I should have used the board search instead of starting a new topic.

Yep. That horse is quite dead around here.

...the future of the digital booked?

arno, did you type that post on your selectric?

here's the newest scoop:
> http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910868

-bowerbird

For those who missed it, more Kindle humor from the AIGA Make|Think National Design Conference last week...

http://

I have a tough time seeing eBooks completely take over- but then again, there's something about the printed page that seems to hold my attention better. Might not be the same for everyone though...

BlueStreak, that was hilarious! Thanks. :-)

Thanks, BlueStreak! Good pro-book-agitprop. The latest argument, that I had to dry up, is the pollution through the production of paper. But if all people destroy the kindle shit …

The latest argument, that I had to dry up, is the pollution through the production of paper.

Arno, tell 'em that discarded computers also create pollution. And the ones that are plugged in consume electricity, and if the electricity comes from consuming carbon, it's contributing to global warming. :-)

>Yep. That horse is quite dead around here.

James, I know what you mean, but I disagree. This is one of those meta-topics that seems to move under our feet.
Even basic words like "book" that we use to discuss the issue are undergoing subtle changes in meaning.
That's my take, anyway. Better to let it start fresh yet again, than append to the existing.
And then we can reference the latest amusing videos!
Maybe we can start giving "digital book" threads sequential numbers. Or just schedule one for every month. ;)

...if the electricity comes from consuming carbon...

carbon = coal (my bad)

With regard to the pollution through the production of the paper used for books, my arguments are these:

1. The production of paper needs much energy and water, but most of the paper is used for magazines, newspapers, toilet products and in offices. That’s just an assumption. It should be clarified.

2. The production of computer controlled devices also needs energy. Additionally it needs unrenewable resources. The mining of some of these resources needs water. Additionally the regions, in which the biggest deposits exist, are politically instabil. I am talking about the raw material Coltan and oil (for the plastics).

3. Paper can be easier recycled than computer devices.

4. a) You never buy a computer device for the eternity. (This also means, that it is harder for the user of ebook devices to get a personal relationship to the ebook device.)

b) For optimal legibility of different kinds/genres of literature you probably need more than one device. (Think about the meaning of the page margins in a book.)

How often do pure ebook readers have to buy new devices?

5. Electrosmog because of wireless connections (download of ebooks).

6. The operation of an ebook device needs energy.

7. The servers, on which the ebooks are stored, need energy.

-------------------

And I have another good argument for printed books:

You can comment the text in a much more immediate way. A graphic tablet or a keyboard is less immediate than a pencil.

> Is the future of the book digital?
>...the future of the digital booked?
I think we book digitally now, like hotels and car rentals, and sometime in the future more people will recognize how many books are already digital. I agree that it's moving from over our feet, I don't envisage the digital coffee table book anymore, more people can see a screen. There is also the misapprehension, I think, that the digital book is mostly text, perhaps rightly brought on by the ample evidence of specialized devices for presentation of mostly digital books of text. This too, @fontface will change I think, right now they are all in Times on the web. Has anyone here read a whole book on the web?

Arno>And I have another good argument for printed books:

But your first, environmentally-based argument is flawed, in my opinion, in a basic way. Nearly all printed books start as digital books. The number of readers who buy books and do not already own and plan to continue the use of their computer, is tiny and shrinking. So, if nearly all books start digital on computers, and some of them go directly to people's existing general-purpose computers, or even to specialized computers for reading, removing the printing and recycling process, is not bad, is it?

This is not to say all printed books are bad, but if the reader wants them digitally, and they are not available except in print, isn't that bad?

Cheers!

David

In my opinion it is easier to find non environment arguments against the ebook devices. Ebook devices are not as legible as printed books and I doubt, that they will be in the coming 20 years. I can imagine, that the problem of the low resolution will be solved, but I doubt, that the problem with the size will be solved then. The margins of the pages have a function. If they are too big, your impression of the contrast between text and background is different, at least I assume, that it is.

"The number of readers who buy books and do not already own and plan to continue the use of their computer, is tiny and shrinking."

But actually you need a special device because of the backlight (?) of TFT and the extremely low resolution. And a computer is not as easy to handle and hold as a printed book in the same size.

„This is not to say all printed books are bad, but if the reader wants them digitally, and they are not available except in print, isn’t that bad?“

The reader? I don’t know, which kinds of paper you can buy in the office shops of Massachusettes, but in Germany you can decide between high bright and low quality recycling paper only. If you want to have a natural paper, you have a problem. Why? As more white as better it is. That’s the way, the reader buys his paper on one of his non eco days. On the other days he buys the recycling paper. (You can order natural colored paper online. There is one semi good German online paper shop.) I am talking about the paper, that people buy for their laser and inkjet prints. Most readers think, that the content of a text is complicated, if they don’t understand it. They never think, that the typography or the printing quality are the reason. So it is not enough to trust in the market. Do you mean, that those things are the best, which are sold the most? No. That’s not the way, in which capitalism works, at least not the capitalism of these days.

Has anyone here read a whole book on the web?

Yes, most recently just a couple of weeks ago. Funny thing is, I even own a printed copy of the same book, but it hasn't been unpacked yet.

http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
Admittedly it's a short book, maybe 100 pages in printed form? I also wouldn't have read the whole thing online if it had been in Arial or Times.

Cheers,

T

@Arno Enslin

"Ebook devices are not as legible as printed books and I doubt, that they will be in the coming 20 years."

Wow, Arno. What have you been looking at?
I own an iRex 1000 E-Reader and use it all the time.
Usually the typesetting stinks because the books/files/e-books or whatever you want to call 'em are machine-generated from raw ascii to pdf but the glyphs are as clear and sharp as print.
Sorry, you're just plain wrong on this. And in 2010, many new devices with improved technology and lower price points are coming.
Perhaps you're basing this statement on something you've seen in the past. But it's long-gone, I assure you.
Those babies are gonna fly off the shelves. Better book one early.

Rich

Richard

"[…] but the glyphs are as clear and sharp as print."

If this would be true, the very most stuff, posted on Typophile, would be waffle. The iRex 1000 has a relative resolution of 160 dpi. I have not hold the iRex 1000 in my hands, but I doubt, that it can preserve the fineness of the very most typefaces, which are designed for body text (sizes), with such a low resolution; doesn’t it need typefaces, which are optimized for it? Can all existing body text typefaces be optimized for it? And if, are those optimized typefaces still the same typefaces with regard to the design, or are they new typefaces? And if they are new with regard to the design, why do some type designers invest years in the fineness of the curves of their typefaces? Do they invest the time for improving the beauty or for improving the legibility. Or are beauty and functionality ever the two sides of the same medaillion?

I am not an enemy of technology. Ebook devices have big advantages in comparison to books. There may be people like you, for that ebook devices already are useful. But for the case, that they replace books, before they are on the same level of legibility and feeling, and I am forced to buy one, because books don’t exist anymore, I solemny promise, that I will not pay for ebooks, as long as I can get illegal copies. And for sure I don’t let force me from the industry, to make me to a test object. If an ebook device is good as a hammer and if it does not cost much more than a hammer, then I will buy one and then I am willing to pay a price, that is comparable to the price of a printed book.

I hope, that the European Union will not forbid books. We are already loosing the classic light bulbs; no, not for the environment, but for the wallets of the lightning industry. And the whole world wants to build new nuclear power stations for the environment. CO2 beats radioactive contamination. It is absurd. Maybe the strategy of our "democracies" is, to make books too unlegible and too expensive for the "electors". And even if one device would cost 100 Euro, it is much more than the price for the taste of reading in form of a paperback. So the poor ones can be kept stupid. And our governments can continue to castrate democracy in the fight against the enemies of democracy.

However, I don’t make books, but I just would miss them. And how much are 20 years?

>I will not pay for ebooks, as long as I can get illegal copies.

So, if a book is only available in electronic form, you feel the right to steal it is yours?

>And our governments can continue to castrate democracy in the fight against the enemies of democracy.

Which is more democratic? electronic media, or print media?

Cheers!

David

Which is more democratic? electronic media, or print media?

Which is more democratic? A piece of soap or a bone? Things cannot be democratic, but humans. People can be better controlled in the computer world. And people better can attract attention in the computer world. All in all I doubt, that computers have made the world better. But it is not the fault of the computers, although I don’t want to imagine, what dictators like Hitler, Stalin or Mao had made with them. Maybe I should.

So, if a book is only available in electronic form, you feel the right to steal it is yours?

That’s dependent on the reason for the non-existence of a printed version and it is dependent on, who the publisher is. But aren’t there enough EULA discussions on this forum? I am relatively bored of them. And what do you expect from a socialist? What’s with lending libraries for example? But a discussion about licenses would probably end in quarrel. I only say, what I would do, if the book industry is unable, to learn from the mistakes of the music industry: I would not pity them.

Arno, are you taking the piss? Or are you just typing out these long rants because the sound of your tinfoil panties crunching makes it hard to walk around in public without the agents of democracy’s enemies locating you?

James

I am stopping myself from saying something about the political system of the USA, except from this: For sure it is not just a chance, that you are New Yorker, isn’t it. My pity with your country is very limited. My pity is with all the victims of the political system of your country and (or inclusively) with the victims from 09/11. A discussion about this would end in quarrel. This is NOT my intention. I really wanted to know, what you think about ebooks and ebook devices. I don’t take the system of my own country for a democracy. You don’t want to know, what I think about the USA.

>Things cannot be democratic, but humans.

Right. Maybe think about the question, and not preconceived answers, and you can cross the political gulf and talk socially about technical issues without beckoning dictators to a little book talk.

Cheers!

David

Do you think, that you can get the advantages of electronic media without the disadvantages? We are more and more controlled with the help of computers. That’s the price, that we pay for the comfort. The development of new computer chips could not be payed without our money. You have asked. The electronic medium ebook is a waste-product with regard to the chips, but probably most personal computers are not used for anything else than the organization of our leisure time. So at least my answer touches your question. Additionally my impression is, that members of typohile.com don’t let miss any opportunity to talk about piracy and license agreements. And that’s often ridiculous in my opinion. More to the point – ridiculous is, that you want to know, if I am willing to steal anything under certain circumstances, and then you believe to know, what you have to think about me.

