TomeRaider to go open source

[Prestidigitweeze]

It's times like this that make me love this forum.

Here's to your history of ingenuity, literacy and commitment. And it's nice to eavesdrop on people with such a healthy outlook on collaboration.

Is the interest in the format archival (for its back-catalog) or is there a viable feature set/interface/aesthetic that users still miss?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by tsneller

The format is very simple - Only half a dozen or so commands to code for.

I couldn't find documentation for the TomeRaider source format. Can you point me to some?

[tsneller]

The main benefit of the TR file format was the file compression. For example - Anna Kerenina (Tolstoy) is 1936k as a txt file, and compresses to 955kb in TR2, and 846kb in TR3. For comparison the BEST compression in WinRar creates an archive of 414kb. But for a file format that retains readability, it is quite impressive.

These are the main tags used:-
<new> Indicates a new chapter (and an entry in the file index)
<a> Used to create hyperlinks within a TR file
<b>Bold text</b>
<i>Italicise text</i>
<u>Underline Text</u>
<hr> Insert Horizontal line
<br> Insert line break.
<p> The Paragraph Tag - Indicates a new paragraph of text.
<centre>Centre Text</centre> (Centre on the page)

It was based on a small subset of HTML, and is also very similar to the forum mark-up tags.
There are a few other tags, used for tables and TAB delimited (Database) type files, but the above probably represents 95% of the tags commonly used.

I have the full file spec in a MS Word Doc - culled from the help files within TR v2 and V3.

I can email it to anyone who is interested.

I have about 400 out-of-copyright TR files formatted, including about 10 different Bible versions.

[carpetmojo]

Despite being a complete tech-idiot, I cannot help feeling this is a very interesting and worthwhile development - in short, A Very Good Thing.

Best wishes to all who further its progress....

[elcreative]

Does nobody read posting dates on thread comments... last one from OP was years ago... rather like viability of TomeRaider...

[Prestidigitweeze]

Hey, the wildly anachronistic thread-bump was worth it for tsneller's response to me and answer to pdurrant's question.

And the current viability is validated by tsneller's open invitation to pdurrant and the rest of us (despite the OP's having gone AWOL since 2009).

So, to sum (though normally this wouldn't be true): Not out of date and not irrelevant.

[elcreative]

Just agree to disagree then... the joys of a smaller file are really relevant if using something with little memory (in modern terms) but with multi-GB storage even on phones... not vitally important. Uses a small subset of html... just what we need - a less capable formatting ability to go back to cruder appearing books and the revival of another format because we don't have enough...

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Uses a small subset of html... just what we need - a less capable formatting ability

When I look at some >10MB ePubs (as Kobo sells them) that are saturated with embedded fonts, hundreds of CSS files, thousands of styles, then yes, sometimes I think we need less formatting. Doesn't mean the book has to look worse, actually overusing styles is what causes many books to look horrible in the first place when it would look fine with just <h1> <p> <i>.

No reason for a new file format though; as long as it's still HTML you can just use a subset of HTML in regular ePub (and other html based formats)

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Uses a small subset of html... just what we need - a less capable formatting ability to go back to cruder appearing books and the revival of another format because we don't have enough...

For almost all the books I read, yes a smaller less capable format would be better, less chance for someone to screw it up. Paragraphs, headings, bold, italic. That would do the job for 95% of the books I read.
My standard workflow for converting books takes just those tags and strips out everything else. If you actually look at the code for a lot of books, it is horrible.
Markdown supports everything needed for almost all simple fiction.

[MatYadabyte]

Hi All (Hi Tim!),

I think Tim is right, TR2 would be the way to go, TR3 is a bloated mess now, TR3 is still a)simple and b) easy to make the files.

But is there really a place for TomeRaider at all today?

I would gladly give it all to the open source.

Incidentally I have mobilereader.co.uk, what can be done with that?

Best wishes

Mat

Originally Posted by tsneller

Hi Mat,

You may remember me - Did a lot of Beta testing of TR2 and TR3.

More than happy to help with trying to do more development of TR. Very keen to see it on Android.

In the meantime, is anyone interested in adding TomeRaider as a Source format for Calibre. I have hundreds of books in TR2/TR3 source format, which I woul love to publish into Kindle and other formats, but I just don't have the time to do it manually.

The format is very simple - Only half a dozen or so commands to code for.

[Puffolino]

Originally Posted by MatYadabyte

Hi All (Hi Tim!),

I think Tim is right, TR2 would be the way to go, TR3 is a bloated mess now, TR3 is still a)simple and b) easy to make the files.

But is there really a place for TomeRaider at all today?

I would gladly give it all to the open source.

Incidentally I have mobilereader.co.uk, what can be done with that?

Best wishes

Mat

Yes, there would be a place, because there are tons of cool documents available and are waiting to be read on mobile devices!

Just one simple example: the wikipedia
- is available for different languages even today - of course in the tr3 format
- no good wikipedia offline reader app is available for android (wikidroyd is the only one which is not that bad)
- android devices are THE mobile plattform actually (75% market share in the world)

So, what is needed?
1. a simple, cool looking tomeraider for android phones AND tablets
2. a cheap (or free) service to create tr3 documents online
3. maybe an app in the google play market for creating tr3 documents
4. a plattform for all tr3 documents (could be critical to control them against copyright violations etc.)

What do you think about that after some months?

[gdimike]

Hi Mat,

Thank you for releasing TomeRaider as open source. If I were you, I would decide on what open source license to release it under, then put it onto one of the distributed open source software revision control control sites like GitHub and publicize that it's now available.

Mike

[HarryT]

This thread is almost a year old. I'm sure the OP has made up his mind by now. Best to check the posting dates before replying to threads.