Here’s a closeup of the type. Note the italics.

The official site for the Sony Reader can be found here: http://news.sel.sony.com/reader/

Can we please take a time out on these April fools! ;-)

At least until midnight GMT!

Seriously the type is a bit tragic, and that seems to go for most of their products - PS3 “Spiderfont” a case in point. I’ve tried to contact various people at Sony to see if they have any interest in licensing any of our types, and I’m sure other players (Bitstream, Monotype, Ascender) have tried as well. I think one of their issues is lack of a central typography group.

This is a real device — no April Fools joke.

Mostly I’m surprised that the typography seems to be an afterthought. And in this day and age of OpenType, it seems this Sony product doesn’t even appear to support ligatures.

I’d like a really close close-up of the type please!

hhp

Also looks like there’s no hyphenation, which explains the rivers.

Hrant, this close close-up crop is from the Sony web site. You can see a giant-sized pic by clicking the link below:

http://news.sel.sony.com/digitalimages/base-photo?photo_id=185532

Somehow that phrase “Pain is good.” seems so appropriate for this product.

That type is just painful on the eyes. I think that people will eventually move away from books and on to screen. But not while this product looks this way.

Dan, I was thinking the same thing! :-)

It’s funny, that mega close-up they’re showing,
it’s like they’re actually proud of the type. Sheesh.

hhp

This product will be no iPod. Someday, we’ll have an iPod for books.

You believe Apple can do typography justice [these days]?

hhp

That isn’t what I meant. I really don’t know much about Apple and typography, so I can’t speak to the matter.

But try to remember the first MP3 players. They weren’t user friendly, and no single player seemed to catch on. The phenomena seemed like it would lag behind portable CD-players for some time.

Then came the iPod. Say what you like about the product or its market share, I’m just pointing out that it brought MP3 players into prime time. Someday, there will be a similar eBook reader. Who knows who will make it… maybe even Sony. But not yet.

I’m sure if Apple were to make an ebook reader the type would be good, the DRM would be better, and the book publishers would gripe about the royalties. ;-)

The other ebook device due out is from a Philips spin-off so maybe we’ll see some Bitstream fonts and technology on the device...

http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/19/irex-reveals-deets-on-its-iliad-ebook...

But the quality of their spec PDF doesn’t instill much confidence.

Not to engage on overgeneralization, but the Japanese tend to have spectactularly good Kanji typography, and equally bad Roman. Kanji doesn’t have serious problems with hyphenation, justification, word spacing, and doesn’t have a true italic. Therefore, it seems, those problems weren’t solved in this product.

If it’s easily hackable (I’ve heard rumors it runs some kind of Linux inside), I think I’ll get one. The physical device itself sounds pretty yummy, and I’m obviously interested in grayscale displays because FontFocus works in gray where ClearType does not.

Sony signs ebook deal with Borders

http://news.com.com/Borders+to+sell+Sony+digital+reading+device/2100-104...

Might be of interest for typophiles wanting to check out the device.

Any more info on this, like timing?
BTW, it looks like it only supports 4 levels of gray (which
really means black, white, and 2 grays) which is kinda weak.

hhp