May 2010 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 May '10

06 May '10

greg said: > I'm not very impressed. Too big & heavy. > I like the iPhone better. "too big". that's a curious objection to make. then again, i was just telling someone yesterday apple might have done things in the wrong order. if they'd come out with the ipad first, and _then_ the iphone, we'da seen it as a natural progression. "computers always get smaller, and then cheaper." by skipping over the ipad form-factor to go directly to the iphone, now it seems they are "regressing"... at any rate, if the iphone and the ipad can do a job equally well, i'd see how the iphone would be better. but i think a whole class of functionality will develop where the iphone is _too_small_ to do the job well... (and a laptop or a netbook is "too big". to define this, seek out places where someone is using a _clipboard_; they will prove to be the realms where the ipad shines.) and of course apple gave itself plenty of room to grow. even if that functionality class takes a while to manifest, there's years of "upgrade" possibilities just in jacking up the memory, adding hardware (the future will laugh hard at the sans-camera debut), as well as dropping the price... > The interface is, overall, very impressive and responsive. let's hope apple doesn't choose to enforce its patents on it, or that the legal system is smart enough to toss such claims. there is nothing about the human hand that doesn't have a long and glorious history predating the founding of apple. > Like all the related Apple devices, you are forced to > "drink the kool-aid" and use iTunes to manage the devices, > and go through the iTunes store for many things > like new apps, even when those apps are free. > (There are some workarounds, but iTunes is > by far the path of least resistance.) i understand why this grates on some people. i also understand that apple is doing it for a good reason, namely to ensure that the user-experience is high-quality. nobody complains that the xbox is a closed platform... or the wii... or all of the various nintendo machines... they just enjoy the fact that the experience comes first. so i take the same attitude with apple's ip* line of stuff... i don't particularly _like_ the fact that it's a closed system. but i _do_ like the stability. now, i'm hoping that the open-source world can compete. i'm hoping they can get high-quality hardware built out and i'm hoping they match that with high-quality software, and i'm hoping the resultant experience is a high-quality one... but i must say i am not _expecting_ them to come through. because they never have in the past. i'm not sure why steve is the only guy who can get it right. it shouldn't be that hard to simply copy what he has done. -bowerbird

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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 May '10

06 May '10

so, does anyone here have an ipad yet? i'll be getting one in the next week or so, when i know for sure that i can walk into the store and walk out with one in a bag. -bowerbird

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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 May '10

06 May '10

michael said: > I notice that no one has said they didn't see iPods > back when there were only a million of those. those white earbuds were an excellent marketing device, eh? ;+) -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 May '10

