Can anyone with a v3 share their real life experience using it? I would be interested to hear about using different formats i.e pdfs and chm, or if they needed to be converted to be read properly? how well do doc's read - is this any version of word docs? And any other issues bad or good you had with this device.

Well my V3 just arrived today. I will test it out for a couple of days and read a book or too and then post :-)

Okay had it for a week and very happy with it. I have found:
- the screen to be excellent with quick updates between pages.
- the design is elegant, slim, and easy to use.
- the default font is nice.
- the zoom feature (where it swaps the view from portrait to landscape) is very handy.
- firmware upgrade was simple and worked with my 1GB SD card.
- I might need to recharge the battery in a month. :)

Downside:
- you can't change the default font or font size. :(
- I use Linux so the the Hanlin Printer Driver (for producing WOL files) can't be used.

Having said that, I have read a Gutenberg TXT, a Sci-Fi HTML, and a Jane Austen PDF on it. Also played a bit with RTF and DOC. :2thumbsup

As with any reader, the viewing depends on the original TXT / HTML / PDF / DOC / RTF file format. It can take a little playing to change the format to read well on the screen of the V3 if the original file isn't up to scratch. But I have found this to be quite simple on most occasions.

1) PDFs get shrunk to fit on the screen. So provided your A4 page PDF hasn't got more than the usual 25-30 lines / page you should be fine. The zoom feature comes into its own on PDFs - you can view the PDF in landscape and view half the page at a time.

2) HTML just seems to work.

3) RTF and DOC work well - just make sure you don't have more than 25-30 lines per page or the font tends to be too small to read easily.

3) Gutenberg TXT files needed to be reformatted because they put a Carriage Return (CR) at the end of every line, not just paragraphs. Turned out to be very simple to do in OpenOffice Writer.

OpenOffice Writer 2.3 - removing Carriage Returns from Gutenberg Text files.
- Open OpenOffice Writer
- Start with a new document
- File -> New -> Text Document
- Insert -> File -> choose your Gutenberg txt file
- Use the default ASCII filter options
- Highlight the whole document
- Format -> AutoFormat -> Apply
- Save document as a text file
- File -> Save As -> choose TXT(.txt) format and a name and save.
Your new text file is good for the V3 (and other eReaders I suspect). :D

I bought the v3 last year in September. My v3's screen is not Vizplex. However, other than that, I like it very much. I've loaded many books onto it and I bring it along wherever I go. I've downloaded books from feedbooks.com in pdf format and they display beautifully. I've also bought books from Baen and Steve Jordan in rtf and converted them to pdf using my Mac. Again the books display nicely in pdf format. Although the software for the v3 cannot be used on the Mac, I'm not bothered by this as I normally load the books onto an SD card using an SD card reader and then insert the SD card into the v3 for reading. I just hope that Jinke can close the deal with Mobipocket so that books in mobi format can be read on the v3. That would be fantastic!

I just hope that Jinke can close the deal with Mobipocket so that books in mobi format can be read on the v3. That would be fantastic!

Do you have any indication that there is such a deal in the works?

Dale

I bought the v3 last year in September. My v3's screen is not Vizplex. However, other than that, I like it very much. I've loaded many books onto it and I bring it along wherever I go. I've downloaded books from feedbooks.com in pdf format and they display beautifully. I've also bought books from Baen and Steve Jordan in rtf and converted them to pdf using my Mac. Again the books display nicely in pdf format. Although the software for the v3 cannot be used on the Mac, I'm not bothered by this as I normally load the books onto an SD card using an SD card reader and then insert the SD card into the v3 for reading. I just hope that Jinke can close the deal with Mobipocket so that books in mobi format can be read on the v3. That would be fantastic!

Hi Menhir, This might sound like a silly question, but how do you know it wasnt a vizplex? I was told only really old v3 would be the non vizplex models, however no one i've spoken to really say conclusively how to tell if their model really is vizplex or not, other than if their packaging box has a little yellow sticker saying 'vizplex'. Dont get me wrong i know vizplex is meant to be a better screen, but i havent come across a post where their owners were 100% sure they really had a vizplex screen!

Best thing to do would be to try and compare it to a device that you know has a VizPlex screen, such as a Sony 505 or a CyBook Gen3. There's all the difference in the world between the "old" eInk screens and the VizPlex screens - anyone who'd seen one would be able to tell you instantly.

Actually, i could not say instantly if i did not have a direct comparison. The iLiad V2 (not vizplex) has a slightly darker screen, but the black is mach blacker than the CyBooks. I can tell by the update speed of the screen, but other than that i could not tell by looking at a single device.

I have a V3 since November and am very happy with it.

The Hardware is simple and elegant but still rugged enough to survive being transported in my bicycle's basket in a backpack. I could geekishly, as I possibly am, carry on how cool the hardware and software is, and how infuriating it is that the GNU/Linux GPL is being violated. And, yes, I have photos of my children and some music on my V3.