@all
"Do you think, that you can get the advantages of electronic media without the disadvantages?"

Since, indeed, we have veered away from a little book talk, I like this sentence. And I'm going to steal it and keep it for later which I'm sure Arno won't mind.

[Re: the text on an iRex being as clear and as sharp as print]
"If this would be true, the very most stuff, posted on Typophile, would be waffle."

How so? Does the function of type change because it's on a screen?
Besides, I love waffles. My wife and I have them for dinner quite frequently. [No joke.]
Eggos - Family Style. You should try it, just pop them in the toaster and butter 'em up.
Delicious. And a nice carbohydrate charge-up after a busy day.

Richard

Even if the sentence would be original and worth to be quoted with naming the author, there is a difference between stealing ideas and stealing media.

With regard to the waffles I prefer to put baked hearts of finches onto them. The quality of my English is as low as the quality of your arguments, but I am grateful for corrections.

"How so? Does the function of type change because it’s on a screen?"

Naturally not. Most of was exaggerated. But I was regarding to the details of the letters in body text, at least that was my intention. I know, that they should not be as contrasted and detailed as letters in display sizes, but even the optical styles of Arno Pro probably variate in stroke width in a way, that can’t be displayed with 160 dpi. And how good a typeface works with regard to the legibility, is also dependent from the surface of the paper. So what do you mean with "sharp and crisp"? My TFT also is sharp and crisp. It even would be sharp and crisp, if it would display 2 pixel per 20 inches only.

Today I bought essays from Tschichold and Gerard Unger’s "While you are reading" (the German edition). Except from the fact, that there were fat black finger prints from the bookbinder on the first page (transparent and slick paper; I was able to rub them out; wow, now I know another advantage of ebooks!) of "While you are reading", I am very happy, that they are no ebooks. (Gerard, for the case, that you are reading this stupid thread, these transparent pages with the big [parts] of letters, they don’t seem to make the book better. Maybe I discover their sense later. Or shall they increase the aesthetic value of the book? However, if it would be an ebook, I would remove them, although I probably wouldn’t be allowed, because ebooks can be licensed only, as far as I am informed. Wow, another advantage of ebooks! But I like, what I have read up till now.)

>People can be better controlled in the computer world.
How do you get people inside computers. ;)

>We are more and more controlled with the help of computers.
You seem insistent on this dark and groping thought.

I personally, think paper controlled us worse.

Anyway, you love books, I can see. I love old books. But where, Arno, in the disposability-of-print-spectrum do you draw the line?

Cheers!

Richard: the glyphs are as clear and sharp as print.

How sharp is that? What kind of print process? What kind of paper?

there are more horses now than there were
back when we used them for transportation.
(or so i have heard.)

likewise, thanks largely to print-on-demand,
paper-books will survive and thrive even when
e-books are the primary method of distribution.

want an e-book printed out? fine. just do it.
(and choose the font you want, and the size,
and the margins, and the text-colors, and
the leading, and a slew of other parameters.)

so no one will have to give up their paper-books.

at least not until the great tree-disease epidemic
of 2033, when most of the trees on earth will be
wiped out, causing the cost of paper to skyrocket.

of course, most people then will miss toilet paper
far more than they miss paper-books. i sure will.

there will also be that thing about trees converting
carbon dioxide into oxygen, causing problems too.

-bowerbird

@bowerbird

I never have seen a book, that was printed on demand. Somehow I have doubts, that such a system can secure high quality, at least not, if you order your book online, because you cannot see the paper and the print, before you order it. This may be a prejudice. I apprehend a loss of culture – more throw-away products, than we already have.

(The ebook device industry will tell us each year, that there is a brand new device, that is more legible or better colored than the predecessor. It’s new, it’s better, it’s nauseous!)

want an e-book printed out? fine. just do it.
(and choose the font you want, and the size,
and the margins, and the text-colors, and
the leading, and a slew of other parameters.)

This requires (conscious) typographical knowledge, which most readers miss. Many, if not all of these parameters are dependent from each other. If this would be so easy, I wonder, why there are professions like typographer. An excessive supply is not necessarily freedom. It can be just the other way around.

when most of the trees on earth will be wiped out

How much of the paper, that is produced worldwide, is needed by the book industry? I am relatively good in estimating. I really don’t know it. I would say 8%.

I assume, that it will be possible to produce cellulose synthetically in 2033. Probably this already is possible today, but not for a rational price. Maybe Bamboo could be used. Bamboo grows very fast.

@David

How do you get people inside computers. ;)

Well, Big Brother is even to fat for the case of a supercomputer. Don’t you know, what I mean? I am talking about the state and the industry. They know, what you buy when and where. They know, which telephone and email contacts you have – with whom and how often. And more and more biometric data are stored. Not to forget all the fu**ing cameras in the cities. Do you really think, that all this is for your protection?

One thing I’ve noticed that gets left out of the equation when comparing the sustainability of digital communication to print is transportation. With electronic media we just have to push a few electrons around. With printed media you have to transport raw materials to a mill, then from the mill to the printing plant (which also needs ink transported). Then the finished printed material is shipped to a distribution point before being sent to stores and/or readers. If that material is to be recycled then it is shipped back to a recycling center and the whole transport cycle is done over.

That’s a lot of in-between steps versus skipping all that raw materials transport and just taking the same electronic communication and piping it directly to the reader using electrons. To me that seems like an exponentially more efficient way to communicate. We all know that the current ebook media is primative, and society in general isn’t used to reading on them. But kids learning to read today are more accustomed to reading electronic media and as they grow up the media is going to get far better than we can imagine.

I thought Pong was the end-all, be-all, greatest video game ever when it first came out. My brain would’ve oozed out of my ears if someone had shown me today’s current video gaming systems back then. Printed books will survive though. I can still find an old-school pinball machine too.

Printing on demand seems to be laser printing. This confirms me in my doubts. I don’t know, if this happens with all laser printers, but the text, printed with my laser printer, is sensible with regard to the direction of the light, because the toner is on, but not in the paper. More to the point – there is no deep connection between toner and paper. There is a 3D-effect, that is more or less visible and that is dependent from the direction of the light. The paper doesn’t seem to be saturated with color, because the toner is not evenly spread out. Additionally there is a slight uneven brightness, because the toner doesn’t seem to melt completely. Although the printer prints very precise, there is something missing in comparison with professional offset printing. (Laser printing is also offset, isn’t it? But I miss the right term.)

Pollution is relative. If the book title is set in Comic Sans and the text is Papyrus then shipping it in a hybrid vehicle and reading it under candle light is very polluting.
But if the title is embossed in Bodega and the text is nicely justified in Minion with appropriate ligatures then you can ship it in a 70s airplane and read it under a Tugsten (not to be confused with the H&FJ typeface) and the pollution would be minimal. You can even put it in your living room fridge (the one you use to store "paper" books). Pollution is relative trust me :D

Is Bodega embossed really a great idea?

bluestreak said:
> With electronic media we just have to
> push a few electrons around.

bingo.

there aren't enough trees in china for them
to print out schoolbooks for all of their kids.

***

arno said:
> I never have seen a book, that was printed on demand.
> Somehow I have doubts, that such a system can secure
> high quality, at least not, if you order your book online,
> because you cannot see the paper and the print,
> before you order it. This may be a prejudice.
> I apprehend a loss of culture – more throw-away products,
> than we already have.

print-on-demand books have the same quality as offset books,
or at least they can... most people cannot distinguish the two...
(_you_ might be able to tell 'em apart; but most people couldn't.)

print-on-demand books are most definitely not "throw-away".
at least, not any more so than the books that are mass-printed.
(which do not seem to be of a very high quality to me these days,
but maybe that's just old age, remembering "the good old days".)

> This requires (conscious) typographical knowledge, which
> most readers miss. Many, if not all of these parameters
> are dependent from each other.

you know, it's funny, because even though individual people might
make some choices that would be so far from "optimal" that they
would make _you_ -- a professional -- _cringe_, the odd thing is
that these people actually _prefer_ to have it the way they order it!

in other words, if you offered them an "optimal" version as a choice,
they'd stick with the one they chose as their own personal "optimal".

what can i say? it's obvious they don't appreciate your expertise...

> If this would be so easy, I wonder, why there are professions
> like typographer.

well, to tell you the truth, it's not actually "so easy", not quite yet.

we still haven't figured out how to give people precisely what they
want, with an interface that enables them to easily make the choices.
because this is a new range of possibility. but we'll solve the issues.

as to why there are typographers, or book designers, or however you
want to call them, it's because -- in the old days -- when we printed
thousands of books in a run and everybody had to use the same size,
it made sense to listen to professionals who would study up on how to
make that size be the most pleasant for the greatest number of readers.

but if we don't have to print in a "one-size-fits-all" mode, why do it?

> Maybe Bamboo could be used. Bamboo grows very fast.

yeah, except that the bamboo trees will be the first to catch the disease.

-bowerbird

>They know, what you buy when and where. They know, which telephone and email contacts you have – with whom and how often...

They? What They has time to pursue the minutia of innocent nobodies? It doesn't sound like "controlling me" to me.

I agree, bamboo grows very fast, but perhaps paranoia grows faster.

(Laser printing charges the paper where the image is to be and opposite charges the toner to be attracted to the charged area. It is I guess, magnetic offset, laser xerography, I can't remember another term either.)

Cheers!

> Is the future of the book digital?
>...the future of the digital booked?

> I think we book digitally now.... There is also the misapprehension,
>I think, that the digital book is mostly text...

only David B got it? :)

@bowerbird

the odd thing is that these people actually _prefer_ to have it the way they order it!

in other words, if you offered them an “optimal” version as a choice,
they’d stick with the one they chose as their own personal “optimal”.

