
Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens (2014) - e15ctr0n
http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2014/02/_thats_one_of_t.php
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benbreen
This is an interesting essay - I definitely think there's a lot to be learned
about graphic design from 18th century print culture, especially people like
William Hogarth with his "Line of Beauty." Incidentally, John Overholt, who
offers up a comment excerpted at the end of the piece, is one of my favorite
people to follow on Twitter. He's the curator of early modern books at
Harvard's Houghton Library so it's basically a series of gems that he unearths
in the stacks:

[https://twitter.com/john_overholt](https://twitter.com/john_overholt)

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avian
> The point being, of course, that the ergonomics of smartphones as reading
> devices are not only kind of rad, but historically so.

You can also turn this around and say that smartphones throw away three
centuries worth of ergonomic improvements in reading. I personally find
smartphones completely unusable for any kind of longer text.

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bryanlarsen
In what way? In my opinion, a high resolution 5" AMOLED smartphone is superior
to any other reading device including paper and e-paper, except for works that
are diagram/table heavy, and for reading outside where glare becomes an issue.

\- AMOLED means perfect blacks, use white on black for nighttime reading

\- internally self illuminated for night time reading

\- light weight and lack of page turning allows wide variety in reading
positions. The use of volume keys for page turning allows easy one hand
operation, improving the number of positions available

\- narrow width eliminates horizontal eye scan. This is important -- most
people do not read a word at a time, their brain processes an entire phrase at
a time. If that phrase spans two lines, being able to focus your eyes on the
end of one line and the beginning of the next at the same time significantly
improves your ability to read the work quickly with full understanding.

~~~
hsitz
It's not just about how a single page looks.

Even assuming that a nice backlit AMOLED is preferable to ink on paper in good
light (which I'm not sure is true), physical books have pages that are easily
turned, quick random access to different parts of book, and lots of subtle
cues to reader about current location, etc. This is an advantage over ebooks.

Ebooks can be digitally searched, which of course is an advantage for them.
But it's hardly clear that any electronic reading experience is hands down
superior to physical book in all situations. And if one were it would not
likely be an ebook in a 5" form factor, that's too small. 5" is good for
portability, but for sitting down in a chair at home for a 1 hour session, I
can't imagine anyone preferring a 5" smartphone to a larger tablet. (I say all
of this as someone who probably reads 40% on 4.5" smartphone, 30% on 13"
laptop, 20% on 8" tablet, and 10% physical books.)

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rms_returns
> physical books have pages that are easily turned, quick random access to
> different parts of book, and lots of subtle cues to reader about current
> location, etc.

Even if that were true, the benefits of a digital reader far far outweigh its
drawbacks over its physical counterpart:

1\. Digital means, no space required. A library full of books can be easily
accommodated on your 64GB MicroSD card!

2\. Digital means no wear and tear. History is evidence to the loss of
thousands of books and corresponding knowledge due to calamities. With
digital, you can backup it to your Google-Drive/Dropbox and they will survive
the ages.

3\. Digital means no tyranny of authorities. Gone are the days when books used
to be "banned" by state authorities for whatever reason. With digital, no one
can subvert your freedom to read anything you like.

4\. Most importantly, digital means easy sharing. If you have a book in
PDF/EPUB, you can just email it, in case you want to share it with someone.
With physical books, you have to physically snail-mail it which is quite
cumbersome.

A lot of concerns you have made (like page-turning) in fact relate to our age-
old habits since we are accustomed to physical books, and like many other
things in life, all we have to do is just adapt to this new technology!

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hsitz
Oh, yes, that's a good list, and I agree almost entirely. I wrote the post
you're responding to, and I'm basically a digital convert. Just this year I
got rid of thousands of physical books that I'd accumulated over last 30
years, and which were huge drag on my life, both from space requirements and
from weight (made moving residences more difficult).

Having said that, I would generally prefer to read a physical book. If I had a
physical book and and a nice tablet with the same (but digital) book in front
of me, I would likely be reaching for the physical book. Ink on paper in good
lighting is preferable to any screen I've seen. And there's an ease to paging
through a physical book that none of the devices I've read ebooks on can
match. So, yes, I agree ebooks on are on the whole preferable. But I would
never go so far as to say they always provide a better reading experience. So
far my ebook reading experiences are not quite as satisfying as physical
books, but any deficiencies are outweighed by other advantages of digital
medium.

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sandworm101
Wrong title. Cart before horse. Should be: "Why Smartphone screens still look
like 18th century books."

When it comes to how to combine graphics and text, smartphones offer little
new compared to thousands and thousands of years worth of artists and authors
seeking to catch the eye of viewers.

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nsns
The large font size might also relate to the unavailability of cheap mass-
produced reading glasses, perhaps it was aimed at an educated older
readership.

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ezy
One difference, in the 18th century, they cared about the format.

Now if only ebook publishers (a) hired proofreaders (b) could figure out how
to properly render diagrams, specialized fonts and pictures such that reading
an ebook containing such was anything other than a disappointment.

I thought the "sloppy" era would be over by now as the technology and
acceptance increased, but for whatever reason, ebooks still are given lesser
priority than printed matter when it comes to editing and layout (and still
are kind of a ripoff compared to the printed edition because of that).

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Florin_Andrei
Could it be due to the perception (loosely based in fact) that the hard copy
is forever, and therefore you better do a good job first, whereas the
electronic media could be corrected post-release?

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lukev
No, it's because ebooks flow the text and images dynamically to accommodate
different screen and font sizes whereas a book can be statically typeset.

~~~
ezy
If only there were a technology which was screen and font size agnostic that
could display text interspersed with diagrams in various ways including
alternative layouts.

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MikusR
One major difference is that the printed book has hyphenation.

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aaronem
Some smartphone reader apps (e.g. Marvin, for iOS) provide automatic soft
hyphenation, which neatly solves that problem without requiring any effort on
the part of the publisher.

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NoGravitas
FBReader on Android has decent hyphenation. Not TeX quality, but still pretty
good.

