JetBook and FictionBook/.fb2

bill_mchale · 10-10-2008, 01:19 PM

I was browsing the Jetbook website today and noticed that it claims to support .fb2 format, which I believe is FictionBook.

So far, pretty much all of the discussion of the Jetbook has talked about it supporting txt and pdfs. So, I was just curious, is this new? Or have we just ignored it up to now?

Also, does anyone know of any tools that will convert other non DRM'd formats into fb2? I am not too worried about reading DRM'd books right now because I suspect it would take me years to work through the PG and the Fictionwise MultiFormat books that interested me (and hopefully by then, DRM will be as dead for books as it is becoming for music).

If it wasn't for the limited format support, JetBook, actually comes pretty close to meeting my basic requirements for a reader; essentially, it must be friendly to any of the major computing platforms, and it must be a reasonably open platform. The LCD versus eInk issue to me is not important.

Jetbook, here is a hint, if you release the source code for the device, you will probably get a bunch of people who will be happy to port FBreader to the device and immensely increase your format support.

--
Bill

pilotbob · 10-10-2008, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

If it wasn't for the limited format support, JetBook, actually comes pretty close to meeting my basic requirements for a reader; essentially, it must be friendly to any of the major computing platforms, and it must be a reasonably open platform. The LCD versus eInk issue to me is not important.

What I really like about the Jetbook (see my review) was the folder support and built in file manager. Also, the LCD screen was fast. Bottom line though it is more expensive than the Sony and the eInk screen is better. Although Sony has no dictionary lookup. Also, the Sony does support DRM formats... but with the deDRM tools not so much of an issue.

If this was a $199 device it would be much more compelling. But, good catch on the FB2. I never tired that format when I had the review unit.

BOb

bill_mchale · 10-10-2008, 02:15 PM

Bob,
Thanks. The cost is not a huge issue for me.. It looks like if you look around, you can find Jetbooks in the $300 range. The screen, from your review, seems like it would meet my needs. As for the DRM, well I am not planning on buying DRM'd content. Besides the questionable legality (according to DMCA) of removing DRM, I think buying DRM'd content only encourages publishers to keep using it. I will buy books from Baen and any other publisher or book seller who sells books w/o DRM. The only possible exception is the eReader format since it doesn't rely on a central server for DRM.

As a dedicated Mac and Linux user, I like the fact that Jetbook does not tie you to to a particular O/S platform. After the Jetbook, Sony is probably closer to meeting my criteria than any of the rest, but mostly that is because of Calibre and not because of Sony's efforts. After that, its probably the ebookwise 1150... but interfacing with Macs and Linux boxes is still a little awkward.

Ultimately, if I can find a relatively painless method of converting one of fictionwise's multiformats into fb2, Jetbook might have another customer.

--
Bill

pilotbob · 10-10-2008, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Ultimately, if I can find a relatively painless method of converting one of fictionwise's multiformats into fb2, Jetbook might have another customer.

--
Bill

I was just reading another feed here about a Hanlin user prefering the FB2 reader on Hanlin to the Mobi one and talking about converting to Fb2... so there must be a way to do it. Did you check the Wiki? (Hmm I only see an FB2 to LRF listed there.)

BOb

wallcraft · 10-10-2008, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Also, does anyone know of any tools that will convert other non DRM'd formats into fb2?

See FB2 creation. I think BookDesigner and any2fb2 are Windows-only, but OOoFBTools should work on any Desktop.

FBReader is one option for Desktop FB2 reading, but see Eng:Readers at FictionBook.

bill_mchale · 10-12-2008, 03:34 PM

Sigh... OOoFBTools is kind of hard to use.. mainly because all the instructions are in Russian

. I do have a friend who knows Russian. I also found an html2fb2.pl script that shows some promise, but it seems to have problems with special characters (Then again, firefox also seems to have problems with them when I try to save an HTML book to txt). I am looking at the script to see if I can figure it out. Unfortunately, the script doesn't have a lot in the way of comments to help a guy out.

