No, it's not just you. The font is too wide. Your eyes have to zoom
uncomfortably fast back and forth across the page to read sentences at
your normal speed (i.e. not enough words per line). Maybe it's done to
make the book have more pages, dunno.
The current crop of O'reilly books seem to have the main text font
about right. Older O'reilly books had the same problem described above
though.
Now, of course, I haven't yet seen any text more beautiful than
TeX-rendered Computer Modern. Very low badness values there -- your
eyes just glide over it like a toy hovercraft on a gymnasium floor.
---John
···
On 8/4/06, Paul Battley <pbattley@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
1. I really don't like the typeface used in Agile Web Development With
Rails. Is it just me?
> [snip]
>
> I don't know if any O'Reilly authors read this list, but maybe this
> thread should be sent on to the authors of the Cookbook or someone
> else at O'Reilly. Seems they are missing what the market wants.
> - Rob
I think they already know that many readers want pdf's. But they have
to balance that with knowledge that many other folks (some of them
prospective buyers of the book) will just copy and freely distribute
the pdf if one were made available. It's probably just a business
decision for them: do they make more sales by offering the
complimentary pdf, or do they lose more because people will share it
online.
But do you know how many PAPER-ONLY books are already shared online?
They just get OCR'd. And for each one of these that is not available
in PDF, that someone illegally downloads and uses - do you think that
person will then buy the paper book?
What I mean is, convenience is king. If someone wants an electronic
copy and only paper is (legally) available, they will get the
electronic copy anyway and then NO money will go to the publisher.
Whereas if the publisher offered the electronic book in the first
place, the person wanting that might buy it.
You have to remember that in many parts of the world, paper books
incur large shipping costs, and take weeks to come. If I'm about to
start a Rails project, am I going to wait three weeks for the book?
Since a pdf is more of a convenience rather than a necessity for (I'm
guessing) the majority of folks interested in their books, they
probably try to stick to paper books.
Maybe in America, where you can get any book in just about any nearby
bookstore. I have yet to see a SINGLE book about Ruby in a South
African bookstore. All my Ruby books have been bought online, and I
buy many more e-books than paper books because they come instantly and
they cost less (no shipping) and they are searchable.
Since one big benefit right now of a pdf is searchability, if I were
Oreilly, I'd focus on making their paper books easier to search by
humans (i.e.,
* even better (or perhaps multiple) indexes,
* maybe using those edge-of-page marks so you can more easily flip
quickly to the chapter you're looking for,
* easily human-scannable table of contents (and maybe even adding a
"contents at a glance" along with a more detailed TOC)).
The nutshell books seem to have more features like this. As for the
other big benefit -- portability -- I guess we're stuck there. I drag
a number of books to and fro work most days.
If I need something to read on the bus where I can't take out my
laptop, I print a chapter of one of my e-books. This is where the
importance of 'printability' comes in.
BTW, one of the things I like most about my books is that I can mark
them up with highlighter or pencil.
<rant>
You can annotate some PDF's too. Although PDF DRM drives me mad.
Lately I buy the encumbered version (so the author and publisher get
their money) and then just find a bootleg copy without all the
restrictions. Otherwise I spend literally hours registering and
reregistering and activating and being told I can't print this or copy
that to the clipboard.
Penalising people for paying you money is the height of madness - you
see it in DVD's which force you to watch all their FBI warnings and
Ad's every time you put in the disk, you see it in the 1-hour phone
calls to Microsoft every time I reinstall Windows XP. The illegal
versions are not only easier to obtain, and free, they are more
convenient to use!
If you want to see what I am complaining about, look in my journal:
</rant>
Les
···
On 8/4/06, John Gabriele <jmg3000@gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/4/06, Rob Sanheim <rsanheim@gmail.com> wrote:
Actually, we'd love the books to be fewer pages. However, we did a fair amount of research on fonts, and we worked with readers early on to see what fonts worked for them. The Bookman we use turned out to give people the sense of being approachable while still being readable. Everyone is different of course, and I understand what you're saying about the width. At the same time, I get a fair number of e-mails from folks saying they love the layouts.
Every now and then I experiment with changing the fonts around (we recently changed the code font in all our books to make it narrower) and I'm still open to suggestions. But approachability is still important to me, and I wouldn't want to go with anything harsh.