But actually I got this gadget to read books and that is what I have been doing lately. I've been reading books in airports and at bus stops at home or in coffee shops. And have read about 15 books on my V3. Nowadays you can download magnitudes of books. I fetched some books from Gutenberg and read them as text files. Have read html-files, which rendered OK depending on the HTML code. PDFs work too though it is somehow the wrong medium for that. When you zoom into a PDF you always have the feeling your peeking through a hole in a fence. My favorite format is fb2, which is a very simple xml based format. You can get surprisingly many books in fb2 nowadays :) . And with a short perl script you can convert Gutenberg books into fb2.

So what I can say is: the books were good and the device did not get in the way.

@redbaron:

Finally I have tested the files you sent me, but as I told you I don't think the V3 will do the work for you.
- The RTF and word files that you sent me do not display the picture. So assume that the V3 is only extracting the text of those types.
- The JPEG can be opened but the zoom doesn't seem to work.
- The PDF can be rotated, see if that could be enough for you.

I have also tried to find you a solution with other readers:
- If you have the money to buy it, I recommend you the iLiad, it is the closest to a comic experience.
- If not, the Cybook seems to do a reasonable good job because if you use the landscape mode, it scrolls about 33% each time so in my opinio the experiece is good.

thanks danara!! it was nice of you to take the time to do the tests. Yes it looks like the illiad and cybook both look okay for the pdfs. I would love the illiad, but the long startup time and huge costs of the illiad have def. put me off the illiad. So it looks like cybook is on my list., btw have the seen the pictures of the hanlin v9, it looks huge sat next to the sony one, i wonder when they will be available to buy?

Yep, I think you should go for the Cybook.

BTW, knowing the track record of manufacturers in this industry, I don't think you should expect the V9 before Q4 2008.
We will carry it at Apollo XXI (http://www.apolloxxi.com) of course, but I don't expect it soon.

@redbaron:

Finally I have tested the files you sent me, but as I told you I don't think the V3 will do the work for you.
- The RTF and word files that you sent me do not display the picture. So assume that the V3 is only extracting the text of those types.
- The JPEG can be opened but the zoom doesn't seem to work.
- The PDF can be rotated, see if that could be enough for you.

I have also tried to find you a solution with other readers:
- If you have the money to buy it, I recommend you the iLiad, it is the closest to a comic experience.
- If not, the Cybook seems to do a reasonable good job because if you use the landscape mode, it scrolls about 33% each time so in my opinio the experiece is good.

Were the original files in colour?

As it seems that the poor quality of some of these images is down to bad dithering from colour to grayscale. I wonder if you'd get a better result if you used something like Photoshop to reduce the colour palette to grayscale before putting in the iRex/CyBook/V3...?

Yes, I used the originals that I got from redbaron, and they were all in color.

As you say, advance users can improve the performance with a little bit of photoshop work.

You could try Manga2Ebook to improve the comic experience:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11261

If you need more formats to test and compare:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16997





@redbaron:

Finally I have tested the files you sent me, but as I told you I don't think the V3 will do the work for you.
- The RTF and word files that you sent me do not display the picture. So assume that the V3 is only extracting the text of those types.
- The JPEG can be opened but the zoom doesn't seem to work.
- The PDF can be rotated, see if that could be enough for you.

I have also tried to find you a solution with other readers:
- If you have the money to buy it, I recommend you the iLiad, it is the closest to a comic experience.
- If not, the Cybook seems to do a reasonable good job because if you use the landscape mode, it scrolls about 33% each time so in my opinio the experiece is good.

Yes, I used the originals that I got from redbaron, and they were all in color.

As you say, advance users can improve the performance with a little bit of photoshop work.
Can you post one of the images so I can try it on the 505?

Interesting test with Asterix, although a manga would be better suited for those 6" screens.
Maybe we should start a wiki page about reading comics on e-ink devices ?

Interesting test with Asterix, although a manga would be better suited for those 6" screens.
Maybe we should start a wiki page about reading comics on e-ink devices ?

There is a Manga wiki page. It could probably be expanded. There is also a cbr/cbz page that could stand some expansion.

Dale

One of the earlier posters mentioned Hanlin might not be GPL-compliant ... can anyone elaborate? Companies ripping off the GPL really get my goat ... suffered through it with the gp2x.

What this usually means is that they a) use software published under the GPL, or b) use derivatives of software published under the GPL, or c) link against software published under the GPL, without, as the GPL requires, making freely available the source code of said software.

To what extent this applies to Jinke, i.e. which GPL'd software they use or link against, I don't know, although their using a variant of Linux certainly means that they at least must offer the source code of the version of Linux used, in order to satisfy the GPL. Which, AFAIK, they don't (unless it's part of the SDK?)

http://openinkpot.org/wiki/BinariesLicenseInvestigation

Sorry for the delay.
Here you go with a few attachments...

I´ve made a short review of my newly arrived Hanlin V3 on youtube. It´s the first e-ink device I could try out so I wasn´t really able to compare it with other devices. Basicaly I intended it to be a small decision helper for all those interested in this device, since there´s really few infos in english on youtube for this device.

here´s the link: Hanlin V3 video review (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdY3VHJpJQw)

Thanks Nivi78 for your YouTube review. Simple & fair. I've had my V3 for about 3 weeks now & I am very happy with the device. Have read a few books & decided my preferred format is FictionBook (.fb2) files. It has the most flexibility in terms of resizing fonts etc. I agree with Nivi78 that PDF performance is a bit hit & miss, but other formats such as doc, txt, epub & rtf all seem to perform quite well.

