Those who work for publishes lament this endlessly, because lack of software support for certain features limits the quality of what they can publish. (And note for several major publishers their print editions are nowadays typeset from HTML/CSS using Prince.)
Interesting, having played around with wkhtmltopdf and Puppeteer, I had no idea any HTML-to-PDF renderers would be a viable option for publishers, but their examples are pretty impressive – definitely more than any e-readers manage!
> as fundamentally they don't believe there's a business case for it
And they’re probably right. I imagine very few people avoid e-books because of their typographical shortcomings. The arguments I hear against them tend to be on a more fundamental level (‘I prefer to be able to feel the paper’), and even people like me who do notice bad typography put up with e-readers. Publishers meanwhile may well care about their readers’ experience, but they can’t afford not to sell digital copies.
So I understand that typography probably doesn’t make much of a difference to the bottom line of e-reader manufacturers, I just wish the bottom line weren’t the only incentive for large companies.
It's not cheap, but if you're a publisher I imagine the cost savings of not having to deal with multiple formats (one for print, one for digital) outweighs that many times over, provided you can get good enough results.
I do wonder if any publishers will get into the e-reader space, especially on the software-only side. But it's not an easy market to get into and the costs are pretty high, and I think both of us are dubious as to how much any user actually cares.
There are lots of different options: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans#Guidelines
The kindle also doesn't support proper kerning. Sorry if I told you that and you can't unsee it now.
But you can install 3rd party reading software on jailbroken kindles like koreader that fixes some of the deficiencies.
Although Koreader has been originally developed for e-ink devices. I'm not sure how well it has been optimized for normal tablet screens.