Well, it is comparable with plebiscites. If you take a vote on death penalty, it would get a majority. If you would vote on waterboarding for the national security, it would be the same. It is a classic dilemma. I am against plebiscites. But the problem is, that our leading politicians miss competence, humanity and respect for the constitution likewise. I think, that the only solution is, that you give the people access to education (knowledge) independent from their origin (and for sure not for the price to go to the army). But just that is not wanted by our political leaders, because an intelligent plebs would not vote for incompetence, avarice and slavering lust for power. Politicians want to have a stupid plebs.

I don’t think, that the free market can guarantee advanced civilization. On the other side an overcontrolled market neither can guarantee advanced civilization. But, and there is a difference between artists and politicians: A person, that works for his audience, but not for his spiritual welfare, is no artist, but a corrupt politician. While the politician should be responsible for his electors, the artist is responsible for himself only. That’s the reason, why many artists, that mix they work with politics, are dilettantes.

Well, I don’t think, that book typography should be art, but there should be more typographers, that talk with the readers about their trade. But my impression is, that they have a tendency to prefer the talk with other typographers, because they miss the respect of the reader and they avenge with arrogance. In book typography it is part of the profession of the typographer, to stay in the background.

print-on-demand books have the same quality as offset books,
or at least they can...

That sounds promising, although offset printing is no guarantee for quality likewise.

@ Arno Enslin

With most people discussing here it is evident what they do, what their relation to type is, what their positions are. But I still have no idea who Arno Enslin is. Could you please provide some information about yourself? What is your profession? Are you a designer or a programmer? How does what you do relate to type, typography, books? It would help to get a better understanding of your comments in various discussions.

A thought here: when I worked at the University of Toronto Press, we produced the Canadian Math Bulletin. The editor told me that while the journal had several thousand subscriptions, generally to university libraries, occasionally papers were published where only four mathematicians in the world would have an interest in the material (and only a few dozen would even be able to understand it). But the publication was the only way to communicate that knowledge about, since you couldn't know which four of the thousands would be interested.

This was pre-Web, and today I assume that those papers are only published electronically, since that provides an alternative to the wastefulness of broadcasting something to such a narrow audience.

i must admit that i haven't read all of the above comments in depth, so if i am repeating what has been said earlier i apologize. that said, to me the book will never be digital. that is to say that the book is a physical object in my conception of the world. texts may become digital, but the book is a thing that is made (typically) of paper and words printed with ink on that paper. that said, perhaps at some point i will consider some type of e-reader device a book, but texts (content) are separate from the book (form).

@Karsten

In various discussions? You mean this discussion, don’t you? The others were about technical things.

My profession is not related to design, art, typography or programming. Am I disqualified now or was I already before? Did you google for Arno Enslin? I did. And because I did not find an Arno Enslin, I decided to be him.

Feel free to take on any name you want. This does not disqualify per se. But as said, lack of context makes it hard to understand your point in a discussion. I am referring to this discussion as well as to the technical ones here and on the FontLab forum.

Why am I not surprised about your reply ...

@bowerbird

as to why there are typographers, or book designers, or however you want to call them, it’s because — in the old days — when we printed thousands of books in a run and everybody had to use the same size, it made sense to listen to professionals who would study up on how to make that size be the most pleasant for the greatest number of readers.

Human individuality does not mean, that two humans belong to different species. I doubt, that the human visual perception varies so much. Otherwise we could not interpret the face mimic of other persons. It is true, that our faces are different, but what would happen, if you (yes, you!) transplant the face of person number X to person number Y? How would the face of X harmony with muscles and nerves and tendons of Y? (We are not talking about people, that were reared by wolfs.)

but if we don’t have to print in a “one-size-fits-all” mode, why do it?

That’s true. But you could say the same about the content. I just imagine a reader, that asks for "The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle" in the creationists edition. We urgently need truth- and multi-truth-templates for books. And naturally we also need "author templates". Everything goes. Jesus, I already have a problem, when I have to choose a sponge in a drug market.

On the other side the visual perception requires eyes. And the powers of vision varies. There are people, that would profit from a bigger point size or another font.

@Karsten

For me the discussion on the FontLab forum was a win of knowledge and competence. One of your two points is from me. I wanted to finally clarify the naming. It is still not absolutely clear with regard to the consequences of certain names in the menus of different programs and platforms, but it was a win. I wanted to eliminate all open questions, that one can have with regard to the naming. And I am relatively sure, that it also is a win for other people, which are interested in font naming. In contradiction to this thread, I cared about the order very much. The order was my point. You are German, too. Then you know the hard lot of our mentality, don’t you?

arno said:
> Well, it is comparable with plebiscites.
> If you take a vote on death penalty,
> it would get a majority. If you would vote
> on waterboarding for the national security,
> it would be the same.

it's great that you're willing to tackle the deep subjects,
arno, but i fear you've made this much too complicated.

print-on-demand lets each _individual_ customize the
print-out to their particular and unique preferences...

so it has nothing do with with a "plebiscite"...
or a stalactite or a stalagmite, for that matter.

it's almost certain that one person's preferences would
make another person puke, and vice versa. and so what?

> On the other side the visual perception requires eyes.
> And the powers of vision varies. There are people,
> that would profit from a bigger point size or another font.

it's interesting that most people understand the idea implicitly
if you phrase it in terms of point-size or font-choice, but they
aren't as willing to let it extend to margins, leading, or whatever.

for me, as a programmer working to give the choice to people,
what i want to create is the ability for the person to give my app
the specs they prefer, and to have the program make it look nice,
in much the same way that a professional typographer would do
the same thing were s/he to be given the specs by that individual,
_even_if_ that professional typographer would be tempted to say,
"well, i'm not sure it's going to look as good as it could otherwise,
but if this is really the way you want it, i'll give it to you like this."

-bowerbird

@john hudson

RF>the glyphs are as clear and sharp as print.
JH>How sharp is that? What kind of print process? What kind of paper?

I see your point. Print technology is too varied to pigeonhole like this. (And, actually, it got me thinking about the assumption, by a lot of people I think, that the more print-like text appears onscreen, the more it simulates ink-on-paper, the more readable it will be, and I think that notion is very incorrect. And it can be proven so. But back to your question.)
Let me rephrase. Forget glyphs, clear, sharp.
The text on the iRex appears very much like ink on paper and I can read from it with the same ease as I read from a printed book. (But one is not necessarily following from the other.)

@bowerbird
"we still haven’t figured out how to give people precisely what they want, with an interface that enables them to easily make the choices. because this is a new range of possibility. but we’ll solve the issues."
Oh yeah? In what century? My understanding, gleaned from web stats that measure such things, is that the large majority of browser users seldom fiddle with their browser settings and accept the pages they are shown "without question" presentationally. What proportion of folks do you think are feeling the need to be their own typesetters, compositors, and/or graphic designers?
No waffling, now!

>the glyphs are as clear and sharp as print.

I see on line that the resolution of the Kindle is 167 dpi. The resolution of type printed photo offset is about 2500 dpi. I haven't seen the Kindle screen, but I just can't believe that it is as sharp. We are talking about an order of magnitude different here, which is huge. You'd have to make the "digital paper" type 20 x as big and move 20 x further away to get the same experience.

@Richard

If the distance between the plastic border and the display of your iRex is not too great, you could scan a bit of text, that is displayed on your iRex. I would propose relative scan resolutions of 600 and 1200 dpi and Palatino in 12 points (on the iRex). Store the scans in uncompressed tiff format please.

I would print the same text in the same font and the same point size with my laser printer then and scan the print.

Naturally this would not allow a conclusion about the legibility, but it hopefully shows the differences of the variations of the stroke widths.

With regard to the sharpness I think, that MS ClearType can be interpreted as an unsharper. The text is more sharp without ClearType. Without ClearType curves are broken, the pixel are loose and the backlight dominates the text. We cannot press legibility in terms like contrast and sharpness.

@arno, et al:
Published PPI or DPI measurements are not accurate guides.
In the early nineties I worked with dye-sublimation printers rated at 300dpi that produced photographic-quality output. How do you get photographic output from 300dpi? Well, there are reasons. And it did.
What constitutes the "dot"? What is it's shape? Are we dealing with color, grayscale, or back and white? All will have a great effect. And more.
I have some scans of the output from the iRex, I'll review them, re-do them if necessary, and get them up online somewhere, or here, and revive this thread.
One thing I haven't done is look at the e-paper screen with a loupe or something, and see exactly what it looks like magnified. That will help explain, too.
rich

Rich, photos looking good and type looking good are two different things. I think that type is much more demanding on resolution, because it is usually read at small size, compared to a photos, which are usually printed at relatively big size. A photo can look great at 300 dpi and type look like mud.

A photo can look great at 300 dpi and type look like mud.

Exactly that. Additionally the distance, that you have to a photo, is often bigger. (Although unimportant in this context: The low resolution can be a method of style and you cannot compare the resolution of a photo, taken with an analog camera and the resolution, taken with a digital camera. The most impressive photos, that I have seen, are photos from wars. The grain was often very coarse there. The difference between grain and pixel or print dots is the evenness of their spreading. The one is "nature" [the chemical reaction in the film] and the other is technology [a matrix].)

david said:
> Well, I’m glad that’s settled then;
> the future of the book is digital.

yeah, right, you know, just like
all our offices are now paperless.

-bowerbird

Yes, bowerbird, the future of the office too is paperless.
In the last 20 years, this idea has made remarkable strides.
Huge, vast, quantities of offices, have done so all that can, will.

Same with books.

Cheers!

>this idea has made remarkable strides.

The usual story is that we use more paper than ever. According to the wikipedia article on the Paperless Office office paper use doubled from 1980 to 2000, as people printed out more, not less from computers than they had from typewriters. The source for the claim is an article in the Economist.

Is this wrong? What is happening that you think will reduce paper?

And in comparison to the lifetime of most office documents, the lifetime of printed books is longer, isn’t it? (The environment argument against printed books.)

