Library of the Future, 4children’s book section

wait, you already used this one, in lotf#3:
> Youll be able to specify different fonts
> for different types of paragraphs
> — headings, footnotes, quotes, bibliography —
> and different colors if you wish.

-bowerbird

It has been pointed out to me — by you as a matter of fact — that the last entry contained a large number of lotf details. My original intention was to visualize one aspect at a time and bring it to people’s attention. While font color does apply in the discussion of user control of type, I feel it is something worth singling out as well.

It’s kind of like photographing one of the lions at the entrance to the New York Public Library after having photographed the whole building. You can’t omit the lions from the panorama. You just have to repeat yourself.

So I reserve the right to be redundant and repetitive, and to phrase the same idea in different terms or for different types of users. And more than that, actually, but you shall see with the next items.

— Roger

FBReader lets the user set the color of type as well as the background, so for instance, you could read in the old WordPerfect screen colors, white on blue. I think this is global, and not controlled by tag, as I misstated earlier.

So do web browsers in their main controls.

PDF and MS Reader let type be any color (well, within the ranges of the device you’re reading on) but it must be specified in advance, by the book designer.

Do any other e-book readers allow colored type? User or designer control?

This surprises me. If you can tell a browser to use your own CSS stylesheet — and you can specify font, and size, and color by tag and circumstance there — why not with e-books?

roger said:
> So I reserve the right to be redundant and repetitive

no problem… :+)

> If you can tell a browser to use your own CSS stylesheet
> — and you can specify font, and size, and color by
> tag and circumstance there — why not with e-books?

well, even with a c.s.s. stylesheet, it’s not all _that_ simple.
and you’re not being specific about “tag and circumstance”;
the number of things that can be controlled does have limits.

but your general point is well-taken.

and we shouldn’t have to wait for “the future” for this.
it should have been part of our minimum qualifications
_yesterday_. last month. a year ago. 5 years ago…

any e-book software that doesn’t let the user control
the color of body-text and the color of the background
should be thrown away without a second thought… :+)

-bowerbird

and we shouldn’t have to wait for “the future” for this.
it should have been part of our minimum qualifications
_yesterday_. last month. a year ago. 5 years ago…

That’s part of the irony of writing about the Library of “the Future” — we have to identify all the things that are possible today but not being implemented.

any e-book software that doesn’t let the user control
the color of body-text and the color of the background
should be thrown away without a second thought… :+)

What’s left? Other than FBReader, what e-book software lets you do this?

roger said:
> What’s left? Other than FBReader, what e-book software lets you do this?

sounds like we need a checklist of programs and features… :+)

-bowerbird

I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps a wiki is the best place to accumlate the information, especially if we post requests for users to supply details (I know that I am familiar with only a few e-book readers) at a variety of places, such as here at Teleread, on The eBook Community group at Yahoo, Mobileread forums, and such like.

I hope to suggest a wiki for this within the next few days. Perhaps someone else has a notion?

— Roger