I have a lot of books in MS Reader format (.lit). Currently I am using ConvertLIT to remove DRM if present; ABC Amber LIT Converter &/or Book Designer 4.0 to convert to FictionBook format. This works really well, with minimal editing required but it would be nice if someone came up with an open-source version of MS Reader for the V3.

I think the V3's readability is excellent - no eye strain or fatigue. Just as good as paper. The device is robust & feels solid & comfortable in the hands, but I do think the leather cover is essential. You can even clip a booklight to it for reading in bed.

I bought the Hanlin V3 specifically for reading books rather than technical documents, & after a bit of trial & error with various formats I am now very happy with the experience.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Thanks for the review, Nivi78. I'm just waiting for my V3 to arrive, and toying with Book Designer.

Any news from Jinke concerning Mobi support for the V3?

I just got back from a business trip last night and found the package with my new V3 waiting for me. (From what my wife told me, TNT has made a mess of the shipping. If it hadn't been for the minor miracle that our phone number was the only piece of contact information they somehow managed to keep intact, I very likely still wouldn't have the unit, but that's a different story.) So I haven't been able to toy around much, but here are my thoughts so far:

1. e-Ink is awesome. 800x600 doesn't sound like much in this time of 1600x1200 monitors, but boy does this look nice!
2. The UI is not designed by Apple, but it sure looks like it'll get the job done in a no-frills, no-unnecessary-features way. I like stuff that doesn't get in the way or tries to out-smart me in the most stupid fashion possible, so yay! I haven't yet gotten the Recent Files folder(s) to do anything useful, but we'll see about that.
3. Hierarchical folder support FTW. At a predictable 8 items per page, it should be possible to organize all my 1000-odd ebooks into a tree with minimum average access time on the included 1 GB memory card (no book more than 4 clicks away from the bookshelf index).
4. Whoever created the Robinson Crusoe .WOL that came pre-installed on said memory card needs to get slapped about the head with something hard and heavy. The same goes for whoever decided that this was a good file to present to the unsuspecting uservictim as a first impression. That... thing is full of errors: commas where there should be full stops, words running into each other without an intervening space, wonky formatting. It is, quite frankly, a mess. Doubly so as it could easily have been avoided had someone cared to do a proper job of it.

Next items on the TODO list:
- Play around some more with the gadget.
- Find a tool that takes a directory full of files and generates a fixed-width directory tree of minimum depth with human-readable folder names (e.g. A-Bra, Brb-Cel,...), or failing that, build one myself.
- Read.
- Post to MobileRead.

OK, I've played around some more, and my impressions differ a bit from localj's (#2 in this thread):

The Good:
I don't know whether I have to thank lBook or Apollo XXI for this, but my V3 already came with the latest firmware installed. Nice.

The TXT parser is pretty damn good. I could just throw a PG TXT file with those line breaks at it, and it did the right thing. No reformatting necessary. This is different from localj's experience, perhaps due to a newer firmware version? After I formatted it as one paragraph per line with an empty line after each paragraph, it also just worked. It choked on a file with one paragraph per line but without an empty line between paragraphs, and displayed that as one continuous stream of text. But since I've never seen one of those out in the wild, this doesn't really detract from the praise.

The Bad:
The HTML parser left me a bit less enthused. Links to other files in the same directory don't work. Not entirely unexpected, but it would have been nice. That it doesn't know how to deal with 3-byte UTF8-coded punctuation characters is forgivable, that it doesn't know the "mdash" named entity (—) and just prints it verbatim, OTOH, is not.

Seriously. Named entity. Hello? It's not like there is an endless number of those (there are, in fact, around 250 of them), and mdash is certainly not the most exotic among them. This needs fixing.

After loading the offending HTML into Book Designer and converting it to FB2, it worked, although the dash was too short now. I'll probably have to play around with BD a bit more.

The Ugly:
ZIP file support doesn't work. It doesn't even show the ZIP files in the book shelf. RAR archives work just fine, though.

WTF?!

The Bad:
The HTML parser left me a bit less enthused. Links to other files in the same directory don't work. Not entirely unexpected, but it would have been nice. That it doesn't know how to deal with 3-byte UTF8-coded punctuation characters is forgivable, that it doesn't know the "mdash" named entity (—) and just prints it verbatim, OTOH, is not.

I agree. html is unusable. If you have a lot of html content try chm - it seems working.
There are some chm compilators on the net - even Microsoft has one for free.


After loading the offending HTML into Book Designer and converting it to FB2, it worked, although the dash was too short now. I'll probably have to play around with BD a bit more.


There is an option in BD - (on page saving FB) where you can set dash type (long, medium or short).


The Ugly:
ZIP file support doesn't work. It doesn't even show the ZIP files in the book shelf. RAR archives work just fine, though.

WTF?!

Nope - it's never works.
Funny thing is they support epub format which uses ZIP compression, so decompressing code exists in ROM.

