p-books

[anahid]

I've had the cybook for only six weeks, but yesterday I had to start a paperbook (studies), just a normal size 300 pages book. I've read books for decades, hundreds and hundreds of them, without any problem, but somehow now I find it really awkward, uncomfortable, looking for the button to pass pages, struggling with the pages to maintain them in place nice and flat... having to look up where I left the reading four or five times... and the size...



anahid

[Slite]

Originally Posted by anahid

I've had the cybook for only six weeks, but yesterday I had to start a paperbook (studies), just a normal size 300 pages book. I've read books for decades, hundreds and hundreds of them, without any problem, but somehow now I find it really awkward, uncomfortable, looking for the button to pass pages, struggling with the pages to maintain them in place nice and flat... having to look up where I left the reading four or five times... and the size...



anahid

I know exactly what you mean.... It's a pain to have to use a dead-tree book when I want to read in bed. My BeBook is so much handier. Even when I'm parked in my favourite reading chair, right next to the fireplace, with a glass of whiskey on the sideboard, I prefer using the BeBook, just because it is so much lighter and easier to hold than a "normal" book.

Oh dear, now I wanna go home from work, light a fire, pour a glass of scotch and snuggle up in the chair....

[Loopy65]

Originally Posted by anahid

I've had the cybook for only six weeks, but yesterday I had to start a paperbook (studies), just a normal size 300 pages book. I've read books for decades, hundreds and hundreds of them, without any problem, but somehow now I find it really awkward, uncomfortable, looking for the button to pass pages, struggling with the pages to maintain them in place nice and flat... having to look up where I left the reading four or five times... and the size...



anahid

lol .. you summed it all up so well here! .. at the start (for about 30 minutes!) I wondered if I'd be able to get used to using a Cybook .. now, I know that I can't tolerate the 'real' thing at all! .. I cleared out my paper books and decided that if there were any I really really wanted to read I'd get the electronic version! Of course I only read 'novels' so I have unlimited choice .. if I had to read 'proper' books for work or study that would be hard as they're not quite so readily available ..

Loopy

[DixieGal]

Soon, well I've been saying soon for several months now, I plan on cutting apart any p-books that I want to keep and magically transforming them. Slayda helped me figure out how to cut them into pieces and slice off the page headers and footers, and then OCR them and reformat them nicely. I figure on keeping them in PDF and MS Word formats until the next great thing comes along.

I simply can't stand to read even a paper magazine anymore. They are heavy, clumsy, etc. This sweet little EB1150 has truly brought sunshine into my life.

[Kaero]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Soon, well I've been saying soon for several months now, I plan on cutting apart any p-books that I want to keep and magically transforming them. Slayda helped me figure out how to cut them into pieces and slice off the page headers and footers, and then OCR them and reformat them nicely. I figure on keeping them in PDF and MS Word formats until the next great thing comes along.

I simply can't stand to read even a paper magazine anymore. They are heavy, clumsy, etc. This sweet little EB1150 has truly brought sunshine into my life.

I would like to recommend not to use .pdf or .doc formats. It is evil . Pdf is hard to transform to other size of paper, or with other words, pdf is tightly connected to its paper size: a pdf file created as A4 paper is hard to read on any smaller screen and respectively. It is not just the problem of the software, it is the problem of the format.

And MS Word format? First, not everyone have ms office, not every book reader can read this closed proprietary format, and secondly, it was designed to create documents, not to share them. Last, but not least, did you tried to open older .doc documents in newer version of Word? And do you know that MS will switch to totaly new format, totaly different from todays .doc?

I would recomend simple txt (preferably with UTF8 encoding). In the case you need more, such as emphasis, chapters etc. you can use html - almost everything can now read hypertext markup language (even cell phones!). Also ebooks formats, such as pdb and mobi files are sufficient. maybe .epub format sounds good. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epub#IDPF

You invested much time in scaning and formating, so you shouldn't spoil your work by choosing stupid format.

[GatorDeb]

Hasn't happened with the ereader yet but I get annoyed when listening to the radio or a regular TV and I can't pause or rewind it

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Kaero

Last, but not least, did you tried to open older .doc documents in newer version of Word?

Yes, I do so on a regular basis with no problems whatsoever. The latest version of Word (Word 2007) opens documents created at least as far back as Word 6 with no problems whatsoever. What difficulties have you encountered?

Word format is certainly proprietary, but, should you be one of the few people not to have Microsoft Office, there are free programs such as Open Office which can handle the format.

[Kaero]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, I do so on a regular basis with no problems whatsoever. The latest version of Word (Word 2007) opens documents created at least as far back as Word 6 with no problems whatsoever. What difficulties have you encountered?

Word format is certainly proprietary, but, should you be one of the few people not to have Microsoft Office, there are free programs such as Open Office which can handle the format.

Unfortunately, I encounter problems with older formats every day at work. I have got Word 2007, my collegue have got 2003 and others some other versions I do not remember. Word usually opens older file correctly, but during editation, the software behaved weirdly - changes format of some text I didn't want to and mostly the best practice is to "copy& paste as a nonformatted text" and create formating totally from the beginning (I could say I am advanced pc user, without boast).

Anyway, older/newer versions was only one of problems using such file format: Not many of ereaders can read .doc. It is not any ISO standart. Microsoft will abandon the .doc completely in next version. The format is bloated.
Anyway, I am free to discusion. Tell me any solid reason why to use it as output format.

[DaleDe]

To exchange documents between versions you can save as Word 97. This format is pretty much interchangeable everywhere Windows Word is in use. The main reason to save it word is that if you don't all your edits are lost . More seriously there are lots of reasons to use it as an output format since it preserves some formatting which is better than text and many eBook creation programs will accept it as input. It is bloated and has all the other bad features you mentioned but it is also the prevalent format in use in most businesses.

[Kaero]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

To exchange documents between versions you can save as Word 97. This format is pretty much interchangeable everywhere Windows Word is in use. The main reason to save it word is that if you don't all your edits are lost . More seriously there are lots of reasons to use it as an output format since it preserves some formatting which is better than text and many eBook creation programs will accept it as input. It is bloated and has all the other bad features you mentioned but it is also the prevalent format in use in most businesses.

It is funny - MS is producing new and new features to new versions of Office, although many peoples recomends me to save documents in older versions to preserve compatibility. Really funny
Doc is readable on almost every PC, but pdb is readable in almost every reading software...
Html also preserves some formatting, and many programs will accept it as input.

[K-Thom]

I'd rather recommend rtf, if it's without graphics. Reliable, keeps all the formatting, readable by almost every Office suite. And, best, you can easily convert it with Arachnophilia (use Version 4.0!) into clean html.