Bill, there may be a distinction to investigate between "office paper" -- which may very well only measure what we might also call "copy paper" coming out of copiers, desktop printers, and the like -- and all of the paper typically used in an office circa 20 years ago (like all the plotter-printed data that used to be filed for which we now have digital databases, or billing/invoicing records, etc.).

Is there really more paper in offices? Or does it only seem that way when one focuses on one aspect of paper in an office.

Kent, checking out the Economist article of 2008 linked on the Wikipedia, it seems to be a pretty general measure of paper used. However, after rising sharply from 1980 to 2000, since then paper use has been declining slowly. So maybe things are headed toward less paper after all. It seems to be a really complex question.

I'd like to bookmark this thread so I can track it later.

Ah? Yes? bookmark?

Awh c'mon. That was good material…

Whoops. How do you delete an accidental double post?

Arno, a couple times you have cited that there are more horses today than there were when they were the main use of transportation. Where does that fact come from?

I note that here http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=144565
it reports that in 1915, when autos were just taking over, there were 21.5 million horses in the US, and today there are 6.9 million.

@Don McCahill

Arno, a couple times you have cited that there are more horses today than there were when they were the main use of transportation.

That was not me; I did not talk about horses. What shall the comparison mean? Ebook devices are on the car level and books are on the horse level with regard to functionality? That would be ridiculous, because functionality does primary mean legibility in this context. I would not prefer an ebook, just because it can play MP3 or take photographs.

bowerbird cited the thing about horses.
In part, I agree. There are definitely more horses asses than ever before.
(Present company excepted, of course.)

Son of a gun had me thinking about it, too. What is it indicative of? Nothing! So what if there are more horses. Are there more buggys? More covered wagons? More horsewhips? Dung in the streets? What's the analogy?

I don't know anything about the stats on paper usage, but I do know that I print less now, using an LCD display, than I did when I used a CRT. FWIW.

rich

We produce many more information products now than before the DTP era began. All of these need proofing and thus paper. But, if we see how much paper per info product we produce, we might have a meaningful figure. With PDF proofing, today I would say paper use is on the way down but not there yet.

ChrisL

In my paperless office eveyone is emailed documents that formerly would have been printed and distributed manually to everyone who needed them.

Now they are e-mailed so that we can print our own copies. As often as we like. (it really is much easier to just print a new copy when you need it than to file the first one for later.)

No. The future of the book in not digital…

At leat - not yet.

-=®=-

i'm the one who was talking
about the number of horses.

and, if you choose to check,
you'll see i covered my ass with:

> (or so i have heard.)

i'm also the one who brought up
claims about the paperless office.

most people will tell you that it is
true that they use more paper now
simply because they'll print out the
entire document if changes are made,
whereas in the past workers avoided
retyping all the perfectly good pages.

on the other hand, there are people
like me who've gone without a printer
for several years now, to no ill effect.

(on those very rare occasions where i
simply must have something printed,
like a boarding pass, i send it over to
my girlfriend, and she prints it for me.)

so i was essentially pointing out that
the waters are very muddy, and you can
see whatever you choose to see in the
puddles, the clouds, and the tea leaves.

especially since many of us old-timers are
well-acquainted with the pleasure of paper,
and there is surely no question that paper
is very handy, and printers are very cheap,
i am positive there will continue to be books
that are printed -- on demand -- even when
the vast majority of books are read digitally...

and, no mistake, that is how they will be read.

because the future of the book is clearly and
unequivocally digital. it is only a matter of
how quickly we get to the future from here.

-bowerbird

Another thing to add to my earlier - I do quite a bit of proofreading of academic work. At first I asked for paper copies, marked that up first. And then the changes were incorporated into the digital.
For some reason, and I really don't know why, I found collaboration was just as easy when I skipped the paper step and now just work from the digital.
A lot of this, undoubtedly, has to do with the willingness to break old habits. Of course "willingness" can be imposed in a number of ways.
Cost of ink cartridges, etc...

Sad to say, but I think near-geezers like me will have to die off before paperless starts getting real traction. And the schools should be the first environment to go paperless but the technology and the budget - you've got to see the quality of the equipment in the computer rooms at some elementary schools - isn't there.

Richard, I'm surprised that you can proofread on screen, as I find it much easier on paper. Do you blow up the type large on screen? Is that the trick?

@ Richard

And the schools should be the first environment to go paperless but the technology and the budget - you’ve got to see the quality of the equipment in the computer rooms at some elementary schools - isn’t there.

Because we need the money for much more important things than children: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-billion-dollar-...

You are dreaming from a paperless world. But our Juntas even don’t have money for a basic humanistic education.

@ William

Do you blow up the type large on screen? Is that the trick?

This cannot be the trick, because either you would need a big distance to the screen or you don’t read words but letters. There must be a metaphysical component in Richard’s screens. Virtual pixels with a lifetime, that is so short, that it can’t be measured (and not scanned!).

I ALWAYS proofread on screen, as it enables me to directly correct the mistakes I made when initially writing the damn thing :-)

However - I am not a Kindle owner (yet) - has anyone here ever settled down in front of a nice fire, with a good glass of whiskey, a nice blanket, and has read a really GOOD book... on an E-Reader? How did it FEEL?

I am an old bookworm, and I have no idea what it FEELS like to read a good story on a screen. Does it WORK?

@ Werfer

I am not a nostalgic, but what you are calling feeling, is, what I call functionality. There is a connection between beauty and functionality. From a certain point of view beauty can be interpreted as functionality. If the other circumstances are the same, beauty has an evolutionary advantage. Books are closer to our nature, because they are closer to the stuff, from which we are made. Paper is more life than plastic, isn’t it? When plastic still was alife, the days were shorter. But I don’t know, how important the human ability of adaption is in this context. It also may be dependent from the content of the books. There is a contradiction between poems about sex, love and nature on the one and the cold smoothness of computers on the other side. (The preference of natural proportions is verified. Even the iRex can not change its proportions. I already did talk about that.)

There is a comparing test of ebook devices in the German computer magazin CT, edition 25/2009. I wish, they also would ask typographers about their opinion, when they make those tests. However, it is an opportunity, to put Richard in mind the scan of the iRex again. Please, Richard!

A very long time in the future, it may indeed be that digital books will almost completely replace paper books. The preconditions for that are, of course:

• Digital books, while they may be protected by some form of DRM, will be freely movable between display/storage devices,
• A digital book, since it doesn't consume paper which is heavy to move around, will be somewhat less expensive than its paper counterpart, and
• Digital book readers will be comfortable for reading, suitable for almost all types of book, inexpensive and convenient.

We're not quite there yet. But if these conditions are met, then the great advantages of digital books - the ability to carry a library of thousands of volumes in your pocket, rather than building an edifice to house it - would take over.

However, for a long time to come, many older books will be available secondhand in paper form for as little as a dollar. Even if the DRM for digital books is such as to let one keep one's library when one buys a new digital book reader, and eliminate any concern over losing one's library if something happens to that book reader, it is not likely to also permit a market in secondhand copies of digital books to exist. Since every secondhand book started life as a new book, and purchasers of new books will have their own utility in mind when buying a new book, this in itself will not inhibit the success of the digital book.

But until the last paper book either falls into the public domain, or becomes an expensive collector's item, even long after new books have stopped being printed on paper, there will be a robust market in secondhand paper books.

well, it's entertaining for someone to come in
to a 2-page thread as if it had just started...

but let me interact with a few of the points
from the post just entered by quadiblock...

> very long time in the future, it may
> indeed be that digital books will
> almost completely replace paper books.

it's really best, most of the time, to think of e-books
as _supplementing_ p-books, not _replacing_ them...

> Digital books, while they may be protected by
> some form of DRM, will be freely movable
> between display/storage devices,

e-books aren't going to go anywhere until publishers
give up an insistence on d.r.m., totally and completely.

d.r.m. adds to the cost, and subtracts from the utility,
and there's already a bad tug-of-war going on between
the buyers and sellers of books, in regard to pricing, so
there's no wiggle-room in which d.r.m. can inject itself.

> A digital book, since it doesn’t consume paper
> which is heavy to move around, will be
> somewhat less expensive than its paper counterpart

e-books will be _far_ less expensive than paper-books...
an e-book is essentially a file, at most a collection of files.
the costs are creation, editing, and maybe fact-checking...
everything else is fat from middlemen that'll be eliminated.

> the great advantages of digital books - the ability to
> carry a library of thousands of volumes in your pocket,
> rather than building an edifice to house it - would take over.

carrying a library in your pocket is an amazing thing, for sure.

but in an age where people carry the _internet_ in their pocket,
it's really not that big of a deal.

the _real_ advantage of e-books -- like all digital content --
is that the reproduction and distribution cost is nearly zero.

we can now give a book to every person on the planet, and
i mean it quite literally. indeed, we can give _every_ book to
every person on the planet, if we decide that's what we want.

when we are finally able to wrap our heads around _that_
-- books being a primary vehicle for communicating our
knowledge and culture -- the potential should boggle us.

> However, for a long time to come, many older books will be
> available secondhand in paper form for as little as a dollar.

actually, i think they will be available, but not for a dollar.

here's what's going to happen.

the big publishing houses -- which of course are all owned
by corporations -- are dinosaurs which will soon experience
the occasion of their extinction. they will stop making money.
and when corporations stop making money, they exit the scene.

when that happens, a flock of new mammals will emerge, but
they won't be able to maintain the vast industry we now know.

so the number of new paper-books printed will plummet...

however, the number of books that are released as e-books
will skyrocket. since many people will still have a preference
for the paper-book experience, they'll use print-on-demand
to get a hard-copy of the books that they really want to read.

so even though the number of new books being printed in
big print-runs by big publishers will drop, the total number
of books being printed will still remain rather high, relatively,
meaning that paper-books will still have a visible presence...

however, they will become more _valuable_. even books that
are now available for a mere dollar will see their price double.

so there _will_ be a strong market in second-hand p-books.

of course, at a print-on-demand cost of a-penny-a-page,
there will be a firm ceiling on how high used prices will go.

but for truly old books (anything printed in a large print-run,
not just bona fide "antiques"), there'll be a collectors' market.

