https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/wilfred-owen/poetry
(bonus: vorticist cover art by Paul Nash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nash_(artist) )
I get that this is a hobby for you. But the arrogance and vanity of software folks who think they can do typographic design (without any training, eye for type, or respect for the real skill and tradition of typography) just leads to bad results.
This goes very much for http://sile-typesetter.org as well, for example.
I probably sound completely intolerant. What I'm trying to say is: your smugness is misplaced.
Also, and just to check, you didn’t run the epub you downloaded through Calibre first did you? Because that does its own internal conversions that can wreck the formatting (I’ve been bitten by this in the past).
2nd also: what reader hardware / software were you using? It’d be good to double-check there’s not a bug we’re missing that isn’t present with any of the core team’s setups.
You wrote: "I get that this is a hobby for you. ..."
But then demanded a non hobby level of commitment to the craft.
"..But the arrogance and vanity of software folks who think they can do typographic design (without any training, eye for type, or respect for the real skill and tradition of typography) "
So how does anyone get _in_ to typography, exactly? Is it by having it as a hobby and moving forward or is it only available to people who complete apprenticeships? Who are you to deny anyone their hobby?
https://standardebooks.org/contribute/
Improve it then.
> vanity
> smugness
I'm trying to understand how these personal qualities would apply to the person you responded to. I generally try to avoid coming across as any of these things and so it worries me a bit that I might be completely missing something in my understanding of social skills.
Could you or someone else explain?
I'm no typographer or publisher, but the book appears correctly and neatly formatted, without error. That puts it in a better state than probably 75% of the commercial ebooks I have paid for. From professional publishers.
So personally I think he deserves thanks, not insults.
If you'd like an example for how better to treat others on this site, look no further than https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18382766.
Take 10 ebooks and ask people to rate the typography. The book has to be pretty bad before the general public notice.
And, as others have said, often the professionally produced book is pretty bad.