2 neighbouring pixels being the same is tiny. Note that PNG doesn't have to be lossless - if you want to shrink the file size you can reduce the resolution or the colour space. Even GIF is a much better choice than JPEG for a diagram, mathematical formula or logo with hard edges and a small number of colours. SVG is usually the right choice, (but don't do what one designer did for me and embed a JPEG in an SVG instead of giving me an SVG direct from Illustrator or Inkscape).
MilanTodorovic 2y ago
Have you tired KOreader[0]? It supports multiple ebook formats, including epub and cbz. You'll need to jailbreak[1] your Kindle though. [0] http://koreader.rocks/ http://koreader.rocks/ [1] https://github.com/notmarek/LanguageBreak https://github.com/notmarek/LanguageBreak
- dns_snek 2y ago
  For anyone who might want to jailbreak their Kindle in the future, you'll want to enable airplane mode otherwise it will automatically update its firmware (patching the jailbreak) and there's no way to disable that. It'll keep updating itself as long as it's powered on, even if you haven't used it in months and there's no telling how long it'll take for current firmware versions to be supported, latest jailbroken version is 17 months old. https://kindlemodding.gitbook.io/kindlemodding/getting-started/determining-the-method-to-use-for-jailbreaking https://kindlemodding.gitbook.io/kindlemodding/getting-start...
amadeuspagel 2y ago
If this is is still a problem thirty years after the invention of the web, then I say: So much the worse for mathematical notation. In the future, mathematical ideas will be expressed in other ways.
- spookie 2y ago
  Mathematical notation, even when considering all its faults, won't be easy to replace. Simple math, maybe. But, for anything complex, any other symbol would require completely different ways of being expressed, if your aim is to make it more readable for newcomers that is.
- shiandow 2y ago
  You severely underestimate mathematicians' ability to cling to older more convenient forms of expression. I imagine blackboards and chalk will be used in advanced mathematics for a few centuries yet.
WillAdams 2y ago
Blame the (metal) compositor unions which back in the day bargained for sinecures where all their members were guaranteed perpetual employment rather than choosing to participate in the digital revolution. Fortunately, some folks did work to preserve the craft and beauty of books --- Dr. Donald Knuth taking a decade off from writing _The Art of Computer Programming_ to create TeX (though initially he thought he'd do it over a sabbatical) is one shining example. Robert Bringhurst's authoring _The Elements of Typographic Style_ also made a huge difference (I've lost count of how many copies I've given as gifts to folks). A further issue is that doing a good page layout over an entire chapter (or book if the pagination is continuous) is an NP-hard problem --- I've had a chapter come out correctly on a first pass exactly once in my career (fastest 40 minutes of my life). The usual work-flow is something like: - check all characters to ensure that hyphens are properly set, en and em dashes replace them where appropriate, and correct the setting of any instances of what should be special characters such as prime or double primes - assign all formatting and ensure that all heads and paragraphs have settings which will forbid widows/orphans and verify that the callouts for all figures/photos/tables are correct - review the entire chapter from beginning to end, page by page, verifying that each ends as it should at the bottom of the page, and that a referenced element shows on that page spread - for instances where things don't work out, check to see which paragraphs can be adjusted to run longer or shorter by one or more lines, adjusting this until one finds a set of adjustments which results in a proper appearance for the page/spread --- repeat for all future pages --- if a particular spread/figure placement is a problem, back up and see if changing previous pages will fix it --- check the last page to ensure that it is full enough, if not, adjust previous spread, if that doesn't work, see if running the entire chapter long or short by a line will fix it. - review the entire chapter again to ensure that there are no bad breaks or stacks, add discretionary hyphens or non-breaking spaces or adjust paragraph settings as necessary, ensuring that pages still base-align If someone wants to write an ePub reader or page formatter which can do that, I'd be glad to see it.
- fn-mote 2y ago
  Fascinating, but as an ebook consumer my standards are quite a bit lower. I’m happy if the relevant figures are on the same page as the text (but that’s important), and the spacing is not absolutely awful.

by jll29 2y ago

WalterBright 2y ago

You could include the formulae as jpg's, not html.

