Why i think the Illiad will fail (or has already).

[astfgl]

Originally Posted by jæd

Last I looked it could render txt and html...

HTML support is broken. CSS is spotty and the chopped lines issue is still not fixed. Reading HTML is a chore, not a pleasure. Converting all my HTML books and documents is more trouble than it's worth. I'm still using my REB1100 for most of my reading.

[markiehill]

Straying off the DRM argument for a second, i agree with this. There is nothing pleasant about reading on the illiad at the moment. Even on PDF which is the best supported format as far as i can tell, it can still be a painful experience, zoom implementation is not intuitive for new users and reformatting is a total mare.

A good reader has to be able to handle pretty much everything you chuck at it OR provide a painless piece of software to do the conversion on the PC side and then transfer over.

Mark

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by markiehill

Straying off the DRM argument for a second, i agree with this. There is nothing pleasant about reading on the illiad at the moment. Even on PDF which is the best supported format as far as i can tell, it can still be a painful experience, zoom implementation is not intuitive for new users and reformatting is a total mare.

I have to agree with that. Pan/Zoom is a poor way to read an eBook.

But this is not an iLiad problem. It's a PDF problem. PDF is a not an eBook format. It's a page layout format. By that I mean that when you create a PDF, you are basically creating an electronic version of a paper product - complete with deciding on the physical paper size to be used.

The iLiad is not an 8.5"x11" device. It's about 1/2 of that. So if you read a PDF that's formatted for 8.5x11, it will be like someone shrunk the book by half - including the type being half-sized. If the type is small to begin with, it's unreadable - unless you zoom in.

My iLiad-formatted PDFs, on the other hand, look great and are a pleasure to read.

Originally Posted by markiehill

A good reader has to be able to handle pretty much everything you chuck at it OR provide a painless piece of software to do the conversion on the PC side and then transfer over.

I agree.

But the issue isn't the reader here. It's the eBook formats.

[markiehill]

my god we agree on something nearly

to get people to transition we need to understand that this is an imperfect world and that the reader will have to deal with many formats (some crap) and render them as best it can. I mean if we had good working text support , that lets you choose a couple of basic fonts and bookmarked your position and formatted well... that would be a good thing for now, most formats can be converted to text.

i will hold my hands up and say that i have not tried txt since the original firmware version, so if you fire right back and tell me thats all present now and working i will have to go and check it out.

Also in my imperfect world i still maintain some form of DRM support is needed , ha ha couldnt let it go could I.

I agree that if you take the time to format a PDF file for the device it looks really impressive, but i aint got time for this ... i need it to happen at the press of a button.

Ohh and we really need search in PDF files.

Mark

[jæd]

Originally Posted by astfgl

HTML support is broken. CSS is spotty and the chopped lines issue is still not fixed. Reading HTML is a chore, not a pleasure. Converting all my HTML books and documents is more trouble than it's worth. I'm still using my REB1100 for most of my reading.

While html isn't perfect it is still useable... Line chopping appears to be a css bug when changing text size and has been reported to Ires,

[jæd]

Originally Posted by markiehill

to get people to transition we need to understand that this is an imperfect world and that the reader will have to deal with many formats (some crap) and render them as best it can. I mean if we had good working text support , that lets you choose a couple of basic fonts and bookmarked your position and formatted well... that would be a good thing for now, most formats can be converted to text.

Ideally you would want RTF support as this would allow styling. If you want one so badly, whats to stop you or anyone else writing a RTF-reader for the Iliad...?

Or look at improving the html browser (Dillo...?), PDF is support is nice, but ultimately a dead-end. Its a format for replicating paper documents, and therefore isn't dislay agnostic. Unless you have a display agnostic reader on the Iliad you will always have to do some re-formatting to match the size of the screen. (Unless the world standardises on A5)

Originally Posted by markiehill

I agree that if you take the time to format a PDF file for the device it looks really impressive, but i aint got time for this ... i need it to happen at the press of a button.