***

the thing is, the people who love paper-books are probably
in for an extremely difficult time, at least in the short-run...

because the corporations are gonna opt out, and that means
very few large print-runs, which means huge price increases.

you might crave the hard-copy when it costs $20, even $40,
but what about when it costs $50, or $60, or $80, or $100?
how many p-books are you gonna purchase at those prices?
your loyalty to ink-on-paper is going to be severely tested...

just like all of the people who love their printed newspapers,
and are sad to see them go, p-book people are gonna weep.

corporations don't care, though; they'll find something else
to sell to you so that they can still make their bloody profits.

-bowerbird

The number of new books in any form with quality content will diminish if there's no way for authors to get paid. As long as paper remains the only fair and workable form of "DRM" for books, paper will survive.

Authors, like type designers, or rock musicians, need to buy groceries. If they can't get the money to do that from their art, it won't be their day job.

@ bowerbird

just like all of the people who love their printed newspapers,
and are sad to see them go

"Go" seems to be the right expression. They don’t go to the internet. They simply go or the online editions don’t have the same content as the print editions (target group orientated production). In the German debate about the pseudo barrier of "child pornography", the theme was more present in the online editions and the reports more critical with regard to the aims. The (printed) German magazine Spiegel is not the same as Spiegel Online with regard to the content. At the moment my position is relatively neutral with regard to the going of printed newspapers, but not with regard to the different content. But there are themes, that require much money for a good recherche. However, my knowledge about the coherencies is very limited.

This is (un)fortunately in German:
http://www.zeit.de/2009/49/DOS-Medien?page=all

quadiblock said:
> The number of new books in any form
> with quality content will diminish
> if there’s no way for authors to get paid.

are you a writer?

or are you an accountant?

do you even _know_ any writers?

accountants won't do accounting if they
don't get paid for doing it, that is true...

writers are not nearly so sensible.

> As long as paper remains
> the only fair and workable
> form of “DRM” for books,
> paper will survive.

there's a lot to unpack in that sentence.

but i can tell even from this distance that
any effort in that direction is badly spent,

> Authors, like type designers,
> or rock musicians,
> need to buy groceries.

ok, it's perfectly clear that
you're not a rock musician.

old joke:
what do you call a bass-player
without a girlfriend? homeless.

> If they can’t get the money to do that
> from their art, it won’t be their day job.

the "writers" for whom writing is their "day job"
are surely the saddest writing creatures around.

when they're not rewording press releases, they're
drafting copy for dog-food or for local businesses.

it's downright dreary.

so much for "their art"...

-bowerbird

Boy, this is the thread that never dies...

quadiblock said:
> The number of new books in any form
> with quality content will diminish
> if there’s no way for authors to get paid.

I, for one, am perfectly willing to take the chance that less will be produced if DRM goes bye-bye or if copyright becomes nullified by the behavior of the public at large. Alternative copyright schemes might provide a fairer result for authors, but will never happen politically. They'll die defending the Alamo.
Dig this: As reported on Boing Boing, in Denmark it's legal to make a copy of your DVD's for backup. But it's illegal to crack the encryption code to do so. So the guy cracked the code and then turned himself in! Absolutely true. He did it, he said, because he wanted to find out which of the two laws counted for more. After all, they can't both be "the law".
The funniest part is - he has yet to hear anything definitive from the authorities. They're not quite sure what to do with him.
(This one had me rolling on the floor.)
And I think bb is absolutely correct - until DRM is ditched entirely, E-Books face an unsurmountable hurdle no matter how good the devices get. IMHO.

@werfer
>However - I am not a Kindle owner (yet) - has anyone here
>ever settled down in front of a nice fire, with a good
>glass of whiskey, a nice blanket, and has read a really
>GOOD book... on an E-Reader? How did it FEEL?

Sans the fire, and the whisky, but with a blanket, yes. How did it feel? You're kidding, right? Maybe not - well, the ideas the author was trying to convey to me through words managed to make their way through without any more of a problem than had they been presented using ink on paper.

@bill
>Richard, I’m surprised that you can proofread on screen, as
>I find it much easier on paper. Do you blow up the type
>large on screen? Is that the trick?

No trick. It's a little tougher on the eyes than print, but the work, overall, goes a little faster as compensation. At least that what happened to me. I do zoom up the font size usually, yes, but not a lot. And once in a while, if I'm fatigued, I'll change the font to Cambria - a screen font with a larger x-height and very even hinting at any size. Times New Roman and Courier are relics - but that's what APA says to use. So it gets changed back to that before submission. I also edit with everything left-aligned. Much easier than the wackiness that happens onscreen when you edit a paper justified and without hyphenation. The body of the paper gets justified right before submission.
Now, I can't vouch for what I would prefer if I had twenty papers to read and have to grade one right after the other with a deadline. But the profs at the online school my wife attends do it onscreen. And it's no cakewalk either. They're very thorough.
Are they still accepting paper papers at the University these days? I had assumed everything would be digital submission, by now.

Regards, Rich

>Alternative copyright schemes might provide a fairer result for authors, but will never happen politically.

What alternatives did you have in mind?

> What alternatives did you have in mind?

oh please no. i tell you, no good will come of it.

-bowerbird

>>What alternatives did you have in mind?
>oh please no. i tell you, no good will come of it.

@bill and bb

bowerbird is probably correct - no good will come of it. However, I believe no good will come of it because *nothing* will come of it - reform is politically impossible. At least today.
bb believes, I think, alternative copyright schemes are a plain old bad idea. But he can speak quite eloquently for himself.
I'm an optimist who, by nature, looks for the middle ground. The laws exist, we have to deal with them.
And I can't see the status quo as sustainable over the long term.
I just got back from 4 weeks out of the country. This subject is a little OT but I *would* like to offer something in the way of explanation. I'll be back.

rich

I basically agree with quadibloc and think BB's full of baloney.

And to answer the rhetorical question posed to quad: I know a LOT of writers. The best man at my wedding has won more awards for his novels than I can keep track of.

T

@thomasphinney

Once very skeptical, I subscribe more and more to bb's baloney and coincidentally, the guy who was best man at my wedding is also a novelist. (We've known each other since the cradle - his father and my father were in first grade together.)
He also teaches creative writing at a university. Tenured.
He just finished a new book, sent it to his agent, and has palpitations every time his phone rings because it might be his agent with bad news. This is because the book biz is in such bad shape.
I asked him why he doesn't try to publish digitally on his own. What's he got to lose?
He said there's "no points" for self-publishing. In other words, unless he goes through the established, formal channels and has a "real" publisher - whatever that is these days - he would lose Whoofie.
I asked him what was more important, the "points" or having people read his stuff.
He didn't answer and I didn't press it.
Writing has not been his "day job" for many years - his work as an educator covers the tab but he gets very liberal sabbaticals and such to write without the distraction of teaching.
Has the guy who was best man at your wedding made a living from his writing alone?

The number of new books in any form with quality content will diminish if there’s no way for authors to get paid.
Authors, like type designers, or rock musicians, need to buy groceries. If they can’t get the money to do that from their art, it won’t be their day job.

There's more quality writing being freely shared than I can consume in what's left of my lifetime, so who cares? Those who absolutely must express themselves will do so, they will find a way. And today, the costs of distribution are near zero so all you need to cover is the time it takes. Those who can't or won't or don't find a way can disappear for all the difference it will make to anybody.
Half the time I find the comments from readers at the NYTimes more insightful and better written than the articles themselves - written by those for whom it *is* a day job.
I'm a musician with years of formal training. Nearly no musicians are or were ever able to make a living as musicians, it's a given. Didn't stop anybody. Didn't stop me. You don't get into it for money. And if you have to stop doing it, nobody misses you.
I'm tired of hearing about this ideal world that never existed where everybody had a way to "get paid".
That's the real baloney.

Cheerfully, rich.

"...and the rich get richer..."

ChrisL

> I’m tired of hearing about this ideal world that never existed where everybody had a way to “get paid”.

What if we take the "get paid" out of the equation for a minute and focus on the concept of copyright as protecting the rights of a creator to determine (to some extent, anyway) the fate of their creation?

What rights do you [anyone] think an author/artist/creator should have over the publication, reproduction, distribution, or manipulation of his/her creation(s)?

[Seriously, just an open-ended question . . . ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJwyBmu-O-o

"What rights do you [anyone] think an author/artist/creator should have over the publication, reproduction, distribution, or manipulation of his/her creation(s)?"

Dear Earl of Kent, My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thine pirates; nor fear to lose it,
But profit is fair motive for any man, pawn or king.
If I but draw breath from my labours, do I not deserve the right to draw type as well?
Shall my endeavor go stolen without a whisper from me only because there is long injustice in the world?
When no other means of toil is expected to continue without payment,
Why then mine, singled out as worthless but because theft is easy and goes unpunished.

ChrisL

Hermann Zapf, Adrian Frutiger, Matthew Carter, David Berlow, Robert Slimbach, Christian Schwartz, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Lucas de Groot, James Montalbano, Nick Shinn, John Hudson, Akira Kobayashi, and on and on. These are all full time type designers, paid for their labors, with a large number of types of excellent quality.

Rich, your seeming idea that this high quality type would have happened if they all could only afford to do type as a hobby, is just ridiculous.

@dezcom
Every time I get into one of these copyright discussions - which always lead nowhere - I think of the picture you've got up on Facebook from Vietnam. (No bull, I really do.)
Luckily for me, Nixon ended the thing right before my number was coming up.
In light of the shit you and so many other guys endured, palpitations and protestations over who's going to buy my font and then, heaven forbid - subset it, convert it, stick it up their backside, whatever they're going to do with it is, in contrast, inconsequential garbage.
Actually, all I was trying to do was get a rise out of Phinney. He's so unflappable. (At least I've never seen him flap, have you?) Hah!
But hey, let's continue, 'cause it's fun...