06 May '10

more experimentation on "gods and fighting men". i ran out a .pdf version specifically for the iphone: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-320*440.pdf the iphone has a display that is 320*480, but i shortened up the height because when you read a .pdf in safari, there's a bar across the bottom. speaking of which, the .pdf reader in safari sucks. the first problem is that the .pdf is presented in one long scroll window. it would be much better if it was _paginated_, and a left/right swipe would navigate from page to page, a la iphone typicality. the second problem is that you cannot advance the scrollbar in long jumps to remote locations; you must move through the .pdf incrementally... when a .pdf has 530+ pages, like this one does, that becomes a significant pain in the derriere... i'd hope that other .pdf readers (a la goodreader) have overcome these constrictions in their apps... *** so now we have three different versions... > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-320*440.pdf > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-5.5*8.5.pdf > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-8.5*11.pdf aside from some differences in the _margins_ and the leading within the text-block, these .pdfs are extremely similar. they each have the same lines on the same pages, and that is easy to recognize... what you will find, moreover, is that the _pagesize_ doesn't make much difference at all -- almost none! if you pull these 3 .pdfs into the same view-port, the "zoom-to-fit" display option will make them appear to be quite similar. indeed, on the iphone, which has smarts that ignore whitespace margins, the different versions appear virtually identical... reflection shows that this is what i was talking about when i discussed how the "pocket dictionary" and the oversized version shared the exact same pagination as the "regular" version. the pages are just "zoomed" or "reduced" as necessary to fit the paper being used. so, if you create your .pdf _correctly_, it can be used on a wide variety of screensizes without any problem. the secret, however, to making the .pdf "correctly" is to make sure the fontsize being used is large enough. when i created the 8.5*11 .pdf, i had to use a fontsize of 17 points, which will seem "too big" to many people. it's not "too big". it creates a 66-character line-length, and the resultant .pdf is viable across many screensizes. and this is why the .pdf that most people create is bad, and not useable on smaller screens. they use a pagesize of 8.5*11 with text that is sized at 11-point or 12-point. that creates lines too long for best readability, and text that's too small to read when shrunk to a small screensize. *** however, even though i use phrases like "best readability" and "too small to read", the most important takeaway here is that digital text gives people the ability to make a .pdf that they can _customize_ to their own unique preferences. questions like "what pointsize gives best readability?" and "what's ideal line length?" and "what should the leading be?" all presume that there is _one_ answer that applies to all... that's a presumption that has some validity when we are creating _one_ version of the book that _everyone_ reads. but that's no longer the case, thanks to print-on-demand. now, everyone can make their own version of the book, and the only "ideal" variables are the ones for _you_personally_. some typographer might say that garamond is the "best font" for this book. but if you like palatino better, use palatino! and who cares if most people prefer 12-point type the best? if you like 11-point, use that to print your copy of the book. if you want 72-character lines, fine! 66-character lines? ok! 54-character lines, no problem! 40-character lines, great! 4-inch lines, fine! or 4.5-inch, 5-inch, 5.5-inch, whatever! the "standard" leading is 120%. but if you like 150% better, and you don't mind that it'll take more pages to print it out, then go for it! *** there is one caveat, however. it's fine for you to create your own one-off of a book set to your own preferences. but don't inflict that book on the world at large, please... keep it to yourself. the world doesn't need 14,926 versions of every book. because here's the problem. some of those versions will have errors in them. and other versions will have other errors. and other versions will have still others. sorting out these 14,926 versions will be a nightmare. that's why -- in my first experiments with this book, i retained the p.g. linebreaks. there's no reason to introduce new linebreaks to the world unnecessarily. it just complicates things, for very little good reason. as long as you retain the p.g. linebreaks, it'll be easy for users who wanna track the provenance of the text. once you introduce different linebreaks, even if the text is the same, ease of comparison is jeopardized. so go ahead and change the linebreaks for yourself. but don't inflict that changed version on the world... *** of course, there's little reason that project gutenberg should be introducing a new set of linebreaks itself... it would be far better if it kept the p-book linebreaks. those paper-books are already out there in the world. they are the canonical version we should adhere to... their linebreaks should be the linebreaks that we use. so let's take a look at the paper copies of this book... internet archive has scanned four copies of this book. here are scans for pages 122 and 123 in those books: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm00gregrich122.jpg > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm00gregrich123.jpg > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm00greguoft122.jpg > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm00greguoft123.jpg > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm00yeatgoog122.jpg > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm00yeatgoog123.jpg > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm01yeatgoog122.jpg > http://z-m-l.com/misc/godfm01yeatgoog123.jpg as you can see, each of these scan-sets is consistent; linebreaks and page composition are the exact same. character-count on these lines is about 54 characters. page 122 and other full pages have a line-count of 36. my next experiments will be to reproduce this format. jim, if you want to make yourself useful, you could do a reformatting of the project gutenberg e-text so that it matches the linebreaks from one of these scan-sets. i will give you a couple days time to pull off that task... -bowerbird

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quick review of my proofing system
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 May '10

05 May '10

here's a quick review of my proofing system... the best overview is to look at this screenshot: > http://z-m-l.com/go/triple2010.jpg you can see there is plenty of room for buttons, which can perform a wide multitude of actions... if you've got a cinema-screen, you can see it live: > http://z-m-l.com/go/triple2010.html proofers compare the scan against an .html-field. (the scan is on the left; the .html is in the middle.) if a change needs to be made, that change is done using the text-field, there on the right, which then generates as its output the .html-field in the center. the edit-field is not "what you see is what you get". but it's what creates the .html, so its representation _should_ be output that essentially matches the scan. of course, the users who don't have cinema screens can't have all three fields displayed simultaneously, so you'll have to swap the .html-field and edit-field as needed. the initial proof is with the .html-field, and the proofer clicks an "edit" button if necessary, which swaps out the .html-field for the edit-field, and the swap is reversed once the text gets edited... and yes, everything we need to represent _can_ be entered with a plain-text edit-field. lines of poetry can be indented with the correct number of spaces. even paragraph indents can be entered with spaces. likewise, i prepend "> " to the lines of a blockquote. a centered line of text is prefaced with _one_ space. headers have 4 (or more) lines above, and 2 below... (different header levels have 4, 5, 6, etc. lines above.) tables are discerned by their multiple internal spaces. once you commit to this methodology, you find that it's rather easy to create a simple way to make it work. likewise, the code that converts the text-field into the .html-field is rather straightforward and easy to create. if you need any help with any of these things, just call... -bowerbird

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one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 May '10