I have a script which does this, and there are many other scripts and macros around that will do this for you...

[markiehill]

nothing to stop me from writing/porting one, and if i could be sure i could get my code onto it without bricking it, i would probably be able to port one time permitting. Though i am not a linux programmer i have written plenty for dos and windoze over the past few years.

I was hoping an official SDK might be in the works at some point.

PDF would not have been my priority if i were irex, it would have been txt, rtf, html in that order, and then perhaps PDF.

Mark

[markiehill]

btw do you have a script that will run

a) on windows
b) or use MS office ?

Thats really what i need.

Mark

[jæd]

Originally Posted by markiehill

nothing to stop me from writing/porting one, and if i could be sure i could get my code onto it without bricking it, i would probably be able to port one time permitting. Though i am not a linux programmer i have written plenty for dos and windoze over the past few years.

Someone else has already done a quick first port of Dillo already...

[jæd]

Originally Posted by markiehill

a) on windows
b) or use MS office ?

No... I don't use Windows, and my only Office script is simple macro to format page sizes... When I get around to I publish more pdf/html resize/extraction scripts...

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by markiehill

to get people to transition we need to understand that this is an imperfect world and that the reader will have to deal with many formats (some crap) and render them as best it can.

Then you've just significantly increased the cost of the reader - both in development costs and license costs. Remember that many proprietary formats are also patented and the licenses may (probably will) cost.

This also adds to the Tower of eBabel issue instead of solving it. Plus it increases the odds that the format you bought your eBooks in will not exist in the future.

The best thing is to pick a few open formats and make it work with those.

Originally Posted by markiehill

I mean if we had good working text support , that lets you choose a couple of basic fonts and bookmarked your position and formatted well... that would be a good thing for now, most formats can be converted to text.

And to HTML as well. And, unlike text, HTML preserves most formatting. HTML is a much better format to standardize on.

The only thing that the iLiad doesn't do is bookmarks for HTML files. That is because eInk is a page-oriented technology and, so, they made the iLiad page-oriented. HTML is layout-oriented, so it's much harder to remember what "page" you were on with HTML. And why PDF works so well on the iLiad.

Originally Posted by markiehill

i will hold my hands up and say that i have not tried txt since the original firmware version, so if you fire right back and tell me thats all present now and working i will have to go and check it out.

I haven't looked at text format since the start either. I have no interest in that format on the iLiad.

Originally Posted by markiehill

I agree that if you take the time to format a PDF file for the device it looks really impressive, but i aint got time for this ... i need it to happen at the press of a button.

3 clicks in OpenOffice to access the page layout dialog.
A few more to adjust the page size to 6.5x5.5".
Save.
Export to PDF.

A little more than the press of a button, but easy nonetheless.

Originally Posted by markiehill

Ohh and we really need search in PDF files.

Another thing we agree on.

[markiehill]

yipee straight from mobipocket themselves !!!

>>Illiad support is already on the tracks (using our Java SDK)
>>But for the PSP it's another story.

http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/view...?p=18286#18286

[nekokami]

Interesting. A Java based reader makes it more likely that the reader will continue to work even if existing platforms expire, though if I understand correctly, Mobipocket only allows you to have up to four devices activated at once, and sets the device ID for only the activated devices when the eBooks are downloaded. I wonder how the device ID will be set for the iLiad? Does it have a software-accessable serial number?

Mobipocket's prices aren't that great when you consider they still hold your content hostage. You get maybe a dollar off paperback prices at best, and if they fold or don't support a future system, you can't read your content anymore. Of all DRM systems, I still think the "least evil" is probably eReader/Palm Digital Media, which uses your credit card number as the key. Too bad they don't have a Java version.

[markiehill]

still i think it is a step forward for the irex in terms of being a viable business and selling more units.

Mark

[b_k]

Originally Posted by nekokami

.... Does it have a software-accessable serial number? ..

My first guess would be the MAC of the ethernet port. But there could also be a CPU-ID or a serial from some of the other components.