[Sigia-l] Texts in e-book (Microsoft/Adobe Reader) format

[Boniface Lau]

> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> Behalf Of Richard Law
>  
> In addition to hardcover and soft cover books, Amazon sells
> e-books. I'm curious to know if anyone on the list has read an
> e-book version of a book: Microsoft Reader or Adobe Reader. If so,
> what are your impressions of the user experience compared to text on
> paper?

I'd tried both of them and gave two thumbs down.

I found them overly constraining when compared with using a web browser
to read html pages.

Seems to me many of the e-books were created using traditional desktop
publishing packages. Thus, the layouts were fixed. When you change
your e-book window or font setting, the content does not reflow very
well. Thus, reading e-books is very cumbersome on devices that you can
adjust window size or font.

In contrast, reading things like the Project Gutenberg files using a
web browser is much smoother and more pleasant.

I heard that some schools were trying to have e-books replacing paper
textbooks. Students ended up using both paper and e-book versions.
Simply making an electronic version out of the paper version does not
work very well.


Boniface