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Why reflowable formats like ePub are overvalued
May 10, 2008 | 7:32 am
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By Tamas Simon
Reminder: These are Tamas Simon’s individual opinions. – D.R.
I read a lot of posts and comments nowadays on the need for a reflowable e-book format. ePub is said to be a “solution” for this. I understand the frustration; I just don’t think reflow is such a big deal, especially not if we look at the long term trends. When do we need reflow anyway? I think there are two cases:
First scenario is when we have some content on a device and we want to change the font size. Honestly, how often does this happen? Once you’ve set the font size for a size that works for you, how often will you change it?
Second scenario is when switching devices. We have some content that looks acceptable on one device and we want to move it to another device that has smaller screen size. If it has larger screen size, we usually don’t even bother, do we?
Wouldn’t you be happy if…
If someone would let you use a different version of the file for the second device—but still a PDF file or something like that, a “final non-reflowable format”—wouldn’t that make you happy? I think what we really need is not one end-user e-book-format that can reflow a hundred different ways but rather a means to access the content in a format that works at the moment. So the “reflow” can very well happen on a server, in the “cloud” or just by being offered a wide variety of formats.
The Feedbooks approach
Check out Feedbooks for instance. You download the book for one device and then download it again for another device. No problem. “Reflow” is done for you by the site. And it very well addresses the first scenario, too; you want bigger letters, there you go. I don’t see why this could not work for copyrighted works. We just need someone to provide the service.
At least there would be something value added, something that provides convenience, something that consumers would pay for in an era when content itself becomes so abundant that it’s almost impossible to charge for it. The publishing industry is still fighting this trend but have a look at some bittorrent sites, see what happened to music: you’ll most likely agree that the trend is clear.
The ownership issue
What happens then with “owning a book”? Well, I suppose you could “own” the source format TEX, or XML that is used to produce the different outcomes. Or just share what you have on the P2P network and hope that someone has another format of the content that will help you out one day. Chance are there is.
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Comments:
Hi, Tamas. Big thanks for your essay. But as both a reader and a writer, may I respectfully disagree?
1. Yes, there are countless times when I want to change font size. A large one is great for when my eyes are tired or I want to take in the material slowly. A smaller one is good for rapid browsing and reading. If nothing else, what about different family members reading from the same file on the same device?
2. The cloud concept in the context you mentioned would be a neat way for techies to divert income from content people. I don’t want readers to have to pay for extra services to give them the right font sizes, etc. It’s unnecessary with a reflowable format. Better that the money go instead for content. And, yes, there are readers who will pay for good books from companies offering fair values. Ask Ficbot. Content is still worth something. No one will confuse typical Usenet posts with Philip Roth novels.
3. Yes, plenty of people want to own even e-books for real and be able to use them on a variety of devices without paying fees or being forced to visit P2P sites to find the right size.
4. Funny you should mention Feedbooks. Hadrien as a person and Feedbooks as a site support ePub, and I suspect that the ability to reflow is a major reason.
Regardless of our differences, thanks again for speaking up! The idea, as usual, is that the different sides can learn from each other.
David
I probably would have agreed with you at one point in time, but now that I’ve passed 40 I find my eyes “see differently” at different times of the day. The ability to kick up the font size when I’m reading late at night is of high value to me. Reflowing in the cloud can work if you always have access to the cloud. As a frequent traveler who uses the air time as reading time, this would not work since I don’t have access to the electronic cloud while in the air. Just my .02.
I guess I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want content that flows. As I’ve mentioned before, I use a half-dozen or so devices to read on. All have different sizes, aspect ratios, and resolutions. I would hate to have to go hunting for new versions of my eBooks if, say, I bought a new Palm with a slightly different aspect ratio.
Being a publisher, I sort of understand the artist types who want their fonts to look just so no matter who the reader is. But ultimately I think this is a losing battle. Content and the presentation not only can be separated, they should be separated.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Spoken like a man with no visual impairments. Your parochial attitude (“works for me, therefore works for all”) is showing.