Another solution (should I settle on the Jetbook) is to use my browser to save html books as pdfs. Since I would be saving them on a size designed specifically for the screen, it ought to work just fine.

PilotBob, I read your review of the Jetbook... you mention that the arrow keys are used for scrolling in PDF mode; I assume the page turn buttons still go to the next page?

--
Bill

pilotbob · 10-12-2008, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

PilotBob, I read your review of the Jetbook... you mention that the arrow keys are used for scrolling in PDF mode; I assume the page turn buttons still go to the next page?

Yes that's correct...

BOb

bill_mchale · 10-12-2008, 10:18 PM

Alas, saving as PDFs isn't working out quite as well as I had planned. For some reason, Safari is leaving large right margins; in some cases, it looks like 30-40% of the page. There might be a way around it, but at the moment, it doesn't look like this is going to be a viable way to import full ebooks to a Jetbook. So either I figure out the fb2 stuff, or I look at finding another reader.

--
Bill

kovidgoyal · 10-13-2008, 02:09 AM

there used to be an any2fb2 script I used on my linux boxen back in the days when i used HaaliReader on my wince devices. Unfortunately, i cant find it any more.

bill_mchale · 10-13-2008, 10:39 AM

Thanks for trying Kovid. I guess part of me is just stubborn

. I like the technology of the Sony readers quite a lot.. if they were to only come up with a platform neutral solution, I would buy one tomorrow...

That being said, on the way to work this morning, I might have thought of a solution for the problem with the perl html2fb script. Basically it seems to have problems with the encoding of special characters (though in the defense of the script, firefox also had problems when I asked it to save the web page to a text file). Everytime it sees something like this: &#8220, the script seems to have some problems with it; instead of seeing a type of quotation mark, I get several nonsense characters in its place.

Unfortunately, the perl code the original author used, is rather cryptic and not very well commented. Also, I am not entirely sure the problem is with his library, it might be with the HTML::Treebuilder package he uses. Also, unfortunately, because of sparse web documentation, I am not 100% that fb2 properly supports the same character encoding that html does (Though I think it does). This leaves me with two possible approaches, both cluges, but both should solve the problem.

The first solution is to simply write a script to substitute all the special characters in the script for more generic ascii characters. A left and right quote might be nice, but they are not essential to keep a book readable.

The second solution is similar to the first, but it is to first substitute the current encoding with one that html2fb2 will leave alone. Once its been converted to fb2, a second script can restore the original encoding. This would be optimal... assuming fb2 actually understands the encoding (being that it is XML, I would think it should).

--
Bill

kovidgoyal · 10-13-2008, 12:43 PM

You shoud just be able to replace entities with their utf-8 encoded equivalents. I dont know Perl very well, but in python it needs about 10 lines of code.

bill_mchale · 10-13-2008, 01:09 PM

Thanks Kovid; I will have to look that up. I have been programming perl for years, but 95% of the time, it has not involved html, and when it did, it was for rather simple projects where I never used any special characters.

--
Bill

bill_mchale · 10-13-2008, 07:22 PM

Ok, I haven't coded the work around yet, but I am pretty confident it will work. I basically did a global search and replace on the &# part of the character encoding. Then I ran it through html2fb.pl and then did another global search and replace to restore the encoding. Worked like a charm.

. Of course, this was with a relatively simple book. We will have to see what happens with more complicated texts.

Still, if I can get it working reasonably smoothly, it might make the Jetbook viable for me; at least until they get better support.

--
Bill

Nate the great · 10-13-2008, 07:50 PM

It occurred to me that if they added FB2 support, they might have ported FBReader in its entirety.

I mention this because FBReader supports many formats besides FB2, including Mobipocket. If this is true then your conversion problem just got much easier.

We'll need to check on this.

