ebooks and iTeX

Well, I've been taking a break from iTeX (new update now in iTunes) to spend some hookey time reading old Heinlein. I haven't read Glory Road in 40 years, and I am quite a different person now. I think I am going to have to go through them all.

I am reading it on the Kindle app on my iPad 3, and it is utter crap. Here is a sample page:

http://www.cheswick.com/ches/blog/rah.png

Now, I've been saying that ebook layouts are okay for fiction: not much to it, reflow the paragraphs as you need to. But this is lousy, and I don't think RAH would like the mediocrity.

We really only have to do this stuff once, and it doesn't take much time. It took me two hours of editing, plus I read the book, to create a fairly decent LaTeX version of Around the World in 80 Days.

The LaTeX is here: http://itex.coastal.cheswick.com/itex_server/latex/pg/103/edited/103.tex

and the iTeX version is here:

http://itex.coastal.cheswick.com/itex_server/web_cache/pg/103.itex

which you can check out with the free app on any iPad. Heck, I spent a couple hours today on the English translation of The Count of Monte Cristo, complete with lots of French, Latin, and accents. I am not done, but run this through pdflatex and you will get something that looks much better than the ebooks I have been reading:

http://itex.coastal.cheswick.com/itex_server/latex/pg/1184/edited/1184.tex

Now I am not saying that the typography is perfect---I'd love to have someone like Marty give me some suggestions---but I am getting spoiled.