On Fri, 2 Mar 2012 22:38:53 +0100 Nils <l...@nilsgey.de> wrote: > Hello list, > > (this is just chatting and dreaming. If you don't want to waste your time > with thinking about the future, don't read on, there is no practical > information in here.) > > Today I bought my first eBook reader, the kobo touch. I chose this because it > is rather cheap and is not a closed ecosystem regarding up- and downloads as > well as file formats. > > I tried pdf and epub books now and it is clear that epdf is not a good format > for this device. I suspect the same for other readers which are not A4 size > or bigger. > > ePub on the other hand scales well to different display sizes. You can choose > the font, size etc. Obviously the human layouter has no fine control over > line- and pagebreaks here anymore (except forced ones like chapter breaks). > Well, maybe this is just the future, I don't see a problem with that, at > least not for text. > > Now I'm thinking about music notation on such a device. Obviously they are > not made for performance, which is fine. The page turn is a bit slow (but so > is a paper pageturn) and the screens are too small for music. But practical > solutions are just around the corner for these (using two linked devices for > example, or one that has two screens, where one page is turned when you play > on the other). > > Anyway, there are more use cases for music notation than piano performance or > conductors. Songbooks don't require much space and even in real life they > have approx. the same measurements. Or music theory books, you only need > snippets here. > > But the different display size remains. You need scaling and dynamic line and > pagebreaks here. > > Lilypond-Book came to my mind where the pagebreak gets dynamic through each > music-line/system becomes one vector image. You get no/ugly system spacing, > but at least dynamic page breaks. > > The line-break on the other hand is more problematic, although in principle > it could be solved in the same manner as page-breaking. This would be a > revival of moveable types, the system is divided in columns and they are > technically independent as well, so you get dynamic linebreaks. > Maybe not the most beautiful way, but quick and practical, which are in fact > the same reasons it was used from the year 1501 onward. > > Any thoughts on this topic? I immediately found this relevant to my interest, > once I saw the staticness and resulting uglyness of PDF compared to the > elegance of ePub (for text). I can not imagine music notation as pdf here. > > Nils
Supplemental: I am sure you heard about musescore and their approach to create a reader software for ipads and other mobile devices. I think they are trying to bind it to Musescore or some derived software itself, requiering the user to install their software. I think this is the wrong approach and an open ebook-format which does not need any musical information other than the glyphs and spacing is better here. Maybe this is even possible as ePub (or similar) extension. Nils _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