I agree. html is unusable. If you have a lot of html content try chm - it seems working. There are some chm compilators on the net - even Microsoft has one for free.

Meh, the HTML parser is even worse than that. It seems that POS has absolutely no usable support for html entities whatsoever, named or numeric. Which means that any attempts to get the thing to display an ampersand should prove interesting, as encountering an ampersand apparently causes it to just swallow that and the following character. Strangely, putting German umlauts into the html as naked UTF-8 works just fine, but that doesn't help with the ampersand problem.

The worst of that is that the FB2 parser suffers from the same problem, thus rendering two of the ostensibly supported formats damn near unusable. Three, if you count ZIP.

To recap: TXT, GIF, JPG, RAR, and PDF (formatted for the small screen) are confirmed to work in a usable fashion. HTML and FB2 have very limited usability, and ZIP doesn't work at all. With that track record, I'm almost afraid to try any of the remaining formats. :angry:

There is an option in BD - (on page saving FB) where you can set dash type (long, medium or short).

Yup. Found it. Thanks!

Interesting test with Asterix, although a manga would be better suited for those 6" screens.
Maybe we should start a wiki page about reading comics on e-ink devices ?

yeah, I was playing a bit of the devils advocate when i gave danara the pics - asterix is A4 and always in colour, so any problems would show up pretty well, most american comics tend to be smaller than A4, and majority of traditional manga tend to be black and white printed on recylced paper - although I was surprised when my nephew informed me Waterstones have started selling b&w manga, but on a paperback format and size (slightly smaller than A5). Any of these scanned in would read brilliantly on these readers. unfortunately you dont get much choice (at least here you dont), and any scanlations you can get hold of will be the larger size.

Meh, the HTML parser is even worse than that. It seems that POS has absolutely no usable support for html entities whatsoever, named or numeric. Which means that any attempts to get the thing to display an ampersand should prove interesting, as encountering an ampersand apparently causes it to just swallow that and the following character. Strangely, putting German umlauts into the html as naked UTF-8 works just fine, but that doesn't help with the ampersand problem.

I've played around some more and need to revise that assessment a bit. Named entities are still an almost complete loss. " works, but it's just about the only one that does. Numeric entities mostly work. Which means that there is one, and only one, way to get an ampersand displayed in an HTML file on the V3: & # 3 8 ;

Most other "special" characters can be displayed either as numeric entities like with the ampersand above, or as naked UTF-8 characters, provided you set the charset to UTF-8 in the content meta-attribute in the HTML head. The problem is that with some of those (I suspect at least the mdash and ndash), kerning problems abound, i.e. you get characters running into each other. This is most likely a font problem.

To sum up, should anyone from Jinke or lBook read this: support for named entities in the HTML parser would be really, really nice. The font issue is more pressing and definitely needs to be fixed ASAP. Additionally I would like to see the ability to upload our own fonts to the device.

ETA: Also, if RAR archive support could be made a bit more stable, that would be nice. RAR files made with WinRAR and Compression Method set to "best" reliably fail to open. Even if you leave Compression Method set to normal, extracting a file fails for some archives, I've yet to pin down the reason for that.

I'll just use this thread to ramble on about my ongoing experiences with the V3 until I either run out of things to ramble on about or someone tells me to stop...

Anyway, last night I got around to reading a substantial amount under low-light conditions for the first time. Con: I'd like the screen to have more contrast. I found myself going for some extra light with the e-ink screen where I would have been happy to continue reading with a paper book. I can see this being an advantage for reading outdoors in full sunlight, but for low-light conditions - which is where I do most of my reading - additional lighting is a requirement.

Pro: The Mighty Bright XtraFlex Duet (http://www.mightybright.com/Music_Lights/78/ProductDetail.html) (aka "bug light" around here) works really well, clipped to the leather cover. There is some light spillage, but not enough to bother the wife, who was contentedly sleeping beside me. Also, the blueish tint of the LED light, while looking a bit cold and harsh in general, works really well with the somewhat yellowish-grey e-ink display. The combination creates a bright, almost pure-white display that is easy to read. Positioning the lights so you don't have any glare from the screen or the body of the V3 takes some doing, but having two independent LEDs on flexible stalks really helps here.

Pro: Page flips are quick, at least when reading FB2 books. PDF files seem to take a bit longer to render. I still need to find the right moment to click "next" for a smooth reading experience, but I think I'll get there.

Pro: I'm really starting to like the reader app of the V3. Above the text body there is a page header with the book author and title, or the file name for TXT files, the page number in <current>/<total> format, and the battery status. Dividing the header from the text body is a thin line, which on closer inspection turns out to be a representation of the book. The line is subdivided at each chapter break, with each line segment representative of the relative chapter length. There is also a marker showing your current position in the book.

(BTW, is this documented anywhere? It should be, but I don't recall reading about that in the manual.)

This turns out to be immensely useful, not only because I find such a visual progress marker more intuitive to grasp than a x/y page number, but it also makes it relatively easy to estimate things like the number of pages left in the current chapter, which for me is an important decision aid for whether to read on to the end of the chapter or turn in for the night.

