I’ve finished leafing through the iPad’s SDK and support documentation, and as much as people have been making fun of it over the last couple of weeks I think it has the potential to be as much of a game-changer, especially in text distribution, as the iPhone was.

Apple is going to great lengths to make sure the iPad is a text-driven device. They’ve resurrected Core Text and CFAttributedString, two API components from Mac OS X that were missing and presumed dead in the iPhone OS. There’s a new standard UI widget called a “popover” that developers can use to display optional information on command (like parses and short definitions, hint hint). The new “split view,” which you’ve probably seen if you’ve looked at the Mail application demo, allows you to both view and drill down on information at the same time.

Apple has a long way to go if they want their digital typography to look anything like the printed article, but given their commitment to typography on the desktop with systems like AATS I have no doubt we’ll have pretty Greek and Latin text on the iPad before the end of the year.