Question About Two Programs

[robint]

Hi. I was wondering what the best program is for reading ebooks. I have many in PDF format, that can be formatted to any other format, including HTML, but I was wondering the best program for this purpose.

Also, I was wondering what program(s) were best for encoding videos. I have a slew of .AVI videos that don't work. What format should my videos be in.

Thanks much.

[JohnKiniston]

The best bookreader for the Zaurus in my opinion is Opie Reader http://www.timwentford.uklinux.net/

I dont think it handles PDF as those are more of a image than a book.

[robint]

The best bookreader for the Zaurus in my opinion is Opie Reader http://www.timwentford.uklinux.net/

I dont think it handles PDF as those are more of a image than a book.
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Hi. I read someplace that Linux (or the Zaurus) handles .pdb format. So I downloaded (previous to this post, Opie from the link above), but wasn't sure what format to use. So then I uploaded a couple of books in that format and I'm all set. Thanks much.

[Stubear]

If you have the option then plucker is probably the best format (at least in my experience) for use with opie-reader. But it will also handle html very well - so you don't need to reformat.

With regard to your video question there have been a number of threads about this topic (Here is one of the latest). With a number of howto's and useful sites as well.

Stu

[TimW]

As well as Plucker, MobiPocket is pretty good (basically it is lightly compressed html) as is Rocket E-Book (.rb). In both (all) cases, avoid copy protected files as the protection mechanism is (obviously, I suppose) proprietary and not implemented in opie-reader.

iSilo 3 probably isn't too bad but I haven't tested too many of those and the reverse engineering of the format was a bit "ad-hoc".

I can't remember if rb is in the current release or not, but it definitely is in the next one (which is imminent).

[tovarish]

you could do what i do. I purchase commercial ebooks in .lit (microsoft) format. I then use clit to convert these to html and then to plucker format using jpluck or sunrise. I use opie reader to view the plucker format.
It is a long and winding process but the only way i can read commerical drmed ebooks.

tovarish

[TimW]

you could do what i do. I purchase commercial ebooks in .lit (microsoft) format. I then use clit to convert these to html and then to plucker format using jpluck or sunrise. I use opie reader to view the plucker format.
It is a long and winding process but the only way i can read commerical drmed ebooks.

tovarish
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Actually, I do pretty much the same except I use [a href=\"http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/DownLoadPublisherStep1.asp]Mobipocket publisher[/url] because it understands the obf files so you don't have to work too hard to work out which page to start your pluck from.

(Actually, I'm currently using rbmake but that is only because it is the last implemented format so I'm still testing it, but most people will prefer the mobipocket route)

[Stubear]

I maus be lazy cause I just unpack the lit file and read the html straight with opie-reader

Thanks again for a great app Tim

Stu

[TimW]

I maus be lazy cause I just unpack the lit file and read the html straight with opie-reader

Thanks again for a great app Tim

Stu
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Apart from the compression and the convenience of a single file to copy around the main thing you'll be missing is the speed with which links are located as most formats index the links. If you don't need that, then why not   .

[Stubear]

Apart from the compression and the convenience of a single file to copy around the main thing you'll be missing is the speed with which links are located as most formats index the links. If you don't need that, then why not   .
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Just unpacked my first lit that wasn't a single html file, so now I see the benefits of converting to another format.

Have to give Mobipocket Publisher a try

Stu

Edit: Just found out the Mobipocket Publisher is a windows app , back to plucker

[TimW]

Edit: Just found out the Mobipocket Publisher is a windows app , back to plucker
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You could try [a href=\"http://rbmake.sourceforge.net/]rbmake[/url].

I'm working on a gui-ised version of rbmake which supports full colour images (default is b&w [not even grayscale!] - I use the full colour of the original image) and better compression (default is zlib in 4kb chunks - I use zlib or PPM in whatever size chunk you want - so far I have managed the full english text (no images) version of the wikipedia in 264MB (the (390 MB, 02 Aug 2004) version downloaded from the wiki2static examples page).

[ltrm]

Tim,

I know that diagrams might be a problem but is there any way that a plugin could be added to Opie Reader to read text directly from pdf files?

QPDF2 can do this already but it doesn't have some of the nice features of Opie Reader, such as the scrolling and the text zooming (when in text mode).

[TimW]

Tim,

I know that diagrams might be a problem but is there any way that a plugin could be added to Opie Reader to read text directly from pdf files?
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It is pretty unlikely as pdf (Page Description Format) is more about describing how to put the text on a page rather than describing how the text should be formatted and letting the reader get on with the pagination to suit the device. If you could use the qpdf engine to produce a text stream with embedded formatting info then you could do it...but it won't be easy.