Borrowed another ebook

This one's even worse than the first one from a usability standpoint.

The problem is that this one's a PDF file, but instead of reading it with one of the many excellent PDF readers in the world (including Adobe's), I still have to read it with Adobe Digital Editions.

Adobe Digital Editions, instead of having menus across the top with helpful items like "rotate screen", and "go to full screen for the text", has buttons scattered around the part of the screen that isn't text. With the epub format, two of the buttons enlarged and reduced the font size, but the PDF's don't reflow, so all you can do is change the size of the text window. The largest size I managed to get on my 14 inch laptop is readable, but if I had an "enlarge font" button, I would still push it. Especially if I were trying to read in bed, which I haven't bothered to do with this one.

On reading the epub book last week, I found myself wishing I had a netbook, but with this one, I doubt that I would be able to get a readable size of text, so this book would probably be even less readable with a netbook.

It isn't clear what the rationale for having some books in epub format and some in PDF, but they seem to be about half and half, so if there are only 108 books and half of them are unreadable, that gives me even less incentive to buy another gadget.

I should mention that my eyes are a lot better than those of most people my age. When I was younger I was unusually good at reading fine print. Until I turned 40, I could read the condensed Oxford English Dictionary without the magnifying glass. Now I still don't carry reading glasses around with me, although in my home, I usually do have a pair within reach. So if I can't get a good font, there are a lot of people in the world who can't read the book even by squinting.

I think this is our tax dollars at work. It's sad that people whose job is to serve the public have so little concept of how to implement technology to do that.

Related posts:

1. When Everything Changed
2. Borrowing ebooks from the library
3. More ebook sloppiness