04 May '10

press release says: > CUPERTINO, California—May 3, 2010—Apple® today > announced that it sold its one millionth iPad™ on Friday, > just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have > already downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store > and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore. > “One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the > 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” > said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Demand continues to > exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this > magical product into the hands of even more customers. they're selling like hotcakes. twice as fast as the iphone, which -- if i remember correctly -- was widely acknowledged as quite a phenomenon at the time... and this weekend, the g3 models came out, so apple stores had many people (who'd been waiting for it) standing in line. maybe apple _does_ need to do a little market research, so they woulda discovered the remarkable latent demand for this niche. it continues: > iPad allows users to connect with their apps and content > in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before. > Users can browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and > share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, > read ebooks and much more see where e-books come in, priority-wise? > http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/05/03ipad.html -bowerbird

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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 May '10

04 May '10

dakretz said: > Try this with a kindle. well, there are lots of people who will _prefer_ the kindle for the precise reason that it _won't_ do things like that... they wanna read a book, be absorbed in that experience; if they wanted to play a videogame instead, they'd do that. i'm not saying they're right or wrong. but they _do_ exist. the other thing is, you need to know the budget for that app. i'd guess if you wanted to hire someone to make something like that for you as a one-off, you would end up paying a lot. and if you wanted someone to make you an _authoring-tool_ that allowed you to make all kinds of different books like that, you'd be paying ten times as much. keep that in perspective... -bowerbird

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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 May '10

04 May '10

michael said: > They are obviously not pushing eBook hard enough, > as that means only 1.5 eBooks per iPad. well, but steve jobs just might point out that that's how many p-books an average person in the united states buys in an average year... :+) -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 May '10

04 May '10

no word from the mad scientist, so let's proceed anyway... *** to remind you where we were, i had freed the text from the p.g. linebreaks, set the typesize at a nice 12-point, and run it out with a 4.5-inch measure, obtained from a pagesize of 5.5*8.5-inches, with 1-inch side-margins. the text-editor version weighed in at about 567 pages, and i provided both ragged-right and justified versions. *** the next thing was to run the text using my converter. i used most linebreaks obtained from the above specs... (i made a few changes, in a process i can discuss later.) these lines had an average length of about 66 characters. for my taste, that's still too long, but it's what bringhurst recommends, and that _is_ the length our specs created. another font woulda created lines with fewer characters, because times new roman is known for being quite tight -- it was designed with that aim -- but let's not quibble, other than to note that lines in the p-book were shorter. *** once linebreaks are set, you can output them to various _pagesizes_ simply by jacking up your text-size and/or making the margins bigger; as an example of that, i ran it out at 8.5*11, with 17-point type and 1-inch margins. > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-8.5*11.pdf or here's the 5.5*8.5, at 12-point type, half-inch margins: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-5.5*8.5.pdf note that i could also do a version for the iphone screen, with perhaps 8-point type and very small margins, and _all_ of these versions would have the same linebreaks... there's this myth/misunderstanding about _reflow_ that you _must_ reflow to accommodate different screensizes. that's not entirely true; it's _never_ been entirely true. for instance, consider the popular "pocket dictionary" which brags that it has the exact same pagination as a regular-sized dictionary. then, in addition, take a look at an oversized dictionary, and you are likely to find that it too has the exact same pagination. how is this done? well, it's quite simple, actually. the font-size is reduced. and, actually, it's quite _natural_ to reduce the font-size with smaller pagesize. (and to increase it with bigger.) because we hold a pocket dictionary closer to our face, and the oversize dictionary farther than a regular one... so our eyes automatically adjust to the varying fontsize. nor does this harm readability. most studies show that it's character-count that matters in terms of readability, not the actual length of a line per se. which means that our notions about "reflow" are quite confused, because those notions create _shorter_ lines when the fontsize is increased, since we're holding the window-size constant. *** at any rate, you have a couple more .pdfs to peruse... i'll do some more fiddling with this book, just for my own edification, but at this point i could consider it "finished". so if anyone has any feedback, please feel free to spill it... -bowerbird

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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 May '10

03 May '10

300,000 was after their first weekend, but that also included pre-orders; i'm sure they had lots of those. so in the 24 days since, they've sold some 700,000, which would work out to roughly 30,000 per day... i don't really know how to judge these things, but considering the number of apple stores, plus the fact that best buy is also selling it, it sounds right. the 3g models are going to cause a big bump too... so it wouldn't surprise me if they get to 2 million in another month or two. after that, it might level off. of course, they'll probably sell another 2 million in the 4th quarter, assuming people buy holiday gifts. (given our economy, it's not a sure thing anymore.) -bowerbird

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