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Books are a sequence of "spreads", which have a fixed page number and a fixed page layout (possibly several to accommodate smaller screens). You can scroll continuously or use the keyboard to navigate through spreads. The spreads are contiguously stacked but each has its own URL.

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Ofc, looking at the specific examples here, there's no one technique that hasn't been done before, e.g. on NYT special longform pieces. But I like the systematization: those longford pieces have always been full-bespoke; I can imagine creating a library of spread templates.

Their manifesto does a great job demonstrating the disaster zone that is e-book layout. bureau.rocks/books/manifest

Other platforms which attempt a fixed page layout: e.g. on

@bubblinapp

, here's Aurelius' Meditations: bubblin.io/book/meditatio. Bubblin scales the physical character size to keep a fixed text range on the page; Bureau will scale a bit but also permits spreads to involve scrolling.

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James is in the year 2030, it's nice

I confess, I don't love a subscription model for books, but I do understand the motivation here, and I'm glad to see someone trying it. Thanks to

@SergeTymo

for pointing Bureau's work out to me.

@JimmyRis

Replying to

James is in the year 2030, it's nice

Really enjoying this! Thanks for sharing The spacing/kerning/"inner and outer" section of the demo is a really wonderful illustration of the power of subtle arrangement

@JimmyRis

Charleston Merriwether IV

immediately connects to Christopher Alexander's 15 principle for me and has my gears turning on applying them to typography and page layout

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Replying to

Have you read things by

@mbutterick

? I really enjoyed his Typography for lawyers, and I was impressed he wrote his own software to produce his books: docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/ Practical Typography is probably the best place to start.

@ChuckyMerrie