Maybe I should introduce you to my wife, whose MS-induced weakness makes it difficult for her to *hold* a print book, and whose MS-induced optic neuritis makes large print necessary. Since MS symptoms vary from day to day, she doesn’t always need the same fonts–and since she and I *share* a reader *and* books, we need the capability.
Yes, I’m torqued off. Sue me.
– C
I switch font size all the time. E.g., when I go to the beach or when some background is reflected in the display. Basically, whenever visibility-conditions change.
Not only do I value reflowability very much, I see no reason what so ever to not provide it.
Oh, and it’s not just the font size that I change. If the sun shines from the side then the edge of my display casts a shadow over the edge of the screen. In those cases I really, really want to adjust the margin so that the text isn’t in the shadow.
I switch sizes all the time today too. For example:
- Today, at the hairdresser. I was getting highlights, had to sit under a heatlamp for 45 minutes, and was not allowed to put my glasses back on. Hello, bigger font size! In fact, I wished my ebookwise had more than two options.
- Cerebus brings up a good point about sharing. I use some of my ebook tools when I am teaching and the kids invariably prefer a bigger font size. Also, if I am trying to load any of it into Powerpoint slides or some kind of overhead projector system, the bigger the better.
- Some books come with default font sizes that are smaller than usual (often as the result of an author who, as Rob says, wants the font to look just so) and it simply doesn’t work for me. If you want your work to look ‘just so’ then display it in an art gallery! If it’s something like a book, where I bought it and it’s mine, I don’t think it is the vendor’s place to tell me how to use it—just like I can buy a pair of canvas shoes and paint them, or buy a t-shirt and hack it all to bits. And people do those sorts of things all the time, do you think the t-shirt vendor should be saying ‘wait a minute, you are not supposed to use it that way’ or something?
- You will never anticipate every device that your user might have. The bulk of the market probably will have something common like a Palm or a cell phone, and sure, you could probably create separate formats for those. But what about the customer who’s spent the last year teaching English in China (and relying on e-books for his/her English-language reading needs while in a non-English country) and comes home with some obscure device they only sell in two countries? Isn’t is easier to just have one format that everyone can tweak to their needs, rather than dealing with customers like that one emailing you to complain that their one-of-a-kind (relatively) device is not listed among the hundred formats you provide?
I was reading recently on one of the forums that someone regularly used font size 2 on his Kindle. I imagine when I was his age I could have done that also. Now I use #5, plus or minus 1, so are you suggesting I should download 3 different books to be able to read that book and then say a child should download 2 more so they can have their choice of font sizes? One of the reasons I didn’t consider the Sony Reader was because of the microscopic PDF presentations that were totally unusable for me. I guess you can publish your books in PDF if you wish to limit your customer base.
To flow or not to flow is hardly the question. Perfecting stylesheets, and their display, is the point.
Not that many years ago, book publishing, for reasons of paper-costs, included photographs as a separate plates’ section inserted where text-page imposition dictated. In-text illustrations had to be included only as line-illustrations and, for the most part, placed somewhere before or after the text reference to them.
The point being that readers adapted to the new, but technically convoluted, form of publishing which is still practised. It was not replaced, in other words, by glossy-page fully illustrated books. It remains a workable solution if not a perfect one.
To make an analogy to this example, the graphic e-book is best served (though not absolutely) by PDF or something similar – a given page size and fixed text.
On the other hand, the other type of e-book is text, rather than graphically based – that will nor change nor will it be shifted by any other form of communications. Writing, not graphics, remains the supreme means of conveying concepts with accuracy and unambiguously to a reader. Everything is secondary to that, no publishable graphic can replace that basic attribute of the written word and its supremacy in terms of human knowledge.
The question is not whether or not this form of text-centric publishing should be reflowable, countless editions of the same works in p-books have been reflowed into a variety of page and text sizes, much to the endless frustration of those trying to locate page references to different editions.
The question is how should it be reflowed, especially when parts of the publication (tables, formulas, text graphics, diagrams etc.,.) are typographically coherent and should be displayed differently according to how the text in the main is displayed. Here the problem with stylesheets as they have now developed (CSS) has distinct limits and needs to approached differently to how it is now implemented.