@william berkson
Rich, your seeming idea that this high quality type would have happened if they all could only afford to do type as a hobby, is just ridiculous.
Maybe so. Let's presume you're right. But if the trade-off for keeping John Hudson on full-time in a digital world is that I must accept invasions into my privacy and have *less* rights as a consumer of information than I did before distribution was digital, then John Hudson and the rest of the guys you mention can all become hobbyists as far as I'm concerned. I'll be fine. The world will be fine.
You've got your priorities, I've got mine. I'll take my chances.

What if we take the “get paid” out of the equation for a minute and focus on the concept of copyright as protecting the rights of a creator to determine (to some extent, anyway) the fate of their creation?

Alright, I'll bite - a little. Besides, I still owe Bill Berkson at least one suggestion vis-a-vis copyright reform.
This thread has done so much bobbing and weaving already, what's a little more.
BTW - I have two patents and a trademark obtained during my previous life in the fashion industry. I fully understand wanting to protect your baby. (It was a heat-sealing system that actually was licensed and marketed. And the one company besides my own that licensed the thing would never have done so if I hadn't had the patent. So I understand the value of IP. I'm no purist. I, too, will take my corporate welfare whenever I can get it.)
And I do think proper attribution, at the very least, is a part of good online citizenship. It serves the creator and the people to whom you're recommending or redistributing the creation. Not giving credit is bad manners, period.
I had a long discussion with somebody recently urging me to become familiar with "open" licensing in relation to the whole @font-face thing. And I've come to see his point: the legal realities being what they are, if you *do* want to keep some control over a work - even if it's to prevent somebody else from repackaging it and start charging money for it - you've got to take steps to clearly license it otherwise you can run into trouble exerting whatever claims you might have. If enforcement is an option, that is. And that's what really sticks in everybody's craw with digital distribution - enforcement is really impossible without imposing restraints on consumption that drive everybody to the free stuff that might not be "high quality" - however you define that - but at least it's free.

How about we start by protecting everyone's creations the same way we protect the creations of fashion designers and the great chefs of the world?
Where would that leave us? We don't seem to be at a loss for innovative clothing or having to endure ratty meals. Geez, look at all the cookbooks!

How does that strike you?

>if the trade-off for keeping John Hudson on full-time in a digital world is that I must accept invasions into my privacy and have *less* rights as a consumer of information than I did before distribution was digital...

How do you have any fewer rights as a consumer of information, if you have to pay for a digital font, as you did before for a material one--and by the way for much less cost?

I just don't understand what you are so exercised about, and it must be something.

As for fashion and chefs, they can earn a living from selling something tangible, namely clothes and food. Since fonts are no longer tangible, but digital, font developers can't do that.

Are you against any form of intellectual property? I mean against all copyright, trademark and patenting?

I don't understand also what you mean by "restraints on consumption". The law currently restrains my consumption of apples by saying that if I snatch an apple from the grocer without paying, they will fine me or clap me in jail. How are intellectual property rights any more restricting?

thomas said:
> I basically agree with quadibloc
> and think BB’s full of baloney.

well, you know, things could be much worse,
if charles brock decided he didn't like me. ;+)

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJwyBmu-O-o

that kindle went up in a million pieces from
just one swing of the baseball bat, didn't it?

> And to answer the rhetorical question posed to quad

it wasn't a rhetorical question. i don't know quad.
perhaps he/she is a writer, or does know some writers.

i know lots of writers, including many who make their
living from writing. i even know some "award-winners".

i also know lots of writers who don't make a penny
from their writing. i also know writers who _should_
or _could_ be making a very good living by doing writing,
except that's not how they decided to arrange their lives.

and what i know, from knowing all of those writers, is that
the ones who are writing stuff that is worthwhile will do it
even if they aren't paid to do it. they do it because they
love it, or they do it in spite of the fact that they hate it,
but they do it, and they will continue to do it no matter what.
they do it because they cannot not do it. it's that simple...

and the ones who are writing just because it is "a paycheck"
aren't turning out anything worthwhile. awards or not...

now, i'm not saying it's "impossible" to write well for cash.
i come up against well-written stuff all the time that i expect
was written for cash. "how cute / are these boots" is a rhyme
from a target commercial i love -- it's chanted repeatedly
by a bunch of kids stomping a stage -- and i presume that the
copywriter for that job was paid well. and yet for all i know,
s/he might hate it, and would quit in a minute if not paid.

but yeah, i'm willing to give up all the writing from people
who are writing just to get paid, and who'd stop otherwise...

> I know a LOT of writers. The best man at my wedding has
> won more awards for his novels than I can keep track of.

first, you didn't really say if he's _making_a_living_ at it.

but i assume that he'd keep writing even if he wasn't paid.

however, all of that is really beside the point, isn't it?

because we all _want_ quality writers to be paid for writing;
we all want quality font-makers to be paid for making fonts,
we all want quality musicians to be paid for making music.

so we have to put into place the mechanisms that allow that
to happen. we must build the infrastructure to make it so.

d.r.m. is _not_ that infrastructure, _not_ that mechanism.
d.r.m. doesn't work; it just gums the machine unnecessarily.

and the only way to make d.r.m. work, even if just half-assed,
is to clamp down on "intellectual property" so hard we will
all suffer, in countless ways. and even then, the cost of
"enforcement" will fritter away the cash we'd hoped to gain.
there are easier ways to decide who should get paid, and
how much. as one example, you could look toward the model
on which b.m.i./a.s.c.a.p. is based. (don't look at those
organizations per se, but rather the model, because they're
bureaucratic nightmares that rob artists rather than pay 'em.
but the transparency an open digital infrastructure could
guarantee could ensure that kind of thievery didn't happen).

_everyone_ wants to be paid for their intellectual property.

fine.

we can make it happen, without d.r.m. this false dichotomy,
where d.r.m. is pitched as "the answer" for starving artists,
needs to be swept away so we face the problem intelligently.

so anyway, thomas, there you go. buy yourself some bread
and you can have a baloney sandwich.

-bowerbird

i see. we want to engage with straw men.

ok, fine.

"death to copyright!"

"information wants to be free!"

"(intellectual) property is theft!"

"stick it to the establishment!"

"pirates have more fun!"

have at it...

-bowerbird

@bill
>I just don’t understand what you are so exercised about, and it must be something.

I'm not all that excercised. Just concerned - as are many, many others and for good reason. (I'm going to come back and post a couple of books I recommend. Good reads. One's free.)
Strangely, as little as a year ago I was probably in the same place as I think Kent is, opinion-wise. I don't think I've done as big a turnaround on anything in my entire life - it's like a switch got flipped in my head. As ex-General Ariel Sharon put it questioned about his marked change in stance vis-a-vis Israelis and Palestinians, "I can see things from over here that I couldn't see from over there." I guess it's a vantage point thing.
A major reason I got involved in the fracas over web font formats was because I understand and still do understand the concern about posting raw TTF/OTF files on web sites. Thankfully, it bore fruit and now, in addition to EOT - which now looks something that will ultimately fade away - there's WOFF, which is an arguably better format. I wanted talent like yours, Kent's, everybody's, working as freely as possible on typefaces for not only print, but screen.
Fonts are a peculiar specialty, really. Type designers are like the air traffic controllers of written language and I really don't want to fly knowing that less than the best are in the control tower. But I will if I have to. And I'll get by just fine. What choice does anybody have? We have to communicate and without typefaces, there are no written words.
There's still a lot of hesitation in the biz, but the more I think about where digital publishing is going the more I think things are going to be quite OK for type designers. We're in a transitional phase of a transformation that's unprecedented. Exciting but unsettling. When someone feels that their paycheck is on the line, waxing eloquent about the common good and a bright future doesn't get you far.
(I just wanted to explain a little of where I'm coming from.)
I think bb's mention of the ASCAP/BMI/Harry Fox nexus for collecting royalties in the sphere of music publishing might provide a model down the road.

Viva La Revolución!

> There’s more quality writing being freely shared than I can consume in what’s left of my lifetime, so who cares?

This strongly depends on the kind of quality writing you're looking for. Yes, people do write quality serious fiction without being paid. And there are also textbooks on many subjects that have fallen into the public domain, or which are written under versions of the GPL.

It is, however, also true that there are other kinds of book which take enough effort of an uninteresting kind to write that people who have a requirement for those kinds of books do expect to have to pay for them. Those books need an appropriate distribution system, and for them, paper is still best.

I can't believe this thread is still going.

I was just reading Metropolis magazine and realized it's about half the size it used to be. While text on paper isn't dead... yet... the pages sure are getting fewer, thinner and smaller.

bluestreak said:
> I can’t believe this thread is still going.

yes, long after print has been rushed to the hospital,
declared dead on arrival, buried, mourned, and then
forgotten, this thread will still be chugging along...

> the pages sure are getting fewer, thinner and smaller.

i was handed a copy of "time" magazine the other day,
after not having picked one up in a couple of years,
and it's not overstatement to say that i was _shocked_
because it was so thin. it felt truly puny in my hand.

-bowerbird

I think "magazine" has become a misnomer. (Should look up the etymology of that one. If someone says, "Hand me the magazine" are they talking about reading material or ammunition?)
A "pamphlet" is more like what it is these days.

Vogue is still hefty, though.

I am having fond memories of old LIFE magazine in folio--large pages, big black and white photos.

ChrisL

Vogue is still hefty, though.

Check out V. It’s like Vogue, but even bigger and smarter. I do think that we’ll soon see a return to larger formats as magazine editors and designers look for ways to compete with the web. Even when a carbon-nanofiber and OLED/eInk 11x17 screen can run of your own body’s electrical discharge and weighs only a few ounces it still won’t compare to an 11x17 gravure-printed fashion mag. How much more likely would you be to pick up a design annual in that format instead of the crap we get now? Of course this doesn’t work for, say, the New Yorker, but it would be great for anything that rides on visuals.

Remember U&lc?

ChrisL

Since reaching the age of being able to carry it all, as a New York City kid, every Sunday morning I went out to pick up bagels and the Sunday New York Times.
I shudder to think of what the Sunday NYTimes magazine section now weighs in at. Even in December. You can't help but get nostalgic.

