PRS-T1 [PIC] The benefits of rooting the PRS-T1

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

+1
There are two basic schools of thought on ebook rendering:

One school believes ebooks *must* be rendered as the *publisher* chooses. They favor pdf or, if forced away from pretend-paper, locked-down epubs. It's *their* book.

The other school believes the consumer is paying the freight so they should have the option to read the ebook *their* way, regardless of what the publishing overlords may prefer.

I favor maximum end-user typographical controls and don't care a stuffed fig whether it displays "properly" or not as long as it is clean and readable. I favor Coolreader because its rendering starts with the embedded styles and then overlays *my* choices. It properly handles nested TOCs and it lets me disable the satus bar and use the entire screen for text.

It's *my* reader, *my* eyeballs, *my* money.

I don't think it's quite as black & white as this. It's not a case of displaying EXACTLY as the publisher decided but of retaining some of the 'nicer' styling features we got used to in p-books, e.g. scene-breaks, blockquotes, Dropcaps, SmallCaps, centred text etc...

It's a long time since I used FBReader (on my PocketBook 360), but I seem to remember it completely obliterated the styling niceties. I never did get round to trying CoolReader. It's quite possible both apps have improved a lot.

I've attached a one-page epub containing various typical styles found in epubs. The default Sony app displays all styling with no problems. I've also attached a screencap of what it looks like on a Sony 650 (I didn't use the T1 because I don't have a screencap app for it, but I'm pretty sure I can make it look exactly the same.)

Edit: I should add that I have used a customised font, not the Sony default.

If anyone can spare the time I would love to know how close to the original you can get using one of the Android reading apps. I haven't rooted my T1 yet as I haven't seen a 'killer app' which will tip me over the edge

In addition, for any Calibre fans who use either the Catalog or News features (both highly styled epubs), are any of the Android reading apps practical at all?

[tayseidel]

Originally Posted by Bidibulle

How do you do to use the caecilia fonts in FBReader ?
I've downloaded them and put them in the mnt/sdcard/Fonts folder but I don't see them in the font menu.
Thanks

That is what I did as well. Try killing FBreader and then open it again. (Either shut it down or use Advanced Task Killer)

[tayseidel]

Jackie, I will give your epub test a go and see if any of the apps display it properly according to the screen you posted- (ADE on the computer displays it just fine, so I have a reference point)

I have kids, so it might be a while before I'm able to test it with the reader apps I have installed on my T1.

[Bidibulle]

Originally Posted by tayseidel

That is what I did as well. Try killing FBreader and then open it again. (Either shut it down or use Advanced Task Killer)

Thanks for your help: it's working now and ceacilia is really fine.

Another stupid question: the right and left button aren't working (probably because I've downloaded FBReader from the Android Market as I'm now with the Zeam version and not using the ADW version).
Do you happen to know how to make them work (not very important, I can tap on the screen to turn the pages)

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tayseidel

Both FBreader and Coolreader don't use pages to display the booklist, they scroll. If you have figured out a way to get books to display list-style, page-style, let me know.

Folders.
Both FBreader and Coolreader let you navigate the file system.
So I organize my ebooks in an author\book-title hierarchy.
(That's what I use Aldiko 1.X for: I let it do the bulk of the organizing for me with its import feature.)

And yes: the neonode touch tech is pretty clearly less than a great match for android's scroll mechanism. (Even less than hoary old pressure based touch tech). But by cutting down on the length of the list you don't need precision scrolling.

I agree that a page-based file listing is preferable (both my Kindle and PB360 work that way) but I've been working in the android environment for a year so I'm used to its deficiencies, scrolling being among the lesser ones...

As they say: YMMV.

[tayseidel]

Jackie, you were right. The default ADE reader on the T1 displays your test epub correctly, but coolreader and FBreader do not. Coolreader comes close, while FBreader renders everything as unformatted text. I have a feeling that I can tweak coolreader to display it correctly. I see why you prefer to either embed fonts in your epub, or replace the original font in the ADE reader on the T1. The problem for me is the page counter showing 5-6 of x #, and the lack of a clock. I've also tried Moonreader, Aldiko, and Nook. None of them display your test epub file correctly. Moonreader left justifies everything.