Ideally for reading and for justifying text etc., text should aim to be about 72 letters per line. However, display and text size will rarely meet this ideal. At one stage or another of “magnification” justified text needs to revert to left aligned, various typographical elements need to be treated differently, pictures may have to be separated and shown in landscape despite the device being read in portrait. In other words, aside from the more “artistic” concerns, there are mundane typographical concerns that no reader software should be allowed to solve for itself without specific instruction.
That is the problem; creating an interactive relationship between the device, users preference and stylesheets. It presents itself not just as an interface problem (which could be easily solved – ie micro-display + small text, as against micro-display + extra-large text), but also as a reference problem to parts within element tags. I would bring one other useful element into the picture – SVG not just as graphic element, but also as “template”, especially for complex tables, where text can via the particular stylesheet be flowed in some sensible way (ie alternative SVGs for different sizes being employed).
My point here is the debate between fixed and flowing text models is misplaced – graphic publications have to assume some fixed proportion and relative size, that can be compromised by smart readers, but will never be completely satisfactory so long as different needs and devices, now or in the future (with the possible exception of fold-out or other another expandable display technology – it may be some time before an A2 display can be folded up into A6).
Text publications (with or without illustrations) is another question, but it needs a lot of development to be be truly suitable for reading, as against monitor browsing for which it was initially designed.
I repeat, that nothing now or promised by the most vivid imagination is about to supplant the written word for concise, precise and unambiguous publication of knowledge and serious thought. We should not get the graphic magazine mixed up with the serious tome, they are two very different things.
Thanks for all the comments.
Wow, I can see that for some of you it is really important to be able to quickly resize the fonts.
So what do you do when you buy a paper book? Don’t you just get one for the “worst case”… meaning big letters? wouldn’t the same work for E ?
Also… I don’t think a device would have to be constantly, all the time on-line, connected to the “cloud”. It’s only needed every once in a while, when you prepare for reading.
just my 2 cents
Hi, Tamas. Remember, most folks who are of prime book buying page aren’t used to reading books off screens. Many don’t think LCDs are as comfortable as paper, and of course E Ink has other issue such as contrast problems.
For that reason and many others, ergonomic factors such as font adjustments count. Yes, even with paper books, I myself miss font adjustability, and here I’ve been reading E for years.
As for the cloud concept, you’re still inflicting unneeded complexity on those who don’t want it. They don’t want to have to mess with a new round of downloads, tweaks, whatever, to use their old books on future devices. Just one example.
Once again, thanks for speaking your mind, Tamas. I just think most people would disagree and vote with their wallets if the book busines went in the directions you suggest.
David
“wouldn’t the same work for E ”
Tamas, you are missing the point. In E, it IS possible to resize on the go. Technically, it can be done. So why limit yourself by removing that option? What is the harm in having it? WHY are you so opposed to people having this ability? You have not yet proven that the complicated system you propose has ANY advantage to the customer.
As to what I do in P…
1) There are some kinds of books I don’t buy in print form. There are some kinds of books I only buy in P form. So I don’t compare the two
2) I have in the past not bought a P book because I didn’t like the way it looked. In E, this lost sale can easily be avoided
3) I take my e-reader with my in different circumstances than I take p-books. So, in the hairdresser scenario, I would not have had an issue with a pbook because I would not have brought one with me
“So what do you do when you buy a paper book?”
Ever looked at the large print market recently?
Cerebus
no I haven’t. From your comment I suppose it much smaller then the “normal” print market meaning you cannot always find what you want in large print.
My point is that if you would happen to find the book in large print then you’d be OK with it.
David and Ficbot
I think complexity is a funny thing.
Complexity has to be hidden from the user.
Reflowing a text is complex, eInk technology is complex etc. etc. yet you don’t even notice it because it’s made transparent to you.
The same could apply to downloading a book, or “reflowing” it on a server.
I thought that adjusting the font size of the text is an overvalued feature, I thought people don’t use it very often. From your comments I can see that I was wrong.
I still think the eBooks should be in the “cloud”…