As an addendum to my first post from Feb 20, the Recent Files virtual folder works just fine, showing you the last 8 books opened. It's the #1 button used to access it that turns out to require a lot more force to depress than the other buttons on my unit.

The Ugly:
ZIP file support doesn't work. It doesn't even show the ZIP files in the book shelf. RAR archives work just fine, though.
No. ZIP file support do work. But you need to name your files, for example
file1.fb2.zip and not just file1.zip .

Additionally I would like to see the ability to upload our own fonts to the device.
It is possible now for FB2/TXT formats. All you need - is to download cr3.zip file (for example, from here (http://users.i.com.ua/~torbich/cr3.zip), unpack it to the /crengine folder of the SD card, copy your favorite fonts to \fonts folder and edit fb2.css file for your needs. Turn Off and On your V3 for the changes to apply.

As an example: fonts (http://www.savefile.com/files/1362515) (in addition to these fonts you need to copy to the /crengine/fonts verdana.ttf, verdanab.ttf and verdanai.ttf from your Windows Fonts folder) and fb2.css:
image { text-align: center; text-indent: 0px }
sub { vertical-align: sub; font-size: 70% }
sup { vertical-align: super; font-size: 70% }
poem { margin-top: 0.6em; margin-bottom: 0.6em; text-indent: 0px }
stanza { margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: left; font-style: italic }
stanza + stanza { margin-top: 0.7em }

a {
vertical-align: super;
font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;
font-size: 80%; color: blue; text-decoration: underline;
}

p { margin-bottom: 0em }
p + p { margin-top: 0.25em }

empty-line { height: 1em }
strong { font-weight: bold }
emphasis { font-style: italic }

title {
color: #C00;
text-align: center; text-indent: 0px;
margin-top: 0.7em; margin-bottom: 0.5em;
font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;
font-family: "Liberation Serif", serif;
page-break-before: always; page-break-inside: avoid; page-break-after: avoid;
}
subtitle {
text-align: center; text-indent: 0px;
font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px
}
description {
text-align: justify; text-indent: 2em;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal;
font-size: 75%;
}
body {
text-align: justify; text-indent: 2em;
font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 75%;
font-style: normal;
}
cite {
text-indent: 0px; text-align: justify;
font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;
font-family: "Liberation Sans", sans-serif;
margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;
}
epigraph {
margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 2%; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 25px
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px;
font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;
font-size: 85%;
}
text-author {
font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
margin-left: 25%; text-align: right; margin-top: 0.5em
}

empty-line { height: 1em }

description { display: block }
title-info { display: block }
genre { display: none }
author { display: none }
book-title { display: none }
annotation { display: block; font-style: italic; text-align: justify; text-indent: 2em }
keywords { display: none }
date { display: block; text-align: left; font-style: italic; margin-top: 0.6em; margin-bottom: 0.6em }
coverpage { display: none }
lang { display: none }
src-lang { display: none }
translator { display: none }
sequence { display: none }
document-info { display: none }
publish-info { display: block }
custom-info { display: none }

No. ZIP file support do work. But you need to name your files, for example file1.fb2.zip and not just file1.zip .

Using ZIP as a single file compression when it is a compressed archive format isn't quite what I think of when hearing ZIP file support, but I guess it's better than nothing. At least it means that zipped FB2 files as produced by BookDesigner should work, which is something, I guess.

It is possible now for FB2/TXT formats. All you need - is to download cr3.zip file (for example, from here (http://users.i.com.ua/~torbich/cr3.zip), unpack it to the root folder of the SD card, copy your favorite fonts to \fonts folder and edit fb2.css file for your needs.

Hmm, I was seriously contemplating converting my whole collection of TXT and HTML to FB2 anyway in order to make use of things like a proper TOC, but if this turns out to actually work (and, let's hope, fix what I think of as the mdash kerning problem), this is even more of an incentive.

But why isn't this stuff documented anywhere?

It is possible now for FB2/TXT formats. All you need - is to download cr3.zip file (for example, from here (http://users.i.com.ua/~torbich/cr3.zip), unpack it to the root folder of the SD card, copy your favorite fonts to \fonts folder and edit fb2.css file for your needs.

As an example: fonts (http://www.savefile.com/files/1362515) and fb2.css:


...
body {
text-align: justify; text-indent: 2em;
font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 75%;
font-style: normal;
}
...



Wow if this works it is really cool! Will this work on my Chinese V3 too? Cannot wait to get home and try this out.

Having to read in sans serif was my only complaint to fb reader.

Sorry, make a mistake in description. You need to copy files from cr3.zip not to a root folder, but to the /crengine folder on your SD card. And turn off/on your V3. Edited my last post for these changes.

Don't know, if this all works on Chinese V3 too, but hope so.

Hi all!

Torbich, thank you for the info about how to change the font type in FB2 and Txt files. It has really improve a lot my reading experience to have mine changed to "Georgia".

Since i started using the V3 i realized that it had problems handlin hyphenation in FB2 files. There is a pdb file in the "cr3" folder called "Russian_EnUS_hyphen_(Alan)" that i think it solve the problem for hyphenation in russian and english text. Does anybody know how can i get the file for hyphenation in spanish text and have the device using it?