Bidibulle, FBreader was patched so that the left/right arrow buttons on the T1 would function as page turn buttons. I almost never swipe the screen to turn the page; I prefer using the page turn buttons, like you. The patched version of FBreader is in the minimal root package, in \sdcard\updates\data\app\FBReaderJ.apk

Uninstall your FBreader and use the .apk in the minimal root package.

[vishcompany]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

If anyone can spare the time I would love to know how close to the original you can get using one of the Android reading apps. I haven't rooted my T1 yet as I haven't seen a 'killer app' which will tip me over the edge

I managed to take a few screenshots of your test epub in four different reading apps, see attached files.

I chose the font size always to fill one page only with the whole document.

[tayseidel]

With the new CSS styles tab option in the new version of Coolreader (version cr3_0_54_38.apk) I got the test epub to display perfectly, with a few tweaks. I'll post screenshots later tonight, as my daughter just woke up.

[snarkophilus]

Originally Posted by vishcompany

I managed to take a few screenshots of your test epub in four different reading apps, see attached files.

Thanks for the screenshots - really quite interesting how the other apps render the test epub.

A really naive question - what exactly are coolreader, fbreader and moonreader targeting if they ignore so much of the epub's formatting that it would potentially make some books almost unreadable?

Cheers,
Simon.

[vishcompany]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

In addition, for any Calibre fans who use either the Catalog or News features (both highly styled epubs), are any of the Android reading apps practical at all?

The same once more, showing a newspaper collected by calibre.

[tayseidel]

This is coolreader 3-3.0.54 with some tweaks to the default paragraph styles section in the CSS tab of the options window.

As you can see, it closely resembles what it should look like in the ADE reader on the T1, except for the sans-serif font in the article header paragraph. I'll see if I can fix that later tonight after the kids go to bed- but, as you can see, coolreader 3-3.0.54 does a better job than any of the other android apps at rendering an epub correctly.

edit- after comparing the ADE shot from Vish to my shot, I can see some formatting differences, namely the bolding on the article header line. I see I have my work cut out tonight in making some more tweaks to the CSS settings in coolreader.

[vishcompany]

Originally Posted by tayseidel

With the new CSS styles tab option in the new version of Coolreader (version cr3_0_54_38.apk) I got the test epub to display perfectly, with a few tweaks. I'll post screenshots later tonight, as my daughter just woke up.

using 3.0.54-33 here (just downloaded it today from the market).
I'm interested in your screenshots; please also post one shot without any tweaks.

[vishcompany]

ok, upgraded myself and did another shot of the test epub; without any tweaks.

[jackie_w]

@tayseidel & vishcompany,
Many thanks for taking the time to experiment and take pictures FBReader and MoonReader don't really come very close, do they?

@tayseidel,
Regarding CoolReader, if I was to create a completely different epub which contained the same sorts of visual styles, but used totally different css class names, would your existing CoolReader config work on both epubs or would you need to totally tweak the config for the second one?

@vishcompany,
Regarding Calibre News. I'm assuming a typical News epub is very reliant on hyperlinks to jump from section to section. Do these work correctly in the other apps?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

It's a long time since I used FBReader (on my PocketBook 360), but I seem to remember it completely obliterated the styling niceties. I never did get round to trying CoolReader. It's quite possible both apps have improved a lot.

FBreader *by design* ignores CSS formatting. Still does.

Coolreader has a toggle; you can choose to ignore the CSS style formats and instead apply the formatting you assign to each tag or have it use the CSS formats but apply your choice of font, margin, and line-spacing settings.

Your reader, your choice.

ADE-based readers the Sony Reader or the unhacked Adobe reader on the PB360 don't offer much choice. That's why a pretty clever person hacked the PB360 ADE to allow end user CSS syles, right?

BTW, other android readers allow the same option to ignore the embedded CSS: Aldiko, Overdrive, even Nook. They have to; as pure software readers with no enforced ties to hardware, they must cater to user needs, not Adobe or the publishers.

With every passing product generation, the hardware-tied readers from Nook, Sony, Kobo, and Kindle are slowly yielding to user control. And where their concessions don't go far enough, the hackers step in.

Users are winning this one; the only question is why the hardware vendors keep dragging their feet.