libprs500 0.4.1 has an open source cross-platform LRF viewer that supports hyphenation (for english) and uses real fonts instead of the SONY's limited three. Use it from the command line (for the moment) by

lrfviewer mybook.lrf


Note that this is an initial implementation and so its bound to be buggy. I've only tested it with LRF files generated by recent versions of libprs500. Also the current implementation is slow/memory intensive, so I doubt its suitable for use on handhelds. I will work on speeding it up when I get the time.

It doesn't support the DrawChar tag as yet (Used to make drop-caps) and the search functionality is not implemented.

Is it going to support full justification instead of left justification?

Wonderful.... this provides a spark of hope for long term readability of the non-DRM'd BBeB files! :)

Is it going to support full justification instead of left justification?

Not sure what you mean by "full" justification. It already supports hyphenation.

Not sure what you mean by "full" justification. It already supports hyphenation.
The Sony Reader supports full justification but not hyphenation.

Full justification is where the right edge is not ragged. Like in most dead tree books.

This is a wonderful addition to libprs500. Karma is on its way.

The Sony Reader supports full justification but not hyphenation.

Full justification is where the right edge is not ragged. Like in most dead tree books.

That's achieved by hyphenation, so yes. :)

This is a wonderful addition to libprs500. Karma is on its way.

Thanks.

That's achieved by hyphenation, so yes. :)
Yes to full justification is going to be added to the viewer in some later version?

It's already there.

If you look at the photo I have attached, what you will see is left justified, not full justified.

Ahh I see, you mean adjusting the space between words so that the line ends at the same point. Yeah I can do that, but I'm not sure it's a desirable goal. The SONY reader does it and I think it looks worse. Of course, with hyphenation it doesn't look as bad since the adjustments to wordspacing are typically smaller.

If Sony supported Hyphenation, then the word spacing would almost be the same on every line. You might have the odd line here or there where auto-hyphenation won't work, but it would look better overall. The best way to do hyphenation is to use a dictionary to lookup the words.

My viewer does precisely that. It uses the Liang hyphenation algorithm, which is the same as that used in Tex. However to achieve perfect justification you have to combine that with flexible word spacing, which works well in books that have small print, but I don't think it looks so good at the larger sizes at which electronic documents are typically viewed.

Well to be honest, other then the hyphenation, it looks like we are viewing on a simulated Libre. I do think full justification would look fine. I get it justified using MS Reader on my computer and I have no complaints that it's not left justified.

Hmm well lets see, I may add an option to turn it on/off.

Hmm well lets see, I may add an option to turn it on/off.
That would be great! Thanks!

Can this be accessed through the GUI or is it just through command line?

Thanks for all the great work!

Mitchll

At the moment only through the commandline, once it stabilizes more I'll integrate it into the GUI.

Wow, that's really great. Thanks a lot for putting that together!

version 0.4.3 with full justification, search and a faster layout engine. Will hit the servers in an hour.

Very nice!

Integrated with the main libprs500 GUI in 0.4.4

Hmm well lets see, I may add an option to turn it on/off.

Kovid. I've looked at a couple of examples of books produced by BookDesigner and the full justification is hardcoded into the text. Being able to turn it on and off is got to be a better option - personally I'd rather have the ragged margin than ridiculous amounts of space between words.

Kovid. I've looked at a couple of examples of books produced by BookDesigner and the full justification is hardcoded into the text. Being able to turn it on and off is got to be a better option - personally I'd rather have the ragged margin than ridiculous amounts of space between words.
The open source LRF viewer supports hyphenation, so you won't get the huge spaces in lines.

The open source LRF viewer supports hyphenation, so you won't get the huge spaces in lines.

Lots of spaces versus lots of hyphens versus justification versus smaller font size: there's always a trade-off to be made somewhere, and as as with all things the choice should be with the reader wherever possible.

Kovid, you are like a machine over there man!! You are doing everything that Sony should be doing. You rock. So will this view show us exactly what the file will look like on the Reader? Or is it just a viewer for .lrf files.

The reason I ask is that it is time consuming to make a book then load it onto the Reader, only to find out the spacing is wrong or something. It would be cool if I could just check it in the viewer first...

Wow, I just started using this. I like the interface and you even included a text search function. Very cool. I have actually been using color graphics in my lrf files (hey someday Readers are gonna be color right?!), and your viewer does a great job of rendering those perfect too.

So when Sony dives in and tries to hire you away from us, you won't forget us little people right?!?! :)

Lots of spaces versus lots of hyphens versus justification versus smaller font size: there's always a trade-off to be made somewhere, and as as with all things the choice should be with the reader wherever possible.

I can add an option to turn off full justification. If you open a ticket for it, I'll make sure it gets into the next version.

Kovid, you are like a machine over there man!! You are doing everything that Sony should be doing. You rock. So will this view show us exactly what the file will look like on the Reader? Or is it just a viewer for .lrf files.

The reason I ask is that it is time consuming to make a book then load it onto the Reader, only to find out the spacing is wrong or something. It would be cool if I could just check it in the viewer first...

That was one of the primary reasons I made the viewer. As I hated having to load books on the reader or boot windows to see the end result of a conversion. However, the rendering is not going to be exactly the same as SONY's reader, primarily because my reader supports hyphenation. You can turn it off with the --disable-hyphenation command-line option.

Another point off difference is that my reader uses different default fonts (the liberation family) as these have real italic and bold typefaces and support a far larger range of unicode characters. But their size characteristics are very similar to the Reader's default fonts, so it should not make much difference.

Thanks Hope it works