Thank you for your dedication to the community! 
The book looks great, and I have learned so much on a brief vitual flick through the pages.
Retirement is a very fluid concept these days, hmmm? 
Thanks, once again.
@clanmills Thank you for your continued motivation and work on a great library!
I think your book looks wonderful, great stuff there. Thatāll be a good read for the upcoming holidays. 
After reading your āMaking this bookā section, I had two questions:
- Is the PDF version you mention available somewhere?
- One tiny suggestion, could you please increase the default font size? On mobile things are nicely readible, probably due to some auto-scaling, but on my pc I find the Palatino 14 px serifed font much too small, even for my simple HD monitor. I think 16px would be the bare minimum, but even setting it to 20px doesnāt hurt imho.
The PDF is here: https://clanmills.com/exiv2/book/IMaEA.pdf
Changing the font? The book is a single 4mb HTML file with embedded style sheets. So several ways to change it:
-
Use cmd-+ in the browser to magnify the text.
-
Copy the file to your pc with curl and edit it.
$ curl -LO http://clanmills.com/exiv2/book/index.html
- Write some JavaScript to modify the font āon the flyā.
I donāt want to start a new software project to do dynamic book publishing. Perhaps ebook readers can do this kind of thing, however I donāt know anything about them.
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Iāve thought of another way to deal with this. The code for the book is at:
svn://dev.exiv2.org/svn/team/book
Get the MacDown.app application for the Mac. You can change the style sheets. I modified GitHub2.css into Exiv2.css (to use Palatino) and itās in the repos. If youāre not on a Mac, there are probably good MarkDown tools for your platform.
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Thank you for your suggestions!
Typesetting is a big rabbit hole. 
I donāt want to push anything, but if you want to try for yourself hereās a patch I tested:
On line 14, change "font-size: 14px" to "font-size: 18px"
On line 318, add before "body { font-size: 11.5pt; }"
The first line changes the font size for normal screens, the second line changes it for printing conditions. I hope this is not what you mean when you stated in your beautiful document āWhen somebody provides a patch, they seldom provide test code, (ā¦) The feature is often incomplete.ā 
Perhaps consider using relative font size values. I tend to go open source with TeX Gyre Pagella.
I havenāt understood what issue this solves. Can you send a screen shot or something to explain why this should be changed.
I have a MacMini with a large monitor (3840x2160 pixels), a MacBook Pro (2560x1600) and a Samsung Tablet. The book looks really nice on them all. I was a little disappointed with it on my sonās iPhone, however it looks great on his iPad.
I looked at the book this morning in various browsers and simply using cmd+ to āmagnifyā seems to work well, although Iām happy with the āout of the boxā appearance.
My comments about people sending incomplete patches refer to C++ code. I can back up my words with links to PRs which ultimately could not be accepted. I can also think of one patch which I wasnāt sure was needed and subsequently cost me a great deal of time. Iām sure the original contributor was unaware of the build and other platform issues that ended up on my back.
I opened the PDF and viewed in 1366x and 1920x at 200% zoom. I think it is a problem with the font itself. I am half your age and have good eyes but I find my eye straining. Anyway, good work!
OK, Folks. Whatās the conclusion? Should I change it?
Just offering you my thoughts, not telling you what to do. 
I donāt mind what you decide. It is your work after all. 
(Personally, I prefer non-serif or light slab.)
Same for me! Itās supposed to be constructive criticism on readability of your document. Of course you can do whatever you think works best
A few of my thoughts visualized:
Side-by-side of the original and with a larger font. I find the larger font much faster / easier to read, even though it takes up more screen space.
Side-by-side of the PDF with a few thoughts again:
Iām going to change it. Itās pumped the book from 85 to 96 pages. However, I agree that it looks better because there isnāt so much text on a line and therefore easier to read. The text of the book and the graphics seem to be in better harmony.
I personally like serif for text, sans for titles and Iām happy with Consolas for code.
Strangely, I see MacDown is reluctant to change the style sheet. Iāll hit him about the head and face and heāll surrender.
Iāve been blessed with very good eye-sight. Itās only the last couple of years that I have to wear glasses for working.
Thank You for your feedback. If you come to LGM, youāll get a printed copy of the finished book. Iāll get 20 or 30 copied printed in B/W and bound at the local print shop.
Thank You @Thanatomanic for such a solid reply.
While I was writing my reply to @afre, your missive arrived. You are both right and youāve been very helpful and constructive. Thank You both for your input.
And if I donāt do exactly what you want, itās because I havenāt totally understood. Itās not because Iām resisting your suggestions. So you are welcome to ask me again!
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@clanmills I can take a look at the book source and can probably get some automated production of HTML, epub, and PDF if youād like.
Thanks, that would be great. I looked today at Designrr and thought that looked really good.
Alison and I will be delighted if you (and your family) can visit/stay with us when youāre in Europe for LGM/2021. Weāre 30km from Heathrow Airport in the beautiful County of Surrey.
I generally agree with @afre and @Thanatomanic. I looked at the document on my 15" laptop at 1920x1080, and was uncomfortable reading it at less than 200%.
For my eyes, which are still pretty good unless Iām tired, the Palatino font needs to be quite large in order to be easy to read. The small margins result in lines which are well over 100 characters long, which makes it harder for the eyes to pick up the start of the next line after the end of a line is reached.
About two years ago, I spent a great deal of time tuning the appearance of the manuals for the products I develop/support at work. We finally reached a consensus on Deja Vu Sans 10 point for a body font and Liberation Sans for headings. We used a left margin of 2", a right margin of 0.5", and outdented the headings 1.5". We also bumped the line spacing from single spaced to 1.15 lines. Lines are a comfortable length, and even the boring stuff I wrote myself is dead easy to read, even when tired.
Without a doubt, the number of pages will increase significantly. But how many people actually print hardcopy of manuals these days? Legibility is king.
The first point is a major one. I didnāt write about it but you did. 
Not only are the figureās fonts larger but they are also heavier. Besides reducing the discrepancies in font properties, increasing the padding may also help.
I tend to set wrapping to 70 characters length when writing and then set it back to whatever is the expected afterwards. Line spacing is tricky. There are recommendations out there but it is mostly eyeballing and getting a relaxed compromise.
I am not a typesetter or copy editor. Just interested in everything as usual. 
Itās 7:30am in England. Iām out of bed. The cat has jumped into bed with Alison. Iām full of enthusiasm to deal with this stuff.
Iām OK about changing the fonts if they are ubiquitous. Being an old PostScript guy, I like to stick to the 35 fonts we shipped in 1984! I know Google have been active in fonts (and everywhere else). Can I assume that Deja Vu Sans and Liberation Sans are available everywhere?
I had noticed that the graphics arenāt well matched to the text. Perhaps they should be rendered at higher resolution. Iāll have to investigate. I have tried to be consistent in my use of colours: Green for data, yellow for offsets. The drawings are āfruityā, however they are also āchunkyā.
Would anybody like a screen-sharing session to eye-ball this together?
BTW. Youāll all get a mention in the book. Thank You very much for your thoughts and ideas. Very helpful.