2 supertoth: Try these: http://alreader.kms.ru/AlReader/AlReader2.Hyphen.zip (or mirror: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/palmfiction/Alan_hyphenation_pattern.zip?download ) -hyphenation patterns for 23 languages.

¡¡Thank You!! Problem solved

Hi Torbich, a question: how did you find that information about customization of fb2 reader? is there any info from jinke about that or you found it for yourself? it would be nice to have documentation about programming/customizing V3

2 ottocol: no, I didn't find that information personally. It came from the author of the FB2 plugin and now is discussed at the russian V3 users comunity: http://the-ebook.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=24, and, particulary
http://the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7509 and http://the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7858 (sorry, these threads are in Russian, you need to use some online translator).

Hi everyone,

This is my first post in MR, but I've been lurking for some time. I've been undecided about e-ink for a while, and been unwilling to pay €350-€400 (Cybook) to sample it. So when the V3 got a reseller in Europe with a price I thought fair, I just couldn't resist it any longer and order one from ApolloXXI.

I've been using my reader for two weeks now, and I joined the crowd that just loves the e-ink displays. It's really worth the money I spent, even if it's a bit pricey "just" to read books.

I've seen the reviews from other users, so I'll add mine to the lot. I have decided to use FB2, and I was quite pleased by the look and organization of the document. Chapters, and pages work quite well, and the graphical display of where we are in the chapter/book is just wonderful. The use of the recent files is also quite nice and simply works, the ability to navigate on the SD folder tree is in my opinion an essential feature.

There are a few things I dislike, like the provided cover, I don't know about the rest of you, but mine just smells and it just doesn't feel like real leather. I also doubt that it will keep the reader secure. It will have to do for now since there isn't any to replace it, but I hope there will be some better replacement in the near future.

Also, I've been experiencing some reboots while reading the FB2 ebooks, every few hundred page turns the device freezes with the green led on and after a while the systems reboots. I haven’t been able to reproduce the bug, but it happens from time to time. It does not render the device useless but it's annoying and I hope it will be corrected on a future update.

As for the advertised format support, I've tested PDF, CHM, RTP, JPG and Rar and they all worked. Although I believe that the image rendering engine should also be upgraded, since it does not do a great job even with B&W images. PDF and CHM were quite a nice surprise, it will do for a quick reference manual but not to read a novel.

Overall I'm quite satisfied with my new "gadget" and I would buy it again even knowing that it has a few problems.

Con: I'd like the screen to have more contrast. I found myself going for some extra light with the e-ink screen where I would have been happy to continue reading with a paper book.


hmmm, I thought all the v3 are vizplex? (did your box have the vizplex sticker on it - the earlier v3 were sold without vizplex) doesnt this mean its meant to have a better contrast?


<cut ..> with the somewhat yellowish-grey e-ink display.


Is this what the v3 looks like in daytime too - yellow grey!?

There are a few things I dislike, like the provided cover, I don't know about the rest of you, but mine just smells and it just doesn't feel like real leather. I also doubt that it will keep the reader secure. It will have to do for now since there isn't any to replace it, but I hope there will be some better replacement in the near future.

Same here. The cover has a distinct petrol-like smell, which I find mildly off-putting. As far as protection goes, I think it will do for my purposes, as I don't have any hobbies which have "extreme" in the name. ;-)

Also, I've been experiencing some reboots while reading the FB2 ebooks, every few hundred page turns the device freezes with the green led on and after a while the systems reboots. I haven’t been able to reproduce the bug, but it happens from time to time.

Yup, same here. The device occasionally freezes, and when I press the On/Off button just once, it reboots. Not a major concern, but still annoying and worthy of a fix.

hmmm, I thought all the v3 are vizplex? (did your box have the vizplex sticker on it - the earlier v3 were sold without vizplex) doesnt this mean its meant to have a better contrast?

It certainly has the Vizplex decal, yes, and the screen flips themselves are quite fast. I would still like to have a bit more contrast. (When I look closely at my screen, I notice a bit of "noise" from black particles in the white areas, maybe this has something to do with it?)

Is this what the v3 looks like in daytime too - yellow grey!?

I wouldn't call it yellow grey, but it's certainly not pure white, and to me the screen has a very slight yellowish cast to it - just enough to be (barely) noticeable and to offset the blue tint of the LED a bit.

so gudy, having played around with your new hanlin, do you think in your opinion it was worth it? Or do you feel you should have gone with another make? (like the cybook or sony)

btw, does the v3 have dictionary support?

No, the V3 doesn't have dictionary support, AFAIK. (But then, I didn't know you could use your own fonts on the V3, so who knows...)

And yes, I think it was worth it. I'd like to see the bugs fixed (occasional freezes, no named entity support in html and FB2 files, RAR and ZIP support spotty), the documentation improved (ZIP support, font upload), and Mobipocket support added (in that order), but the device is usable as is and except for the occasional freeze, all these issues can be worked around, at least by an experienced user.