Regards
Dave
···
On Aug 4, 2006, at 3:56 PM, John Gabriele wrote:
No, it's not just you. The font is too wide. Your eyes have to zoom
uncomfortably fast back and forth across the page to read sentences at
your normal speed (i.e. not enough words per line). Maybe it's done to
make the book have more pages, dunno.
No, it's not just you. The font is too wide. Your eyes have to zoom
uncomfortably fast back and forth across the page to read sentences at
your normal speed (i.e. not enough words per line). Maybe it's done to
make the book have more pages, dunno.
Actually, we'd love the books to be fewer pages. However, we did a fair amount of research on fonts, and we worked with readers early on to see what fonts worked for them. The Bookman we use turned out to give people the sense of being approachable while still being readable. Everyone is different of course, and I understand what you're saying about the width. At the same time, I get a fair number of e-mails from folks saying they love the layouts.
Every now and then I experiment with changing the fonts around (we recently changed the code font in all our books to make it narrower) and I'm still open to suggestions. But approachability is still important to me, and I wouldn't want to go with anything harsh.
Regards
Dave
37signals produce a book called "Getting Real" for download, watermarked per purchaser. They have made better margins on the book than they would have through a 'normal' publisher.
CSS can be used to format pretty much anything (within reason) in a 'custom' manner.
What would stop an author from writing a book, publishing it online with watermarks and a EULA (or equivalent) holding purchasers responsible for the watermarked editions of the book, and then selecting a format for the book (font size, style, etc.) that could be used to generate a CSS file through which the book would be printed to .pdf (for example) and downloaded by the purchaser?
Is there a reason an author would not use such a system, were it available? Is the retail channel so powerful, it makes such a scheme unworkable to content creators?
There are 'civilian' versions of such, but I was thinking of 'real' books designed for a mass audience.
I'm glad to learn the book was set in Bookman. I like that font. I have impaired vision, and I find Bookman much easier to read than the more common Times Roman or Garamond.
Regards, Morton
···
On Aug 5, 2006, at 10:42 AM, Dave Thomas wrote:
On Aug 4, 2006, at 3:56 PM, John Gabriele wrote:
No, it's not just you. The font is too wide. Your eyes have to zoom
uncomfortably fast back and forth across the page to read sentences at
your normal speed (i.e. not enough words per line). Maybe it's done to
make the book have more pages, dunno.
Actually, we'd love the books to be fewer pages. However, we did a fair amount of research on fonts, and we worked with readers early on to see what fonts worked for them. The Bookman we use turned out to give people the sense of being approachable while still being readable. Everyone is different of course, and I understand what you're saying about the width. At the same time, I get a fair number of e-mails from folks saying they love the layouts.
Every now and then I experiment with changing the fonts around (we recently changed the code font in all our books to make it narrower) and I'm still open to suggestions. But approachability is still important to me, and I wouldn't want to go with anything harsh.
Its obvious publishers like the Pragmatics and 37signals "get it", in
that they sell totally unrestricted PDF's. O'Reilly PDFs can be found
easily if you really want to pirate, regardless of the controls they
have on their Safari program.
Trying to lock down pdfs or other electronic versions of books is
about as futile as game publishers trying to place SafeDisc or
similiar protections on their games. All it does is frustrate legit
buyers, as the pirates crack each version within days, if not hours.
If O'Reilly had been offering a combo pack with an unrestricted PDF +
hard copy of the Cookbook, I would've bought it already instead of
hesitating due to the lack of a pdf.
- Rob
···
On 8/5/06, Leslie Viljoen <leslieviljoen@gmail.com> wrote:
--
> No, it's not just you. The font is too wide. Your eyes have to zoom
> uncomfortably fast back and forth across the page to read sentences at
> your normal speed (i.e. not enough words per line). Maybe it's done to
> make the book have more pages, dunno.
Actually, we'd love the books to be fewer pages. However, we did a
fair amount of research on fonts, and we worked with readers early on
to see what fonts worked for them. The Bookman we use turned out to
give people the sense of being approachable while still being
readable. Everyone is different of course, and I understand what
you're saying about the width. At the same time, I get a fair number
of e-mails from folks saying they love the layouts.
