On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 10:21 AM, Alistair Buxton <a.j.bux...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On 23 February 2011 14:10, Sivan Greenberg <si...@omniqueue.com> wrote: >> >> Feedback? > > As requested, a list of things that I think are important for an ereader. I > am only really interested in the case of reading novels on a tablet device, > so this may not be applicable to comic books, magazine, technical reference > material etc. A lot of the points will be applicable to desktop readers but > some are purely about tablet interfaces.
I agree with a lot of what you say... some additional comments below: > * No scrolling between pages, "page 23.5" or any of that nonsense. Not sure if I agree here --- I think for formats that have a 'real' page #, showing it is important. If I want to mention to someone something that happens on page 35, I wanna be sure that page 35 is the same whether I'm using a handset, 7" tablet or 10" tablet. > * Do indent the first line of the paragraph. > * Start a new page for a new chapter all of these formating things shouldn't override what's in the original layout unless the user explicitly chooses - I'd generally like to see the book the way it was intended by the auther/publisher. > Formats: > > Unfortunately reformatting of the text is problematic for some formats, > notably PDF - even if you can change the font, you cannot necessarily reflow > the text (in particular, identifying paragraphs is often extremely hard). > And that is assuming the PDF is not just a sequence of bitmaps. Reflowing PDFs is a bit of a black art. Sony does it pretty well, but I think it's pretty challenging --- I'd definitely put it as low priority... just tell people to use Calibre and convert the PDF to an epub or something... I'd say that's a good approach for most format support, actually --- if the reader supports epub and native PDF, tell 'em to use calibre to convert everything else. of course, if you want any kind of mainstream success for the book reader, it'll need to support DRM'd epubs... Frankly, even though I only *buy* DRM-free books, i'd find an ebook reader without DRM support crippling because I can only borrow ebooks that use DRM, and if I can't read ebooks borrowed from the library, I'd find it pretty limiting. Warren -- Warren Baird - Photographer and Digital Artist http://www.synergisticimages.ca _______________________________________________ MeeGo-community mailing list MeeGo-community@meego.com http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-community http://wiki.meego.com/Mailing_list_guidelines
