Conversation

One big roadblock for environments hoping to improve on the book with fancy interactive elements: they all require reading on a screen! And reading on a screen is almost universally terrible! I've been getting increasingly worried about this—seems like a serious threat! (con't)
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Of course there are on-screen features which enhance expert reading… but on balance, I'm pretty reliably a worse reader when reading on screens. Not thrilled about needing to solve those problems in addition to all the tools-for-thought ones! What do you find promising here?
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on the whole newer physical books are so much worse than they used to be — smaller type, gutters so narrow you can’t see the full beginning of the line, final lines nearly running off the page, your fingers on the edge covers text, tight binding, cheap paper etc
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a good PDF would be infinitely preferable and that’s where i’ve been leaning a lot, lately yeah i want an overview mode and the ability to flip around that currently no tools support but i’m bearish on paper books bc publishers suck
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I tend to do digital book reading in PDF rather than ePub too (Google Play's "original pages" feature is a godsend). PDF software at least isn't *laughably* bad, but it's still so dang impoverished for reading as a real use case.
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Back in my PhD days, a huge advantage of PDFs was the non-destructive destruction they afford: infinitely flexible highlighting, move pages around and ‘tear them out’ or recombine into new files, etc, all while keeping the original intact. Commonplace books for the 21st century.
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Yes, and tools like PDF Expert or Highlights go even further with notes exporting, url schemes, or split view. All that info still needs to go somewhere, ideally keeping a link between the original file and these ‘byproducts of reading’ - that’s been the biggest barrier/timesuck.
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Sure! The biggest gap for me though is a cross-platform database that is built for that kind of recombination (as opposed to jury-rigging something with DevonThink or similar which stops working the minute you stop maintaining the system with all its intricacies).