eReader to be Ported to the Palm Pre

[carlobee]

I'll be ordering Pre and i think this is going to be great.

[daffy4u]

If you're using any of the Homebrew apps on your Pre there is now a "lite" Palm Reader app available.

From the PreCentral Forums

Palm Reader has the following features:

* On device library management. Add books to library, delete from library, edit title and author.
* Bookmarks, bookmark management, and jump to any location in the book.
* Auto-scroll with variable speed, or "flick" up or down to move through the book.
* "Flick" pages left or right, or use on screen arrow keys to read page by page.
* Search capability by word or phrase.
* Dictionary look up of a word with five on-line dictionary choices: Wikipedia, Google, YourDictionary, Websters, Urban Dictionary.
* Full array of adjustable preferences: Font Size, Text Color, Background Color, Screen Orientation, "Flick" Paging (On/Off)


Known Issues:

* Due to limitations with the current SDK, Palm Reader will currently only support HTML formatted books. Popular formats such as ePub and Mobipocket are archived files that cannot be decompressed on the Pre at this time. We have requested access from Palm to be able to support these formats (non DRM of course).
* Currently the Pre will still turn the screen off even while reading a book unless finger swipes or other actions are performed. There is a homebrew app designed to prevent this, and a Preware tweak that adds an option to prevent this, but there is no Palm authorized method at this time.


Directions:

* There are several popular utilities available to convert your existing eBooks into HTML. Once the book is converted, simply copy the book (you may copy the folder structure, and any images if you wish) to the Pre in USB mode. Feel free to use whatever folder structure you like, Palm Reader will find the book.
* After you have copied the books to the Pre, load up Palm Reader and it will explain that you have no books in your library. Press the "Search for Book" button and it will find all of the HTML files you have copied to the USB drive.
* Select the book and Palm Reader will format the file for the screen (this does take a while the first time this book is being loaded, so please be patient).
* The book is now in your library where you can edit the title and author, or simply begin reading.

[bhartman36]

Linux has plenty of serviceable decompression programs. It might be possible to write something to hook into one of those, such as the webos-internals team did for the experimental video recording app. It's not something I know a lot about, but I would think that would be an easier road to go down, rather than waiting for Palm to open up the SDK (which I think, despite Palm's best intentions, is bound to take longer).

[JCKobo]

There is already an eBook reader on the Palm Pre.

Shortcovers has been on the Palm Pre since it launched in the US in June. You can buy any of our books directly on your Palm Pre, and now with our ePub support, you can take those same purchases to your PC/Mac and to Sony and other eReaders.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by JCShortcovers

There is already an eBook reader on the Palm Pre.

Shortcovers has been on the Palm Pre since it launched in the US in June. You can buy any of our books directly on your Palm Pre, and now with our ePub support, you can take those same purchases to your PC/Mac and to Sony and other eReaders.

Thanks for the post, as a result, I downloaded the reader and bought a book (Atlas Shrugged). I had been feeling guilty about picking it up from the dark side, and thought to assuage my guilt by paying someone for it.

Anyway, aside from the intimidating wait times when it's "Loading" in spite of having downloaded the book to my device, I can't for the life of me figure out how to retrieve a bookmark.

I'm not in the habit of leaving cards open in CardView, and I really don't like hunting through chapter and verse just to find where I left off in a 1500 page book. This app should remember where it left off, and open back to that page.

If you have any influence on the development team, please submit my regards, and suggestion.

Oh, and is there a help file somewhere, I can't seem to find one, either on the device, the PreCentral message board, or the ShortCovers website.

[JCKobo]

Originally Posted by wodin

Thanks for the post, as a result, I downloaded the reader and bought a book (Atlas Shrugged).

Thanks for giving us a try and thanks for buying something, even if it was guilt driven

Originally Posted by wodin

If you have any influence on the development team, please submit my regards, and suggestion.

When you open a book back up to read, it should return you to your previous reading location. There seems to be a bug in the Pre application that causes that to not work properly for some users and you seem to have run into it.

I do have some pull with the dev team - I help set the priorities for our development, and better bookmark support (including fixing that bug) is the top of our list. I'll put your comment in there as well to give the team an increased sense of urgency.

Originally Posted by wodin

Oh, and is there a help file somewhere, I can't seem to find one, either on the device, the PreCentral message board, or the ShortCovers website.

Our help files are linked on the website:
http://www.shortcovers.com/companyinfo/help.html

And the Palm specific help file is here:
http://www.shortcovers.com/shortcove...wEw/page1.html

Thanks again for trying Shortcovers, and if you have any more questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them.

Jordan Christensen
Product Manager,Shortcovers

[The Hooded Claw]

I tried Shortcovers on my Pre, but it appears it has to revisit the internet frequently to update as I read. I can make a lot of guesses why the producers had good reason to develop it that way, but it doesn't meet my needs (especially not for reading on airplanes!). I'm holding out for a Kindle app for my Pre, though in fairness I can't imagine sitting and reading on that screen for long periods. Still would be nice to have for short bursts of reading!

[wodin]

Originally Posted by The Hooded Claw

I tried Shortcovers on my Pre, but it appears it has to revisit the internet frequently to update as I read. I can make a lot of guesses why the producers had good reason to develop it that way, but it doesn't meet my needs (especially not for reading on airplanes!). I'm holding out for a Kindle app for my Pre, though in fairness I can't imagine sitting and reading on that screen for long periods. Still would be nice to have for short bursts of reading!

Yes, that appears to be the case. It's not a problem for me because I nearly always have a cell signal or WiFi available, but it would be nice! Those interminable waits for downloads are annoying! I told it to download to the device, but no joy.

I think they have plans to enable that feature because the download button is there, and they have rhetoric on their website that seems to indicate it's in the plans. And this app is still a very rough beta. We can hope.