Kris777 · 10-23-2008, 09:11 PM

yes, I have jetBook and new version of jetBook supports FB2 format.
You can also use Bookdesigner program to convert books from DOC, HTML, RTF formats to FB2

10-10-2008, 01:19 PM	#1
bill_mchale Wizard Posts: 1,451 Karma: 1550000 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Maryland, USA Device: Nook Simple Touch, HPC Evo 4G LTE	JetBook and FictionBook/.fb2 I was browsing the Jetbook website today and noticed that it claims to support .fb2 format, which I believe is FictionBook. So far, pretty much all of the discussion of the Jetbook has talked about it supporting txt and pdfs. So, I was just curious, is this new? Or have we just ignored it up to now? Also, does anyone know of any tools that will convert other non DRM'd formats into fb2? I am not too worried about reading DRM'd books right now because I suspect it would take me years to work through the PG and the Fictionwise MultiFormat books that interested me (and hopefully by then, DRM will be as dead for books as it is becoming for music). If it wasn't for the limited format support, JetBook, actually comes pretty close to meeting my basic requirements for a reader; essentially, it must be friendly to any of the major computing platforms, and it must be a reasonably open platform. The LCD versus eInk issue to me is not important. Jetbook, here is a hint, if you release the source code for the device, you will probably get a bunch of people who will be happy to port FBreader to the device and immensely increase your format support. -- Bill

10-13-2008, 10:39 AM	#10
bill_mchale Wizard Posts: 1,451 Karma: 1550000 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Maryland, USA Device: Nook Simple Touch, HPC Evo 4G LTE	Thanks for trying Kovid. I guess part of me is just stubborn . I like the technology of the Sony readers quite a lot.. if they were to only come up with a platform neutral solution, I would buy one tomorrow... That being said, on the way to work this morning, I might have thought of a solution for the problem with the perl html2fb script. Basically it seems to have problems with the encoding of special characters (though in the defense of the script, firefox also had problems when I asked it to save the web page to a text file). Everytime it sees something like this: &#8220, the script seems to have some problems with it; instead of seeing a type of quotation mark, I get several nonsense characters in its place. Unfortunately, the perl code the original author used, is rather cryptic and not very well commented. Also, I am not entirely sure the problem is with his library, it might be with the HTML::Treebuilder package he uses. Also, unfortunately, because of sparse web documentation, I am not 100% that fb2 properly supports the same character encoding that html does (Though I think it does). This leaves me with two possible approaches, both cluges, but both should solve the problem. The first solution is to simply write a script to substitute all the special characters in the script for more generic ascii characters. A left and right quote might be nice, but they are not essential to keep a book readable. The second solution is similar to the first, but it is to first substitute the current encoding with one that html2fb2 will leave alone. Once its been converted to fb2, a second script can restore the original encoding. This would be optimal... assuming fb2 actually understands the encoding (being that it is XML, I would think it should). -- Bill Last edited by bill_mchale; 10-13-2008 at 10:42 AM.

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10-10-2008, 02:15 PM	#3
bill_mchale Wizard Posts: 1,451 Karma: 1550000 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Maryland, USA Device: Nook Simple Touch, HPC Evo 4G LTE	Bob, Thanks. The cost is not a huge issue for me.. It looks like if you look around, you can find Jetbooks in the $300 range. The screen, from your review, seems like it would meet my needs. As for the DRM, well I am not planning on buying DRM'd content. Besides the questionable legality (according to DMCA) of removing DRM, I think buying DRM'd content only encourages publishers to keep using it. I will buy books from Baen and any other publisher or book seller who sells books w/o DRM. The only possible exception is the eReader format since it doesn't rely on a central server for DRM. As a dedicated Mac and Linux user, I like the fact that Jetbook does not tie you to to a particular O/S platform. After the Jetbook, Sony is probably closer to meeting my criteria than any of the rest, but mostly that is because of Calibre and not because of Sony's efforts. After that, its probably the ebookwise 1150... but interfacing with Macs and Linux boxes is still a little awkward. Ultimately, if I can find a relatively painless method of converting one of fictionwise's multiformats into fb2, Jetbook might have another customer. -- Bill

