.lit Crit

Dorothea also sent a version of Down & Out in Microsoft Reader format (.lit). so I tried out Microsoft Reader.
First of all, it's only available for Windows, so I couldn't run it on my Macs.
The install nagged me about activation. I'm not going there...
I can't resize the window.
ClearType on my CRT just looks fuzzy and slightly fringed. I bet it's good on an LCD though.
Font size choices are very stiff and clunky. I can't change the typeface choice (It's an OK serif face vaguely like Baskerville).
It full-justifies and auto-hyphenates the text, but doesn't use dangling hyphens, and even has hyphens hang over page boundaries. Widow and Orphan control seems rudimentary. I got orphans in the licence agreement; if I turn the font size up (which doesn't make it resize the window width to compensate for line length) it orphans the second lines of the quote's titles. I bet it really blows with something more complex.
I can't turn this off to get ragged right. This really looks bad in the intro bit with URLs in and the indented contractual bits.

There isn't a way to navigate through the chapters within the text. The complex next/previous page thingie has buttons that look like they should do this , but they are disabled.

The way the Find box pops up and dances about is really nasty. Why does it have to be on top of the text at all?

Looks like the state of the art here hasn't advanced much if at all since the Voyager Books 12 years ago.

Dorothea explains what would be needed to add full OEBPS support to a browser.