As an aside (regarding layouts), one amazing thing about the PickAxe
v2 to me is how, all over the place, there's notes that say, "see page #n". I'm guessing this is done using some LaTeX magic. It's very
impressive and helpful. I lot of other books just say, "see chapter
n, section m".
Regarding Bookman, I will say that although the glyphs are rather
wide, they have nice ... um, "balance" I guess (that is, the
difference between the thickest and thinnest parts of a given glyph
isn't too large), and it's indeed a handsome font. I think David
Black's recent Ruby for Rails book suffers (IMO) from the font glyphs
being too thin in the thin places, which gives the text a kind of
uncomfortable high-contrasty look (great book, by the way).
Every now and then I experiment with changing the fonts around (we
recently changed the code font in all our books to make it narrower)
and I'm still open to suggestions. But approachability is still
important to me, and I wouldn't want to go with anything harsh.
Dave, I just grabbed a sample pdf (exerpt) chapter from your site and
had a look.
1. Whoa! The source code snippets are colorized! The graphics
(including the occasional screenshot) are in color too! And on Ubuntu
using Evince, the text is much more readable and clear than I'd
expected (I'd previously been using xpdf). I will definitely
reconsider buying your pdf versions.
2. The sans-serif font that you use interspersed with the Bookman to
indicate filenames, urls, variable names, symbols, chapter outlines,
etc. ("Avante Garde" maybe?) seems like a weird choice. It seems artsy
for artsy's-sake, and not particularly readable. Last time I saw it in
print was in the earlier editions of some Core Java books from Sun.
3. The source code font looks nice -- like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,
which I see a lot of And clickable "download source" links -- *yow*
that's nice.
No, it's not just you. The font is too wide. Your eyes have to zoom
uncomfortably fast back and forth across the page to read sentences at
your normal speed (i.e. not enough words per line). Maybe it's done to
make the book have more pages, dunno.
Actually, we'd love the books to be fewer pages. However, we did a fair amount of research on fonts, and we worked with readers early on to see what fonts worked for them. The Bookman we use turned out to give people the sense of being approachable while still being readable. Everyone is different of course, and I understand what you're saying about the width. At the same time, I get a fair number of e-mails from folks saying they love the layouts.
Every now and then I experiment with changing the fonts around (we recently changed the code font in all our books to make it narrower) and I'm still open to suggestions. But approachability is still important to me, and I wouldn't want to go with anything harsh.
Regards
Dave
I started out with Pragmatic buying the combo packs, but I've migrated to PDF only. First of all, it's a lot less expensive that way. Second, they're searchable. But the real reason is that I have close to a gigabyte of PDFs (not just Pragmatic) and I can't even begin to think how much space all of those would take up on paper.
There are a few times when I need paper -- it's really tough to read a PDF on anything smaller than a notebook, and I ride the light rail in to and home from work. But for the most part, I only buy paper books now when they're only available in that format or they're "collectors items" like my Richard Bellman collection.
Another *real* advantage to the PDF is that they can be easily updated. The Pragmatic folks have this down to an art.
CSS can be used to format pretty much anything (within reason) in a
custom' manner.
What would stop an author from writing a book, publishing it online
with watermarks and a EULA (or equivalent) holding purchasers
responsible for the watermarked editions of the book, and then
selecting a format for the book (font size, style, etc.) that could be
used to generate a CSS file through which the book would be printed to
.pdf (for example) and downloaded by the purchaser?
Watermarks are mostly an cosmetic feature---I've seen originally
watermarked PDFs without watermarks. In doubt, all you need is a full
version of Adobe Acrobat, but I don't know the details.
Is there a reason an author would not use such a system, were it
available? Is the retail channel so powerful, it makes such a scheme
unworkable to content creators?
It's probably "just too much work". And I don't know of a CSS
solution that does really high-quality typesetting. (With XSL-FO,
that's different, but even less people know this.)
We've experimented with most of the XML -> PDF direct generation systems, and with going via HTML. Our experience is that float placement is still a major issue, which is why we don't do it.
Our online-only books (the Fridays) are formatted wildly differently (landscape, not portrait, larger fonts, big side margin etc), but they come from the same markup used to created the printed books. We have the capability to produce the different formats--we just don't get have the solid technologies.