10-12-2008, 03:34 PM	#6
bill_mchale Wizard Posts: 1,451 Karma: 1550000 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Maryland, USA Device: Nook Simple Touch, HPC Evo 4G LTE	Sigh... OOoFBTools is kind of hard to use.. mainly because all the instructions are in Russian . I do have a friend who knows Russian. I also found an html2fb2.pl script that shows some promise, but it seems to have problems with special characters (Then again, firefox also seems to have problems with them when I try to save an HTML book to txt). I am looking at the script to see if I can figure it out. Unfortunately, the script doesn't have a lot in the way of comments to help a guy out. Another solution (should I settle on the Jetbook) is to use my browser to save html books as pdfs. Since I would be saving them on a size designed specifically for the screen, it ought to work just fine. PilotBob, I read your review of the Jetbook... you mention that the arrow keys are used for scrolling in PDF mode; I assume the page turn buttons still go to the next page? -- Bill

10-12-2008, 10:18 PM	#8
bill_mchale Wizard Posts: 1,451 Karma: 1550000 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Maryland, USA Device: Nook Simple Touch, HPC Evo 4G LTE	Alas, saving as PDFs isn't working out quite as well as I had planned. For some reason, Safari is leaving large right margins; in some cases, it looks like 30-40% of the page. There might be a way around it, but at the moment, it doesn't look like this is going to be a viable way to import full ebooks to a Jetbook. So either I figure out the fb2 stuff, or I look at finding another reader. -- Bill

10-13-2008, 02:09 AM	#9
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,857 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	there used to be an any2fb2 script I used on my linux boxen back in the days when i used HaaliReader on my wince devices. Unfortunately, i cant find it any more.

10-13-2008, 12:43 PM	#11
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,857 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	You shoud just be able to replace entities with their utf-8 encoded equivalents. I dont know Perl very well, but in python it needs about 10 lines of code.

10-13-2008, 01:09 PM	#12
bill_mchale Wizard Posts: 1,451 Karma: 1550000 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Maryland, USA Device: Nook Simple Touch, HPC Evo 4G LTE	Thanks Kovid; I will have to look that up. I have been programming perl for years, but 95% of the time, it has not involved html, and when it did, it was for rather simple projects where I never used any special characters. -- Bill

10-13-2008, 07:22 PM	#13
bill_mchale Wizard Posts: 1,451 Karma: 1550000 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Maryland, USA Device: Nook Simple Touch, HPC Evo 4G LTE	Ok, I haven't coded the work around yet, but I am pretty confident it will work. I basically did a global search and replace on the &# part of the character encoding. Then I ran it through html2fb.pl and then did another global search and replace to restore the encoding. Worked like a charm. . Of course, this was with a relatively simple book. We will have to see what happens with more complicated texts. Still, if I can get it working reasonably smoothly, it might make the Jetbook viable for me; at least until they get better support. -- Bill

10-13-2008, 07:50 PM	#14
Nate the great Sir Penguin of Edinburgh Posts: 12,375 Karma: 23555235 Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: DC Metro area Device: Shake a stick plus 1	It occurred to me that if they added FB2 support, they might have ported FBReader in its entirety. I mention this because FBReader supports many formats besides FB2, including Mobipocket. If this is true then your conversion problem just got much easier. We'll need to check on this.

10-23-2008, 09:11 PM	#15
Kris777 Banned Posts: 1,767 Karma: 2520493 Join Date: Oct 2008 Device: Nexus 7, jetBook-Lite, jetBook mini, Toshiba Thrive, JETBOOK COLOR	yes, I have jetBook and new version of jetBook supports FB2 format. You can also use Bookdesigner program to convert books from DOC, HTML, RTF formats to FB2

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