{"id":1607,"date":"2010-05-17T13:10:41","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T17:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2010-05-17T13:10:41","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T17:10:41","slug":"books-and-ebooks-are-not-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/2010\/books-and-ebooks-are-not-the-same","title":{"rendered":"Books and eBooks Are Not The Same"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"On Turning the Page\" href=\"http:\/\/ministryoftype.co.uk\/words\/article\/on_turning_the_page\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1610\" title=\"eBooks\" src=\"http:\/\/joshuanewmandesign.com\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/eBooks1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"286\" srcset=\"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/eBooks1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/eBooks1-300x143.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Aegir Hallmundur writes over at <a title=\"On Turning the Page\" href=\"http:\/\/ministryoftype.co.uk\/words\/article\/on_turning_the_page\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Ministry of Type<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\ufeff\ufeffThe whole <em>idea<\/em> of pages bound like that is an artifact of a  particular printing technology<\/strong> \u2014 it\u2019s the nature of the delivery medium,  not the message. So when we have a digital book, we\u2019re using technology  that has its own set of conventions, its own restrictions and its own  freedoms, and every bit of digital technology has some means of moving  through any arbitrary content: a keyboard has cursor keys, page up and  page down keys, a mouse has a scroll wheel, laptops have trackpads with  scroll areas, and smartphones have touchscreens, joysticks or D-pads.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My concern with pageless eBooks has been that <strong>they eliminate two of the most important elements of design: the top and bottom of the rectangle that describes the page<\/strong>. All graphics, pull-quotes, and everything must be both inline and may only address the right and left margins.<\/p>\n<p>But now I&#8217;m rethinking it. Pages are arbitrary breaks, dictated by the size of paper that&#8217;s convenient to print on. Without them, we have:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Right margin<\/li>\n<li>Left margin<\/li>\n<li>Right third<\/li>\n<li>Left third<\/li>\n<li><strong>Paragraph top<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Paragraph bottom<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The big difference here is that <strong>the left and right margins are dictated by the <em>medium<\/em>, but the top and bottom are dictated by the <em>context<\/em><\/strong>. That is very, very interesting to me. We&#8217;re also missing the top and bottom third now, unless paragraphs are meant to fit onscreen by themselves. This might be a problem, since we don&#8217;t know font size.<\/p>\n<p>I also have some concerns that, with font size a variable, the column width is liable to get too great or small for easy legibility. Even newspapers and mass market paperbacks usually manage to keep it between 7 and 12 words (about 65 words per line, give or take a dozen or so), but the eBook readers I&#8217;ve looked at don&#8217;t care about that at all, which is a problem.<\/p>\n<p>(Thanks to the <a title=\"Creator of the SRSBZNPUS\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/viscousplatypus\" target=\"_blank\">glueyest of monotremes<\/a>!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aegir Hallmundur writes over at The Ministry of Type, \ufeff\ufeffThe whole idea of pages bound like that is an artifact of a particular printing technology \u2014 it\u2019s the nature of the delivery medium, not the message. So when we have a digital book, we\u2019re using technology that has its own set of conventions, its own &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/2010\/books-and-ebooks-are-not-the-same\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Books and eBooks Are Not The Same&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-and-object-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glyphpress.com\/talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}