New subject: Background Colour for Reading

1 Mar 2011

      geez.   i point out one classic "jim" post,
only to find he just posted another one!

and this one is even shorter!

so let's quote it in full, ok?

jim said:
...
It's amazing how intensely personal 
   each person's preference for a reader device is, 
   what display technology, what choice of fonts, 
   serif vs. sans, text color, background color, 
   big or small and light, etc.
And it is amazing how with a little thought 
   on the authorship side how we can already today 
   make books using one source format that come 
   pretty close to meeting customer expectations 
   re all these choices!
that's it.   the full post.

and what's "amazing" about that post is that jim
contradicts his first paragraph with his second...

take _that_, internal consistency.   off with your head!

because the _truth_ of the matter is that "we" do not
come anywhere even _remotely_ close to the goal of
"meeting customers expectations"...   not remotely...

and that's _precisely_ because people have a _ton_ of
preferences, about which they're intensely passionate.

which, by the way, anyone who was _paying_attention_
already knew, about people and reading preferences...

but lots of people in the e-book world have _never_
paid any attention to user-preferences, so they have
no clue they aren't "meeting customer expectations".

furthermore, they fail to realize that the file-formats
they've built give very short shrift to user-preference.

(and often to the e-book _creators_ as well, ironically.)

and even when the file-formats might allow expression
of user-preference, the viewer-apps often constrict it...

for instance, did you see recently how _emotional_ and
_strong_ the preference for curly-versus-straight quotes
expressed itself?   jana said that curly quotes are "correct",
so she didn't care if i even offered the option of straight!
on the other hand, two other people said "straight, please",
and gave some utterly compelling reasons for that choice.

but do any .mobi or .epub viewer-programs let their user
_specify_ whether they get straight quotes or curly quotes?
not that i have seen.   you take whatever the builder put in.

double-dash vs. typographic em-dash?   no choice at all.
you get what the creator of the e-book decided you'd get.

indented-pargraphs versus block-style?   no choice at all.
sometimes not even for the darn creator of the e-book!
you get whatever the viewer-app decides you're gonna get.

justification?   sometimes nobody gets any choice at all.
sometimes the creator gets a choice, but not the reader.
and sometimes (yay!) the reader gets a choice.   (not often.)

there are many preference variables that are just like these;
opinions run strong, as does user desire to configure 'em.

we're not even _close_ to "meeting customer expectations".
and if you ever talked to any customers, you would know it.

-bowerbird

Re: Background Colour for Reading

Bowerbird＠aol.com

Ricky Wong

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