Dave
···
On Aug 5, 2006, at 10:45 AM, Steven R. wrote:
CSS can be used to format pretty much anything (within reason) in a 'custom' manner.
What would stop an author from writing a book, publishing it online with watermarks and a EULA (or equivalent) holding purchasers responsible for the watermarked editions of the book, and then selecting a format for the book (font size, style, etc.) that could be used to generate a CSS file through which the book would be printed to .pdf (for example) and downloaded by the purchaser?
Is there a reason an author would not use such a system, were it available? Is the retail channel so powerful, it makes such a scheme unworkable to content creators?
There are 'civilian' versions of such, but I was thinking of 'real' books designed for a mass audience.
Dave, I just grabbed a sample pdf (exerpt) chapter from your site and
had a look.
1. Whoa! The source code snippets are colorized! The graphics
(including the occasional screenshot) are in color too! And on Ubuntu
using Evince, the text is much more readable and clear than I'd
expected (I'd previously been using xpdf). I will definitely
reconsider buying your pdf versions.
Thanks. That was another consideration when it came to using Bookman as the body font.
2. The sans-serif font that you use interspersed with the Bookman to
indicate filenames, urls, variable names, symbols, chapter outlines,
etc. ("Avante Garde" maybe?) seems like a weird choice. It seems artsy
for artsy's-sake, and not particularly readable. Last time I saw it in
print was in the earlier editions of some Core Java books from Sun.
Heh--you're right--good eye. It is Avant Guard. I don't love it, but it turned out to work nicely in body text-a monospaced font is way to wide, but the Avant Guard somehow gives the impression of being monospaced(-ish), I think because it's fairly light. However, if you have suggestions for a replacement I'd seriously love to hear them.
1. Whoa! The source code snippets are colorized! The graphics
(including the occasional screenshot) are in color too! And on Ubuntu
using Evince, the text is much more readable and clear than I'd
expected (I'd previously been using xpdf). I will definitely
reconsider buying your pdf versions.
One thing I don't like is that the colorizer they use seems to screw
up when coloring XML - take a look at the sample chapter from "Data
Crunching", for example. It can't handle tag names that contain
dashes, apparently.
3. The source code font looks nice -- like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,
which I see a lot of And clickable "download source" links -- *yow*
that's nice.
That being said, the font is nice and readable in paper too (I've got
my "Best of Ruby Quiz" right here). Too bad the clickable source
links just don't seem to work in the paper editions...
Much in the tradition of Slamdance connected to the Sundance Film Festival,
the not ready for prime time programming fellows ^1 announce the RUBY For
The Rest Of Us Conference. RUBY ROUC
Held at the same time as the Denver located "Ruby Conference 2006" we
will provide an opportunity for more Rubyists to attend the fun of the 2006 event. ^2
Scheduled presenters are invited to contact us to submit a video of their presentation
or to schedule a time to do a second presentation. Wanna-be presenters are invited
to submit proposals immediately. Those who cannot attend may submit videos.
We are working on have video conferencing presentations. But if you are not in Colorado
you can't have all the fun. ^3
Schedules will be posted on a Wikki. Registration will come with a money-back guarantee. If you
are not satisfied with the conference, your fees will be refunded, no questions asked. If you sign
up for hiking or boating or camping or tree climbing or horseback riding and are unhappy, we cannot
refund those fees since they are out of our hands.
Food will always be available at events including world famous Colorado Italian Meatballs. Of course prices
will vary depending on whether you are buying a gourmet cheese sandwich or a CIM outta.this.world !
We figure we can handle a max of 300 to 600 people. Still working out those details. Registration is $75. ( see guarantee )
Send in $25 now to hold a spot in the RUBY ROUC. Paypal is nice. Checks are okay. Gold Bullion, check. Chickens and potatoes, NOT.
^1 ( yellow bellied uber rebels )
^2 plans are underway for an annual event in Denver.
^3 fun events are planned for Denver and for the mountains and for the limited amount of water located in Colorado. Please bring a gallon of water with you to increase the Colorado water sports capabilities. We plan to have go-go girls ^4 ( at least two ) and some guys in tights along with dancing bears. Tractor Hayride.
