Re: eBook Ignoramus Authors

On Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:30:59 -0500, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
<seawasp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
On Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:37:19 -0500, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
<seawasp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:

I don't want to carry yet another special purpose tool around when I
can use a general purpose phone/pda/internet browser/bookreader/mp3
player/GPS, maps and routefinder/emailer. It won't be ideal, but I'll
be carrying a phone around anyway so why not make it useful?

My iPhone is great for use as a phone, a music source, directions,
finding answers to crucial questions.

I would NEVER try reading a book on it. Screen vastly too small. And
making the text large enough to read would probably result in less than
a paragraph per screen, meaning that I couldn't possibly scroll it fast
enough and controllably enough to read comfortably.

I use Stanza on my iPhone, and set it to a size that gets this in one
screen, plus the phone status topbar:

------------------------------------------------------------
or the powers of reason. This in itself constitutes an
unimpeachable indictment of weakness. Then, influenced
doubtless by an illogical feeling of sentiment, you permitted
her to walk abroad in the fields to a place where she was
able to make an almost successful attempt to escape.
Your own reasoning power, were it not defective, would
convince you that you are unfit. The natural, and
reasonable consequence is destruction. Therefore you will
be destroyed in such a way that the example will be
beneficial to all other kaldanes of the swarm of Luud. In

This is where it would cut off for me in viewing comfort -- 10 lines
(having just found some text and enlarged it until it was comfortable to
read). But as my lines would then be larger characters, I'd presume
there'd be even less text, maybe at "Therefore you..." In any case,
that's less than 100 words, which is a few seconds of reading.

After some fiddling to get ten lines (the font size is a slider, not a
numeric field in Stanza) it comes out like this:

This in itself constitutes an unimpeachable
indictment of weakness. Then, influenced
doubtless by an illogical feeling of sentiment, you
permitted her to walk abroad in the fields to a
place where she was able to make an almost
successful attempt to escape. Your own reasoning
power, were it not defective, would convince you
that you are unfit. The natural, and reasonable
consequence is destruction. Therefore you will be
destroyed in such a way that the example will be

So there's a line and a half difference at that size. 8-12 seconds
reading per page, depending. Once you're reading you don't notice the
next-page tap happening, and the tap zones are in appropriate places
for where your thumb will be as you're holding the phone, and
next/previous can be switched round to suit your handhold.

The
iPhone touch-scroll is difficult enough to control in fine, at speed,
that it would be EXTREMELY annoying to try to regularly read that way;
I'd continually overshoot or undershoot. Or worse, it would interpret
something as a double-tap, etc., and I'd abruptly end the reading
session without meaning to.

Your visualization is poor, young one. No touch-scroll in Stanza. Page
turning has two methods available:
Swipe - right to left to turn to the next page, or left to right for
previous page.
Tap zones - three zones for next page, previous page, and options.
Both methods are simultanously available.

To get out of a book you have to hit the options zone, then
back-to-library. Or the physical button of course. Stanza also returns
to where you left off by default, takes about 4 seconds to start up
and get to the right page. It always stores the page you were on, so
you can hop between books without losing your place.

The original jailbroken Books.app reader used the touch scroll method,
but also had next page and options tap zones.

Tain't bad. A bit too short horizontally. The E90 was better - screen
the same physical size as the width of text in a hardback novel, so
I'd have the text at the same size as a hardback too. The iPhone I use
smaller text.

I realise that I am lucky to have eyes which have no problem at all
with reading screens, particularly LCD type.

Eyes with no problems are useful. Mine have always been nearsighted,
but now I have developed presbyopia as well.

Ow, bad luck. I'm short sighted (-3 diopters) and astigmatic (+1.25,
with the axes at 100 degrees to each other! Who designed this crap?),
but nevertheless when corrected have no trouble with reading screens.
Never have. I'll enjoy it while I can.

Hopefully by the time I start going long-sighted too, eyeball medical
technology will be able to fix/replace the focussing gear, or do
something with direct nerve induction, or at least give me some sort
of retina-painting laser HUD tech that'll work around it.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
....most SF writers are small blokes; they spent a lot of time grubbing
around on the floor for old SF mags, not stretching up to the top shelf
for pornography... As an aside, Douglas Adams is quite tall.
- Terry Pratchett
.

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