That said, I wouldn't recommend the V3 for just everyone. For the average user, the CyBook Gen3 or the Sony PRS-505 probably provide the smoother experience. Both of these were hot contenders for my money, but the complete lack of support outside the USA essentially killed the Sony, and the price combined with the (perceived) support problems from Bookeen made me choose the V3 over the CyBook.

btw, does the v3 have dictionary support?
No, V3 doesn't have dictionary support now, but I hope that in near future (3-4 months) it will.

While I really like my V3, there's one thing that has been bugging me ever since I got it.

Does your V3 take 5, 10 or even 15 seconds in opening a FB2 book? And does it take about 1 or 2 seconds before flashing and changing the page?

Does your V3 take 5, 10 or even 15 seconds in opening a FB2 book? And does it take about 1 or 2 seconds before flashing and changing the page?

I've definitely noticed the former, but not the latter. But then, I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to that.

I imagine what happens in the time it takes to open an FB2 file is that the application goes through the whole file and formats it in order to determine the number of pages in the book at the current font settings. Playing around with those, as well as the zoom levels, might give more of an idea.

I'll check this out a bit when I'm home tonight.

It turns out that opening one particular FB2 book from the book shelf took just shy of 10 seconds from the button click until the last read page appears on the screen. Reformatting the same book after a font change took a bit less than 5 seconds. This leaves 5 seconds for the software to open the zip on the SD card, extract and load the file, and go to the last visited page. Which, on reflection, seems a bit much.

Going to the next page in this book took about 2 seconds from the button click until the new page was displayed. The larger part of this was spent doing whatever before the screen flip, so this is not a problem with the actual screen being slow.

Halving those numbers would be nice.

I've definitely noticed the former, but not the latter. But then, I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to that.

I imagine what happens in the time it takes to open an FB2 file is that the application goes through the whole file and formats it in order to determine the number of pages in the book at the current font settings. Playing around with those, as well as the zoom levels, might give more of an idea.

I'll check this out a bit when I'm home tonight.

It turns out that opening one particular FB2 book from the book shelf took just shy of 10 seconds from the button click until the last read page appears on the screen. Reformatting the same book after a font change took a bit less than 5 seconds. This leaves 5 seconds for the software to open the zip on the SD card, extract and load the file, and go to the last visited page. Which, on reflection, seems a bit much.

Going to the next page in this book took about 2 seconds from the button click until the new page was displayed. The larger part of this was spent doing whatever before the screen flip, so this is not a problem with the actual screen being slow.

Halving those numbers would be nice.

Thank you, it seems your results are the same as mine.

I also think that 10 seconds for opening a book is too much, but I don't do it so often it bothers me.

Howewever, I do change pages a lot (about once per page, go figure :) ) and find the delay quite annoying. I'd say it's a matter of the V3 not pre-caching the next/previous page before showing it. I hope they can fix it with a firmware update.

By the way... I've found the V3 battery life is much, much better than my old PRS-500's, and much, much, much better than my girlfriend's PRS-505's.

I'd say it's a matter of the V3 not pre-caching the next/previous page before showing it. I hope they can fix it with a firmware update.

That should certainly be possible, yes. Heck, since the CoolReader engine is available as Open Source from sourceforge.net, I'd give it a shot myself if I had the time and energy to start such a project right now.

Something else that caught my eye was the following line in the release notes of the latest version: "Added support for HTML entity in FB2 (& ", etc.)"

Now there is something to look forward to in the next firmware update!

That should certainly be possible, yes. Heck, since the CoolReader engine is available as Open Source from sourceforge.net, I'd give it a shot myself if I had the time and energy to start such a project right now.

CoolReader tuning up is already in progress. There is experimental firmware with new (lets call it beta version) CoolReader. The list of improvements is huge, caching of the next page - is one of them (another one - is changing fonts "on the fly"). But the result is not so good - about 1.6 sec/page turn. As the author says, it is a problem with display driver, it is the reason of a delay.

[Uploading your own fonts] is possible now for FB2/TXT formats. All you need - is to download cr3.zip file (for example, from here (http://users.i.com.ua/~torbich/cr3.zip), unpack it to the /crengine folder of the SD card, copy your favorite fonts to \fonts folder and edit fb2.css file for your needs. Turn Off and On your V3 for the changes to apply.

I've played around some more with this, and it doesn't work reliably. The fb2.css works just fine, but quite a few fonts apparently don't work. The Lucida Bright and Lucida Sans fonts from a Win2k/Office2k3 installation don't work. Neither does Palatino Linotype from a WinXP installation. Redhat's Liberation fonts work just fine, though.

Interestingly, the Palatino font works under the Windows version of Coolreader 3.0.8, while the Lucida fonts at least have the good grace to consistently refuse to work both on the V3 and under Windows. But then, only having the Lucida fonts and the corresponding fb2.css in the crengine directory, but no other fonts, makes Coolreader refuse to even start up under Windows, while on the V3 it continues working...

I've played around some more with this, and it doesn't work reliably. The fb2.css works just fine, but quite a few fonts apparently don't work.
Check up the font file extension - for Windows both .ttf and .TTF are fine, but V3 (and Linux) are case-sensitive, so only .ttf files are considered as fonts, not .TTF.