^4 gives you an idea of when I was born
Gus S Calabrese
Denver, CO
720 222 1309 303 908 7716 cell
Please include and do not limit yourself to "spam2006". I allow everything with "spam2006" in the subject or text to pass my spam filters.
( yellow bellied uber rebels )
Yeah, but pure FO just doesn't hack the book stuff (and indexing is a serious, serious hack...
One day it'll happen, and we'll try our best to be there.
Dave
···
On Aug 5, 2006, at 1:11 PM, Christian Neukirchen wrote:
It's probably "just too much work". And I don't know of a CSS
solution that does really high-quality typesetting. (With XSL-FO,
that's different, but even less people know this.)
Two people have asked you nicely to spell Ruby correctly when hosting events in its name. If you aren't going to listen to that, I guess we know all we need to know about whether or not we should be attending events with your name attached to them.
James Edward Gray II
···
On Aug 6, 2006, at 7:20 AM, Gus S Calabrese wrote:
Much in the tradition of Slamdance connected to the Sundance Film Festival,
the not ready for prime time programming fellows ^1 announce the RUBY For
The Rest Of Us Conference. RUBY ROUC
One thing I don't like is that the colorizer they use seems to screw
up when coloring XML - take a look at the sample chapter from "Data
Crunching", for example. It can't handle tag names that contain
dashes, apparently.
Hmmmm I am not posting events in it's name I guess you are referring to Ruby whilst I am referring to RUBY.
Should have I included the apostrophe in its ?
RUBY ROUCs just want to have fun
Much in the tradition of Slamdance connected to the Sundance Film Festival,
the not ready for prime time programming fellows ^1 announce the RUBY For
The Rest Of Us Conference. RUBY ROUC
Two people have asked you nicely to spell Ruby correctly when hosting events in its name. If you aren't going to listen to that, I guess we know all we need to know about whether or not we should be attending events with your name attached to them.
James Edward Gray II
Gus S Calabrese
Denver, CO
720 222 1309 303 908 7716 cell
Please include and do not limit yourself to "spam2006". I allow everything with "spam2006" in the subject or text to pass my spam filters.
···
On 2006-Aug 06, at 09:44hrs AM, James Edward Gray II wrote:
On Aug 6, 2006, at 7:20 AM, Gus S Calabrese wrote:
I think it is great that someone is going to all this effort to organize a conference that accommodates the people who won't be able to get into RubyConf. He seems to be meeting a demand for a service needed by the community, in a way that also happens to involve personal time and financial risk. If it is called RUBY ROUC, it seems to be spelled correctly, it is just upper case.
So, is that the problem and the reason that people who post about the case of the name don't show any appreciation that he is trying to provide something to the community? I see no big disservice being done to anyone by the conference name having upper case.
Is it to prevent some sort of brand dilution for Ruby? If so, any intelligent person will know that Ruby is the name of the language despite there being a conference called RUBY ROUC. If they can't tell the difference, then do you really want them adopting the brand? Ruby RUBY ruby RuBy. Why get mean about it?. Unless, of course, it impacts the way Ruby runs on your machine. If so, we should probably just call it ruby.
I don't want a flame war over religiously held feelings, I honestly just don't understand the reasoning for this uncharacteristically unfriendly behavior on this particular list which is known for its friendliness (at least in my experience.)
Have a nice day!
Bob
···
On Aug 6, 2006, at 8:44 AM, James Edward Gray II wrote:
On Aug 6, 2006, at 7:20 AM, Gus S Calabrese wrote:
Much in the tradition of Slamdance connected to the Sundance Film Festival,
the not ready for prime time programming fellows ^1 announce the RUBY For
The Rest Of Us Conference. RUBY ROUC
Two people have asked you nicely to spell Ruby correctly when hosting events in its name. If you aren't going to listen to that, I guess we know all we need to know about whether or not we should be attending events with your name attached to them.
It's probably "just too much work". And I don't know of a CSS
solution that does really high-quality typesetting. (With XSL-FO,
that's different, but even less people know this.)
Yeah, but pure FO just doesn't hack the book stuff (and indexing is a
serious, serious hack...
I consider FO an output format here, of course you need a toolchain to
generate it.
···
On Aug 5, 2006, at 1:11 PM, Christian Neukirchen wrote:
One day it'll happen, and we'll try our best to be there.