But on the other hand, I now get the contents delivered for free onscreen in Florida!

i suggest we make it a new year's resolution
not to post any more to this particular thread.

but while there's still some time... ;+)

i can't help but notice that thomas phinney
never did respond on whether his best man
actually makes a living from his writing --
his _award-winning_ writing, for the record
-- because that would seem to have bearing
on the thread, would it not?

since -- in my experience -- award-winning
writing is the very type of stuff that is _not_
all that salable in the marketplace (if it even
manages to make it to the marketplace in the
first place), i'm guessing that that best man is
pulling his paychecks out of academia instead.
probably by teaching even more writers how to
not make a living off their writing... ironically...

and this brings me to my much bigger point...

which is that _copyright_ doesn't really "protect"
individual artists all that much, precisely because
_copyright_ is the first thing that the corporations
have you _sign_over_ to them when they sign you.

corporations are the big beneficiaries of copyright.

you'll also notice that the legal system rules that
employers own the rights to intellectual property
created by their employees, even when the work
was done offsite, in their own time, in areas that
are only vaguely related to the employee's job...
like the work thomas did while he was at adobe.

none of this will surprise anyone, though, since
the law always sides with the rich and powerful.

-bowerbird

@bowerbird

OK. I promise not to post after the New Year. But it has to be unanimous. If anybody else posts, I'm back. ;)

@william berkson

I promised you a couple of book recommendations regarding copyright issues.
I would suggest James Boyle's very recent The Public Domain: Enclosing The Commons Of The Mind
It was just named Book of the Year by the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (Oy, more awards, the financial kiss of death!)
It's available for free as a PDF and a raw HTML version at:
http://www.thepublicdomain.org/
And also at Feedbooks.com where, also for free, you can get it formatted to fit a variety of e-reading devices. It's also for sale at a modest price from Amazon.
Of earlier vintage is Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright written in 2001. The great thing about Litman's book is that, because it was written in 2001, we sort of know, as readers, how the story ends and whether or not Litman's predictions come true. But it covers all the conundrums that copyright law has us still struggling with today.
Both beautifully written books - really good reads - and Boyle's book even has one of the best little bits of musicology, of all things, that I've ever read.
(Boyle and Litman don't write in the tortured prose of the lectern like so many academics do. It's the straight-to-the-point talk of the private tutorial. Don't get me started!)
Anyway, if you read these books with an open mind and then come back to me and say something akin to, "So? I still really don't see any problems." You're either a schmuck (and you're certainly not that) or myopically blinded by self-interest, Mr. Fancy-Pants type designer.

So there.

Happy New Year To All!

Thanks Rich, I've downloaded it and will have a look.

[[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/business/media/28paywall.html?_r=1|On the other hand...]]

@bill

Glanced at the article. Been tried before. The problem is - once you start charging money - no matter how little - the eyeballs go elsewhere.
I take no delight in it. It's just the way it is.
Some years ago, the NYTimes put some premium content like the Opinions section behind a firewall and asked for, I think, $60 a year.
I paid. I needed my daily fix.
About a year later, they suspended the program and I got a refund.
Good luck to Rupert M. and his search engine that's going to "scour" the web looking for ripped-off news items.

On yet another hand, I hope this is a trend:
MIT Will Publish All Faculty Articles Free In Online Repository
The MIT faculty voted unanimously to do this.

Kudos to MIT.

Hey, Rich this is a test. Will it happen, won't it happen? I'm betting yes, before all the newspapers go broke from the wonders of free distribution, which is soon. Want to bet a dinner at a type conference that the New York Times will be charging to see some content by summer 2011?

Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if local papers went into a syndicate with big papers like the Washington Post, New York Times, etc., and share revenue on their local coverage--you sign up for the Post or Times and get your local news also, right down to the neighborhood.

Makes sense to me. Probably not to you :)

you can force some people to pay for some content
in advance.

whether you can force _enough_ people to pay for
_your_ content (whatever that might happen to be)
to make it worthwhile to enact the infrastructure
needed to process the payment transaction is yet
another question.

it's worth mentioning, however, that people _will_
gladly volunteer payment-after-the-fact for content
freely provided to them in a gift-exchange modality.

if people love your content, they will find a way to
reward you for it... this is the path of the future...

and, back on topic, the future of the book _is_ digital.
however, people will still print-on-demand the books
that we love, to have a physical manifestation of them,
the same way we get reprints of digital photos we love
so we have something to frame and put on the mantle.

-bowerbird

>if people love your content, they will find a way to reward you for it... this is the path of the future...

lol. if people love your content, they will find a way to make other people think it's their's.

Cheers!

david said:
> lol. if people love your content,
> they will find a way to
> make other people think it’s their’s.

they can try, but since you put your stuff
out, at zero cost, for public consumption
-- which is how _they_ got a hold of it --
timestamps make its origin perfectly clear.

speaking of timestamps, no posts here
after midnight, server-time. _or_else..._ :+)

-bowerbird

>speaking of timestamps, no posts here after midnight...

Happy New Year!

I'm posting just to see what kind of "or else" punishment bowerbird imposes. 'Cause that's what I want to fire back at the bird for continuing the annoying short line breaks that causes my scroll finger to cramp.

Strictly on topic though. Think of all of the heavy manuals that Apple, Adobe, etc. used to send with software. We haven't seen any of those books printed on paper for a long time.

bluestreak said:
> Think of all of the heavy manuals that
> Apple, Adobe, etc. used to send with software.
> We haven’t seen any of those books
> printed on paper for a long time.

sure we have. it's called "the missing manual" series, and
you can find a wide array of exemplars at any bookstore...

but your point is well-taken. at some time in the future,
the corporate publishers will find that it no longer makes
financial sense to do large print-runs, and they will simply
stop doing them, at a speed that will snap your head back.

-bowerbird

p.s. the "or else" punishment for prolonging this thread is
social disapprobation. and no, i can't feel it either. :+)

@BlueStreak

You broke the magic spell and now we're all doomed to spend all eternity arguing over nonsense on this thread.
Oh, well...

@bill

Firstly, I was going to take you to dinner at TypeCon 2010 in LA, in any event.

Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if local papers went into a syndicate with big papers like the Washington Post, New York Times, etc., and share revenue on their local coverage—you sign up for the Post or Times and get your local news also, right down to the neighborhood.

It's not that this doesn't make sense to me. It does - the question is whether those pesky readers/customers will go along with it. They're the ones who pay the freight.
The newspapers - like a lot of us, me included - are at the end of their rope. The attitude might be, "Well, if we lose a lot of readers (and advertising revenue), so be it. At least we're going down fighting." I hope it doesn't come down to that, but it might and they have every right to try.

I no longer know what's good for making money anymore. I don't know what to advise younger people to do - do you?

Somethin's goin' on here but I don't know what it is...(add Dylan's nasal whine here) do YOOOOOOOU, Mister Jones?

Have you noticed that there's really no such thing thing as a "popular song" anymore. You know, the kind that streams out of every other car window and that everybody knows - everybody from 5 years old on up to Grandma?
The kind of mass culture you and I grew up with seems like it's on its way out. What's coming, who knows.
Everybody's got a different level of tolerance for chaos. Mine is high, thankfully. There's so much of it, now.

rich

You are OK if you have "your brand new Leopard skin pill box hat", Richard.

ChrisL

> the question is whether those pesky readers/customers will go along with it.
> They’re the ones who pay the freight.
> The newspapers - like a lot of us, me included - are at the end of their rope.

Richard,

Good Morning! Rise and shine! Do you think that the New York Times, for example, is just the paper?

The NYT Holdings (just part of the list!):

= The Star-News
= The News Chief
= International Herald Tribune
= The Boston Globe
= The Gainesville Sun
= The Gadsden Times
= The Courier
= Star-Banner
= North Bay Business Journal
= The Dispatch
= Sarasota Herald-Tribune
.....

= Baseline Studio Systems
= About Group (about.com)
= UCompareHealthCare
= ConsumerSearch

More?

> About a year later, they [The New York Times] suspended the program
> and I got a refund.
> Good luck to Rupert M. and his search engine that’s going to “scour” the web
> looking for ripped-off news items.

The NYT is Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr. not Rupert Murdoch! You need a lesson Who's Who ASAP! :)

> The NYT Holdings (just part of the list!):
> = The Star-News
> = The News Chief
> = International Herald Tribune
> = The Boston Globe
> = The Gainesville Sun
> = The Gadsden Times
> = The Courier
> = Star-Banner
> = North Bay Business Journal
> = The Dispatch
> = Sarasota Herald-Tribune

why does this remind me of the recent financial fallout?

maybe it goes like this: "ok, any one of these papers
might go bust, but surely _all_ of them won't go bust,
and certainly not all at about the same time, right?"

look, if you wrap up a bunch of bad loans in a package,
the package doesn't automatically become a safer bet...

-bowerbird

Richard Fink wrote: "You broke the magic spell and now we’re all doomed to spend all eternity arguing over nonsense on this thread.

Eh, we got nothing better to do anyway.

I read, or skimmed, my Sunday paper just a few minutes ago and commented to the wife that the content has become so sparse that it's a waste of time. I used to spend all Sunday morning reading the paper. Now I'm done in twenty minutes or so. We also commented that their cuts to content have forced us online to find other sources for that news which leads to discovering other online content that we were unaware of before being forced to hunt. In my opinion the newspapers are their own worst enemies by not understanding their audience or how to provide the content that people want delivered to their doorstep with ink on paper.

And bowerbird, I hereby consider myself socially disapproved.

bluestreak said:
> And bowerbird, I hereby consider myself
> socially disapproved.

i hereby consider myself socially disapproved too! :+)

-bowerbird

@david hamuel

> About a year later, they [The New York Times] suspended the program
> and I got a refund.
> Good luck to Rupert M. and his search engine that’s going to “scour” the web

Relax. These two sentences are adjacent, but unrelated.
The reference to Murdoch was in response to William Berkson's link to a story about newspapers weighing the possiblity of charging for content and Murdoch was quoted about some magic web search spider that was going to find the content taken from Murdoch's news sites so they can take action against those sites.
I'm assuming the cost of doing this will be folded into the fee Murdoch intends to charge us. ;)

rich

This appeared on my FB feed from a friend: (it may already be here, I haven't really been following this thread very closely) Mag+: reading magazines on digital devices.