tagawa 2y ago
The downside of that is screenreaders can't read them out.
- pohuing 2y ago
  Alt texts are a thing on epubs. I would hope Amazon's format can do them as well.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Problem solved!
_Algernon_ 2y ago
Doesn't work well with theming.
Skeime 2y ago
I have not once seen a formulae-as-images solution that I would consider acceptable, aesthetically. Common problems are: - It almost impossible to align the baseline of the formula to the baseline of the surrounding text. - Often, images are only used for "complex" formulae, while simple ones are implemented using normal typesetting. This resolves the baseline issue for simple formulae, but now the fonts between simple and complex formulae don't match. (This requires extra concentration for the reader, as in other contexts, different font styles are frequently used meaningfully.) - The images often have sub-par resolution.
- spookie 2y ago
  Furthermore, you would need to express them in text anyways for accessibility.
nosianu 2y ago
One advantage of ereaders is that the fonts an be set to any size convenient for device and the person reading it. A fixed pixel size image of something you want to read does not go well together with rendered text at all. It's okay for photos, but very definitely not for formulas, which are basically mostly text. I'm not even talking about the aesthetics, different fonts because they too can be set by the user, and layout, since what's inside the image is fixed and untouchable by the renderer that handles all the rest of the text.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  On my tablet I can use two fingers to zoom. But I pretty much never need to do that with a full size tablet. That's why I bought one with the retina display.
  - nosianu 2y ago
    But zooming scales the fonts only. For pixel images you have the pixels that are in it and that's it. Scaling those either up or down does not produce good text. Now I'm just waiting for the inevitable "AI image scaler" that handles text inside images.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > Now I'm just waiting for the inevitable "AI image scaler" that handles text inside images. I'm surprised this isn't a thing already, as it seems doable with what people called "AI" 20 years ago. I mean, unless some unusual/non-default font was used, upscaling text on an image should be almost trivial. Ligatures notwithstanding, "printed letters" have a fixed shape, so: 1. Identify the typeface, size, weight, etc. by looking at the pixels of the text; 2. OCR the text (which should be 100% reliable); 3. Blank out the original text pixels; re-render the content (from step 2.) at a larger size (using parameters from step 1.). I'm hedging here; it feels to me that OCR-ing normal text that never left the digital realm should be 100% reliable, but I'm not a specialist in that subfield so I surely must be missing something...
auggierose 2y ago
That attitude leads to the shitty epubs we currently have. You either do a fixed-size PDF layout, or you have a proper dynamic solution. For technical/mathematical content, I am not interested in anything in between, given that PDF just works for me, and is easily achieved with tools today.
rjmunro 2y ago
JPEG is the absolute worst possible solution here. If MathML or similar is not supported, use an SVG or PDF so that it's zoomable and not made of pixels. It's also slightly readable by screen readers (although you probably want some sort of alt-text for those anyway). If no vector formats are supported, use PNG, or another "lossless" format not JPEG. JPEG's compression is designed for photos where the probability of 2 neighbouring pixels being the same is tiny. Note that PNG doesn't have to be lossless - if you want to shrink the file size you can reduce the resolution or the colour space. Even GIF is a much better choice than JPEG for a diagram, mathematical formula or logo with hard edges and a small number of colours. SVG is usually the right choice, (but don't do what one designer did for me and embed a JPEG in an SVG instead of giving me an SVG direct from Illustrator or Inkscape).

MilanTodorovic 2y ago

Have you tired KOreader[0]? It supports multiple ebook formats, including epub and cbz. You'll need to jailbreak[1] your Kindle though. [0] http://koreader.rocks/ http://koreader.rocks/ [1] https://github.com/notmarek/LanguageBreak https://github.com/notmarek/LanguageBreak

dns_snek 2y ago
For anyone who might want to jailbreak their Kindle in the future, you'll want to enable airplane mode otherwise it will automatically update its firmware (patching the jailbreak) and there's no way to disable that. It'll keep updating itself as long as it's powered on, even if you haven't used it in months and there's no telling how long it'll take for current firmware versions to be supported, latest jailbroken version is 17 months old. https://kindlemodding.gitbook.io/kindlemodding/getting-started/determining-the-method-to-use-for-jailbreaking https://kindlemodding.gitbook.io/kindlemodding/getting-start...

amadeuspagel 2y ago

If this is is still a problem thirty years after the invention of the web, then I say: So much the worse for mathematical notation. In the future, mathematical ideas will be expressed in other ways.

spookie 2y ago
Mathematical notation, even when considering all its faults, won't be easy to replace. Simple math, maybe. But, for anything complex, any other symbol would require completely different ways of being expressed, if your aim is to make it more readable for newcomers that is.
shiandow 2y ago
You severely underestimate mathematicians' ability to cling to older more convenient forms of expression. I imagine blackboards and chalk will be used in advanced mathematics for a few centuries yet.

WillAdams 2y ago

Blame the (metal) compositor unions which back in the day bargained for sinecures where all their members were guaranteed perpetual employment rather than choosing to participate in the digital revolution. Fortunately, some folks did work to preserve the craft and beauty of books --- Dr. Donald Knuth taking a decade off from writing _The Art of Computer Programming_ to create TeX (though initially he thought he'd do it over a sabbatical) is one shining example. Robert Bringhurst's authoring _The Elements of Typographic Style_ also made a huge difference (I've lost count of how many copies I've given as gifts to folks). A further issue is that doing a good page layout over an entire chapter (or book if the pagination is continuous) is an NP-hard problem --- I've had a chapter come out correctly on a first pass exactly once in my career (fastest 40 minutes of my life). The usual work-flow is something like: - check all characters to ensure that hyphens are properly set, en and em dashes replace them where appropriate, and correct the setting of any instances of what should be special characters such as prime or double primes - assign all formatting and ensure that all heads and paragraphs have settings which will forbid widows/orphans and verify that the callouts for all figures/photos/tables are correct - review the entire chapter from beginning to end, page by page, verifying that each ends as it should at the bottom of the page, and that a referenced element shows on that page spread - for instances where things don't work out, check to see which paragraphs can be adjusted to run longer or shorter by one or more lines, adjusting this until one finds a set of adjustments which results in a proper appearance for the page/spread --- repeat for all future pages --- if a particular spread/figure placement is a problem, back up and see if changing previous pages will fix it --- check the last page to ensure that it is full enough, if not, adjust previous spread, if that doesn't work, see if running the entire chapter long or short by a line will fix it. - review the entire chapter again to ensure that there are no bad breaks or stacks, add discretionary hyphens or non-breaking spaces or adjust paragraph settings as necessary, ensuring that pages still base-align If someone wants to write an ePub reader or page formatter which can do that, I'd be glad to see it.

fn-mote 2y ago
Fascinating, but as an ebook consumer my standards are quite a bit lower. I’m happy if the relevant figures are on the same page as the text (but that’s important), and the spacing is not absolutely awful.