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+---- Thread: Kindle PC application (/showthread.php?tid=398)
Kindle PC application - RobertShiplett - 01-23-2012
I have just used the Kindle browser reader for an e-book purchased from Amazon.
I have just one word: terrible.
The text layout was a bad as the early efforts of Adobe and of the ABIWord word processing software.
Why would we leave this domain to Amazon, Apple and Google - at least in China, India, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, the Arab world and large parts of Africa ?
The current Kindle PC Windows application, 1.8.3, cannot properly format simple footnotes on text-only pages (footnotes are not common in the novels commonly sold for Kindle?)
Yes, Curl cannot yet do "ruby" text and we cannot opt for alternate UNICODE spacing as an option in text,
but we could be more than an also-ran in this niche. Is there a Curl partner readying an application?
I don't believe that corporate document presentation and annotation should not be abandoned to Apple and Google (Microsoft will not bow out so easily even if Adobe now has cold feet.) We do not back away from data presentation, so why shy away from documents? Yes, Curl did not produce a web word processor. But neither has Google (yes, there, some may argue.)
Regardless, neither the iPad nor the Chrome browser are the last word in corporate document presentation and annotation - not in the cloud or otherwise.
In my opinion, naturally.
Here is a link to the new Amazon ebook format: KF8 for HTML5 and CSS3 discussion and format info.