Jetbook preferred formats

[Lanx]

So i'm a lazy man at heart, i hate even doing bulk conversions, anyway i have a jetbook and ipod touch, i swap between the two to read, i've found i like the touch more, mainly cuz navigation is easier(multitouch, pinch, zoom, and the fact that the itouch is a fast computer) and i read sleeping on the bed, w/o a reading lamp so i just use the itouch tft.

anyway back on track, i start to play around with the formats the jetbook can handle(since it is going to have fbreader soon). I do not know these formats, i'm not an ebook guy, i think the whole eink thing is all baloney anyway, confusing people into thinking they will have less eyestrain, when half of america works infront of a computer TFT 8hours a day, but they'll read ebooks better with eink ESPECIALLY when they turn the page and this super blinding bright black flash zaps your corneas.

Ok back on track jeez, So i use only pdfs, i read on computer, itouch, jetbook, in pdf only, now i start playing with the formats.

i've found out, calibre is good for
epub

jet book sucks with mobi

and papercrop looks horrible on the jetbook, i guess cuz it's just now compressed images instead of fonts, but wow it's like trying to read around the jaggies.

So does anyone have any preferred formats and methods? the calibre-epub seems to work, tho you loose a lot of format but it's better than mobi, atm.

[rgeorg]

Originally Posted by Lanx

So does anyone have any preferred formats and methods? the calibre-epub seems to work, tho you loose a lot of format but it's better than mobi, atm.

Caveat: I am really new at ebook formatting, and I don't like spending much time at it, so I've just learned a few techniques and they seem to carry me through most of my ebook conversions (not all). Note that jgray and Kris777 have been the ones to provide links/descriptions to all of this info.

1. I don't do anything with TXT & RTF, since they display just fine. EPUB also seems to work OK for typical books.

2. PDF from text (not images) - I use the PDF program to crop (Document->Crop Pages->All) the white space of the margins. Then I export as text. TXT displays quite well on the jetBook. (note: any annoying headers/footers can be Find/Replaced out). Many times, just removing the margins and viewing it in landscape mode is fine - no conversion required.

3. LIT files. Use LIT converter to convert to TXT. Looked at all possible formats - txt display best (and quite well in general). If there are annoying header/footers you can fiddle around with Find/Replace and RTF format.

4. Some sites, such as manybooks.net, have a "Custom PDF" option where you can format PDF to the jetBooks specs (70mm x 90mm with 3mm margins) - this works great.

5. MS Word docs - save as RTF. You can specify page size to 70 x 90 mm - but that doesn't really seem to make any difference.

Again, this is real quick, basic formatting that takes just a minute or two per book. Considering I may read 1 or 2 books a week it's very little overhead time. That's about all I've done so far, but I have enough reads to last me for quite a while!

[jgray]

Originally Posted by Lanx

jet book sucks with mobi

I haven't noticed any difference between epub or mobi with the current jetBook firmware. In fact, the firmware ignores most formatting in epub and mobi, so it doesn't look much different than plain text.

Why do you say mobi sucks? Do you have the latest firmware?

As you already know, new firmware is due out soon that should be significantly better than what we now have. I am anxiously awaiting the chance to try it.

[Spectralist]

I've found the jetbook doesn't like mobi files made with calibre. A lot of seemingly random symbols pop up in the text. Files i've downloaded as mobi to begin with seem to work correctly though.

On the other hand epub files seem to lose their italics and images when displayed on my jetbook.

So i usually use mobi if the book uses italics, and i d/led it in that format to begin with, and epub if it doesn't use italics or if i need to convert it from the format i got it in.

[Lanx]

2nd on the reason mobi sucking cuz of the wierd random characters i get when iuse calibre

[jgray]

Originally Posted by Spectralist

I've found the jetbook doesn't like mobi files made with calibre. A lot of seemingly random symbols pop up in the text. Files i've downloaded as mobi to begin with seem to work correctly though.

On the other hand epub files seem to lose their italics and images when displayed on my jetbook.

So i usually use mobi if the book uses italics, and i d/led it in that format to begin with, and epub if it doesn't use italics or if i need to convert it from the format i got it in.

That's strange. I tried some mobi and epub ebooks and the italics worked fine. Bold did not display at all, however.

[jgray]

Originally Posted by Lanx

2nd on the reason mobi sucking cuz of the wierd random characters i get when iuse calibre

That sounds like possibly an issue with Calibre and/or the character encoding of the original file. See if forcing UTF-8 helps.

I haven't used Calibre too much yet, but I haven't noticed any character encoding issues on English texts. I have had some issues with images not displaying after converting with Calibre. I haven't looked into it enough yet to know whether the problem is Calibre or the jetBook.

If I download an epub with images (rather than generate one with Calibre) it displays fine on my jetBook.

[Lanx]

but what would really be the difference of choosing epub over mobi? they both seem the same, except mobi's got messed up characters possibly when using calbre to convert.

[jgray]

Yes, in the current jetBook firmware there isn't any real difference in how these two formats are displayed. That may change with the next firmware.

As for which one to use for reading, use whichever format you can obtain. If both formats are available, I would go with epub. Going forward, epub is based on standard XHTML and CSS and is not proprietary. It is also capable of nicer formatting than mobi, assuming that the reader software fully supports both formats.

[Lanx]

well this is new firmware week, hopefully fpreader will look nice.or fb, eh whatever reader that is.