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Comment by beaumartinez | Hacker News Reader

A great improvement over Readability! It's bookmarklet has been replaced, at least on my bookmark bar: it's faster, has increased customization options and justification, and is open-source... Add hyphenation to that mix and you've got a solid ten out of ten service.

(Justification and hyphenation were the two features I always wanted Readability to have, and it always seemed odd to me that something branded "readability" lacked them...)

In the FAQ you answer to whether Readable is open-source: "no" in the sense that the source isn't on display somewhere. Not to split hairs here, but that sentence is incredibly confusing; what does having your code "on display" have to do with being open-source?

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As for the license the code is under, I say "Yes and no" and detail them both. The "no" part address the fact that Readable's code isn't (and probably won't be) in any public code repositories.

If you're interested in the code, though, you can find the bulk of it here: http://readable-static.tastefulwords.com/_r/bulk.js

And, yes, it is open source; currently under a variation of the Creative Commons License; but, as detailed further up in this thread, that'll probably change by tomorrow -- as, apparently, Creative Commons isn't recommended for source code.

Why would you want justification in something that's supposed to make something more readable? Justification might make text look nice, but it's terrible for readability, and people with dyslexia often struggle at reading it, and the same usually goes for hyphenation.

"Readable text" does not mean the same thing for everyone.

I look at it as the long tail of text formatting preferences; and I think it's everyone's right to have text look exactly the way they want -- no compromises. That's why Readable is so incredibly customizable.

So don't worry: justification is optional; and hyphenation will be too.

Why, then, are books typeset justified and hyphenated?

> Justification might make text look nice.

And that's bad? You have to look at text to read it; I'd rather it look "nice" and as non-distracting as possible. Perhaps "readability" is subjective, but I think text that flows evenly is easy on the eyes.

On the contrary, variable spacing from justification is very distracting.

Hyphenation is a planned feature. As are hanging (typographic) quotation marks.

So hang tight: more cool stuff is coming -- I just have to find more hours in the day.

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