"On June 13 our own Joanna published an article entitled Kobo growing pains – user issues and my prescription, in which she detailed some of the problems she had with the new Kobo Reader. Kobo Vice President Michael Tamblyn has just published a response to her article in the comments area. It is only fair that his response get the same “press” as Joanna’s article, so I’m reprinting it, in full, here:"In fact it would make more sense to give more "press" to the response as you would then be "reporting" news rather than "blogging" or offering uninformed "opinions" like Joanna's original article.
When I read Joanna's original "prescription" article I immediately understood the place this type of blog post had in the world. The fixed font issue is an ongoing headache and the response from the Kobo Veep explained it well: poorly created ePub files with fixed size fonts are ultimately responsible, and, ultimately, the publishers need to get their act together. Firmware hacks and stanard-breaking tricks are not the answer.
Joanna's viewpoint of "I don't care why it doesn't do what I want it to do, just fix it!" is very important. Like the kindle's v2.5 firmware upgrade that immediately led to the v2.52 upgrade, its important for the e-reader manufacturers to respond quickly to end-user's wishes and complaints.
Its also important to make sure that the e-publishing industry is not given a free ride. Whether its incompetence, arrogance, or a petulant desire to sabotage the fledgling industry, I think that if a publisher wants to sell (rent) a DRM protected ebook they must provide a quality product--the least part of which is creating stylesheets with scalable fonts.
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