You know I tend to swing both ways on this topic. The e-book readers are easy on the eyes and compact and convenient and much less wasteful than printed books. Yet you lose the smell of an old book worn from being read time after time. There is no sentimental value in an e-book reader.

...................
Get My Fonts Under Freebies

> There is no sentimental value in an e-book reader.

people attach "sentimental value" to all types of objects.

including, i am quite sure, e-book reader-machines...

-bowerbird

@ bowerbird

people attach “sentimental value” to all types of objects.

Although this is very true, the differences between books are much bigger than the differences between ebook devices; not only because the material lives and dies (!) differently, but simply for the fact, that there are millions of printed books, but a few ebook devices only. Well, the sentimental value is primary dependent from the subject, but not from the object. But I assume, that it is easier to sentimentally value a woman, if women look, taste and smell differently.

@ lucascobb

The e-book readers are easy on the eyes

If this would be (already) true, many threads here, in which typophile one-unit-movers discuss about the outlines of glyphs, would be not more than a monstrous joke! If there would come an genetic defect, that all women make look like cockroaches (lol, English can be so funny!), the woman, that is actually the most ugliest, would be the most beautiful in future. Except another genetic defect parallel changes the flavour of men. And I think, that many printed books are so badly made, that ebook devices give the illusion, that they are easy on the eyes, simply for the fact, that you miss the comparison to printed books, that are easier on the eyes. I only wonder, if printed books will be made worse with intention for pushing the ebook market.

@arno
If this would be (already) true, many threads here, in which typophile one-unit-movers discuss about the outlines of glyphs, would be not more than a monstrous joke!

What's a one-unit-mover?

Also, if you do a little googling about the panoply of e-reading devices that were on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, you will get an idea of how much more readable E-Paper displays are as opposed to backlit displays.
E-Readers have exploded as a category.
Strangely - or perhaps not so strangely - few products have web browsers installed.
(You know, the web, where all that free stuff you can read is.)

And the format and copyright wars are on!

bowerbird - where's it all going? any trends?

@ Richard

According to Wikipedia an one-unit-mover is a typophile who is not contented with the design of his glyphs, because the stroke width is one unit to small. So the typophile decides to move a node by one unit.

But one unit more or less – even a high resolution printer cannot solve it in body text sizes. And for sure not an ebook device. So the sense of many discussions here is questionable in my opinion, because the reason for them would be pure aesthetics (visible in big sizes), but not legibility. In fact I think, that there is a hand full of fonts only, that are highly legible (round about 0.005%), because most font families miss optical styles or are made for big point sizes.

Don’t take me more seriously than I do, please. I am just an amateur. And maybe there is a necessity to make thin, highly contrasted and highly detailed body text fonts.

@arno
I had constructed my own humorous, scatological definition of a "one unit mover" and now you've gone and burst my bubble!
But it seems I wasn't far off - at a UPM of 2048 fussing over moves of one-unit seems a bit nit-pickishly anal retentive. However, if I ever actually design a typeface (unlikely) or more probably edit an existing one, I will be a one unit mover.
I just can't help nudging things a little bit that way, a little bit this way.
Unlike programming where, once you have a solid solution, that's it, you're done,
type design and typesetting seems to be one of those things where it's never, ever exactly right despite endless fussing but you just have to move on at some point.

"According to Wikipedia an one-unit-mover is a typophile who is not contented with the design of his glyphs, because the stroke width is one unit to small. So the typophile decides to move a node by one unit."

I plead guilty as charged, your honor :-)

ChrisL

After spending some time reading this thread (which, after a quick test, would consume nearly 100 pages of dead trees) I am more convinced that ever that reading products that are created by chopping down trees and driving them around on trucks are not long for this world. Why? All the time you would have spent reading the paper is spent reading things like this.

FWIW: One unit can make a big difference at low resolutions. Depending on how you do your hinting, 1/2048th of an em can make a 1 pixel stem into 2. The metaphor extends back into the conversation. Changes made right now will be magnified for years to come. We are at an inflection point.

Rich: But it seems I wasn't far off - at a UPM of 2048 fussing over moves of one-unit seems a bit nit-pickishly anal retentive. However, if I ever actually design a typeface (unlikely) or more probably edit an existing one, I will be a one unit mover.

I've now worked on two projects in which we settled on a UPM of 4096, because the 2048 grid didn't provide for fine enough adjustments. These were both display types with fine features, so one would expect them to be used at larger sizes at which the construction of these details would be visible, but the other aspect of the design in which ‘fussing’ over single unit movements is important is in relative weight of thin strokes. Rather than thinking about the single unit movement relative to the UPM, you should think about the single unit movement relative to two thin strokes, one horizontal and one vertical: suddenly that single unit makes the difference between these strokes being optically balanced or not.

I remember many years ago listening sympathetically to Luc(as) de Groot's complaints about the difficulty of designing a super-lightweight sans on a UPM of 1000. If the stems were on average 20 units wide, a shift of a single unit represented a 5% difference in stem weight, and that's much too big a jump when trying to optically balance horizontal and vertical stems. Again, in design what matters is not the distance of a move relative to the UPM size, but the distance relative to other distances.

Type design is an excellent example of Marx's principle that cumulative quantitative changes result in qualitative change. :)

My first attempt at a hairline sans (NOW Gaunt) had a stroke weight of 18 units. Balancing horizontal to vertical was bad enough at 1000 UPM but joining curves with such limited selection of vector points was downright painful! I finally gave up and switched to 2048 which was at least somewhat tollerable.

ChrisL

christian said:
> I am more convinced that ever that
> reading products that are created by
> chopping down trees and
> driving them around on trucks
> are not long for this world. Why?
> All the time you would have spent
> reading the paper is spent
> reading things like this.

right. because cyberspace is interactive.
while print is yesterday's (dated) news...

people like to talk to each other. they do.

they'd rather do that than read the news.
or read a celebrity tell-all. or watch t.v.

of course, if they can have the t.v. news
relate high points from a celebrity tell-all,
they'd probably rather watch _that_, but
they will still come online to talk about it.

***

richard said:
> bowerbird - where's it all going? any trends?

oh, there are lots of trends. including all those
e-reader-machines at c.e.s. that you mentioned.

but none of 'em are going anywhere. or perhaps
i should say all of them are going nowhere, fast...

the reader-machine isn't anything without a solid
content-base attached to it, and only amazon and
barnes&noble have such machines. (and it's unclear
whether barnes&noble can make their machine work,
_or_ if they can stomach the price-war with amazon.)

but no one will really know anything until apple moves.

their tablet will reshape the world of possibilities, but
until they unveil it (and probably even for a year after,
while we come up to speed), we don't really have a clue.

which is not to say that we can't judge the current crop
of reader-software, because it's patently obvious that
it's all crap. nothing is even close to state-of-the-art.

-bowerbird

@john hudson and Christian Robertson:

I've spent enough time on Typophile to sense, usually, when something I write - if it's technically inaccurate - is going to prompt a response among those who know vastly more than I, technically.
I wasn't disappointed.

Thanks for the info on the potential effects of moving by one unit. Not so nit-picky a thing after all.

rich

@bowerbird

Don't buy that Apple's tablet is going to be some great revelation and dividing point like the iPhone. It's a freaking tablet PC, not the Messiah.
However, as I noted earlier, almost all the devices offer an "out of browser experience". How do you market something that leaves the web out of the mix?

Whereas, I take it as a given that the iTablet, or whatever it's called is going to have Safari on it with 3G web connectivity built in.

I'm also very interested to see the quality of the text rendering on a larger backlit LCD like the iPhone.
My eyesight just isn't up to small-screen devices. Even though text rendering on my iPhone is very, very sharp and clear. It might be an age thing. Both eyesight and the habits formed by years of reading from "pages".

rich

richard said:
> Don't buy that Apple's tablet is going to be
> some great revelation and dividing point
> like the iPhone. It's a freaking tablet PC,
> not the Messiah.

um...

if it's _not_ a "great revelation and dividing point",
like the iphone and ipod were, apple won't do it...

(and, lest i be confused with rumor-mongers that
i hate, apple has not yet even announced a tablet,
and it's important to remind ourselves of that fact.)

> How do you market something that
> leaves the web out of the mix?

you make an asset out of that liability. or try to...
in this case, it's "your reading won't be distracted."

whether that marketing _works_ or not... that is a
different question entirely. since i believe there are
a lot more people who want web browsing even if
web browsing is a "distraction" from their reading,
i'm inclined to think such marketing will not work.

when i add in the other things an apple tablet will
enable -- including a myriad of stuff that we have
not even thought of -- i think the choice is clear...

> I take it as a given that the iTablet, or whatever
> it's called is going to have Safari on it
> with 3G web connectivity built in.

3g seems like a safe bet, but even still, i've learned
not to assume or speculate about what apple will do.
most of the time, you're wrong, and even if you are
right, there's no payoff, usually because you didn't
understand the consequences of the choices made.

often times even apple itself gets wildly surprised...
for instance, they had no idea the app store would
get huge with crazy and imaginative stuff that gave
customers added value for their iphone purchase...

> I'm also very interested to see the quality of the
> text rendering on a larger backlit LCD like the iPhone.

again, it's unwise to assume that apple will use an l.c.d.
they might, or they might not. or some models might,
and other models might use o.l.e.d. or a pixel qi screen.
(i've got the original o.l.p.c. machine, which used the
pixel qi screen, and it's a fascinating combination of
technologies that enable both inside and outside use.)

-bowerbird

Type design is an excellent example of Marx's principle that cumulative quantitative changes result in qualitative change. :)
That's a good one!