Check up the font file extension - for Windows both .ttf and .TTF are fine, but V3 (and Linux) are case-sensitive, so only .ttf files are considered as fonts, not .TTF.

That's not it. The files are named Palatino-Regular.ttf etc. They contain no spaces, and the file extension is ttf, not TTF. Besides, as I said, CoolReader 3.0.8 under Windows also had problems loading some fonts and even refused to start with only Lucida Sans and Lucida Bright (both in regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic) in the fonts folder.

That's not it. The files are named Palatino-Regular.ttf etc. They contain no spaces, and the file extension is ttf, not TTF. Besides, as I said, CoolReader 3.0.8 under Windows also had problems loading some fonts and even refused to start with only Lucida Sans and Lucida Bright (both in regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic) in the fonts folder.

Just a guess - tried DOS-standard 8.3 file names? i.e. palatinr.ttf, lucidasa.ttf, and lucidabr.ttf?

Nope. The problem turned out to be something else entirely: I managed to get the two drives (internal flash and SD card) mixed up, and the whole crengine spiel only works on the SD card, but not on the internal flash drive.

Which I think is bogus. The 10 MB of the internal flash drive is far too small to store a significant part of my library, but would be just fine for all the system stuff, namely the PDF manual and the crengine folder. Also,when you boot the device up with the SD card inserted, it defaults to the root of the SD card, so accessing books on the internal flash drive always takes two more button clicks in order to switch to the internal drive first.

This suggests a kind of natural way to keep things neat and tidy: put the system stuff (crengine folder, PDF manual) on the internal flash drive and your library on the SD card. Except that doesn't work.

:-(

My experience using crengine is full of trial and errors. The reader is very picky about "fb2.css" I had problems using css comments, newlines using pt or px in body etc.



body { text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em; font-family: "FreeSerif", serif; font-size: 12pt } this didn't work

...
body { text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em; font-family: "FreeSerif", serif; font-size: 85% }
... this works and is my current setting. You can get "FreeSerif" at http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/

My experience using crengine is full of trial and errors. The reader is very picky about "fb2.css" I had problems using css comments, newlines using pt or px in body etc.

Yeah, I noticed that all the example fb2.css files I saw set the font size in %, and I kind of suspected a problem like this but never tried to see whether that was actually the case. Thanks for saving me the time. ;-)

CoolReader only supports a subset of css, and I'm fine with this, as I think that we don't really need full-blown css support to get decently formatted e-books. But knowing exactly what works (and what doesn't) would be nice.

You can get "FreeSerif" at http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/

Thanks for the link. I'm still not 100% happy with my current font settings (I've switched from the Liberty fonts back to Lucida Sans and Bright because the height difference between small and capital letters in the Liberty fonts wasn't big enough for my taste), and I always like to know what others are using.

Just took delivery of one of these. Like it so far.

One niggle seems to be the susceptibility of the device to large changes in visual output after firmware upgrade. That niggle, though, is tempered by the thought that I just skipped about 10 firmware levels (v1.23 to the latest 1.25).

The device seems to be quite sensitive to carriage return (\r) processing. A bit odd to rely so heavily on dos (windoze) formatting techniques on a Linux based device. Fortunately I'm a programmer so I'm post-processing a lot of material using the usual commandline Linux tools (and perl...a lot of perl).

The latest firmware (2008-01-29) seems to have snafu'd RTF formatted text for me...the unit just isn't processing whatever benighted technique rtf uses to move from one line to the next...weird output abounds.

At this point I'm (sort of) enjoying myself translating the material I have onhand to .fb2 (FictionBook) format, which frankly kicks butt compared to everything else I'm looking at. Having trouble finding repositories of e-books which are in .fb2 format (and aren't in cyrillic). Still, most works are relatively easy to convert...although the density of poetry in Lewis Carroll can be a challenge.

Well this turned into a ramble, didn't it.

What do I think of the reader itself? Based on under 24 hours usage - its great.

You can get "FreeSerif" at http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freefont/

This font is great! It looks a bit squashed at the smallest font setting, and there are certainly more beautiful fonts out there, but it has a very clean, clear look. Free Serif is by far the most readable serif font I've seen so far on a 6" e-ink screen. Thanks again!

I took the V3 on a 4-day trip with the family over the Easter weekend, and I couldn't be happier with the experience. Trips involving small children feel like moving a complete household anyway, so not having to worry about the number of books to take with me was nice. The FreeSerif font is awesome even after reading for hours, and the experience was sufficiently immersive that muscle memory activated and I started to actually try to turn those non-existent paper pages a couple of times. :-)

The only major complaint I have are the occasional crashes/reboots. Once, the device rebooted after a waiting time of 20-30 seconds, the other time it was completely stuck with the red LED on, and I had to use a tooth pick to reset the unit.

Note to self: always have a tooth pick or paper clip with you when using the V3.

Note to self: always have a tooth pick or paper clip with you when using the V3.

I dont know how big the reset is on the v3, but i usually find my stylus on my pda useful for things like that, of course it doesnt help you if you dont carry a pda either :)