My Iliad experience - Page 5

CommanderROR · 06-23-2006, 08:33 AM

@ali I wonder how long page-jumping takes in a .wol book on the Hanlin V8 or in a PDF using the V2. Page-turning from one page to the next in a .txt or html document seems to be rather fast on the V8 (the V2 isn't out yet so no way to test that) but i'll have to ask TaKir about page-jumping in books.

tribble · 06-23-2006, 08:43 AM

@ali: I know what your getting at, but that would need a complete prerendered book, as you said. I guess, you could add that to the viewers. On the other hand, page flipping like in real books will not be an option with the e-ink image refresh times that are available now. That will probably take a few more years, because i havent seen or heard of a prototype thats working with fast page updates yet.

I personally yould like to see prerendering options an especially prerendered indexes and fast search algorithms which should render quite fast.

Well, all e-ink device owners in the next few month will be pioneers anyway, so dont expect a perfect product. The good ones will show up in about two years. Then i will ditch the iLiad and get the iLiad 2.0 or a device from Plasticlogic or the reading design study from philips.

CommanderROR · 06-23-2006, 09:05 AM

according to TaKir the V8 does a good job of page-jumpimg even in 7-8MB .wol books. Sometimes however it takes longer
He had a laarge .txt file that took 15-20 secs to jump to page 600 from the beginning.
This file alos took 3-4 minutes to load in notepad on the Pc, so it's probably an exception.
normal books under 1000 Pages apparently take about 3 sec. to jump between pages that are further apart. (like 100pages) and about 1 sec. to turn pages.

i'd love to see a vid of this, but I think TaKir doesn't have the equipment.

ali · 06-23-2006, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tribble

@ali: I know what your getting at, but that would need a complete prerendered book, as you said. I guess, you could add that to the viewers. On the other hand, page flipping like in real books will not be an option with the e-ink image refresh times that are available now. That will probably take a few more years, because i havent seen or heard of a prototype thats working with fast page updates yet.

I guess something below 2 seconds is absolutely sufficient for a paper - and it should be possible using prerendered stuff. I guess i'll think about that once the sdk is there. Generating such books should be dead easy - ghostscript and imagemagick provide all you need.

(Besides: Hanlin's "wolf" format is produced by a tweaked printer driver, right? They're probably doing exactly that)

Henrycat · 06-23-2006, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ali

I guess something below 2 seconds is absolutely sufficient for a paper - and it should be possible using prerendered stuff. I guess i'll think about that once the sdk is there. Generating such books should be dead easy - ghostscript and imagemagick provide all you need.

(Besides: Hanlin's "wolf" format is produced by a tweaked printer driver, right? They're probably doing exactly that)

Correct me if i'm wrong, but are you saying caching the whole book to memory, so it would only flip to another page when i jumped?

I suppose with text books it could work... my pdfs have been between 2-4 megas.

But my Beserk mangas in PDF are 120 megas (size of my CF), so how would you do it for that?

When i jump from pages it doesn't seem to take that long compared to just fliping to next/previous...

CommanderROR · 06-23-2006, 10:05 AM

you can create wolf books either through a printer driver (large files, no zooming) or through a software (still buggy for english text, no support for PDF at the moment but small files and you can use zoom).

If they made a better version of their book conversion software (or the rusians made one, I thin they're working on one) then using .wol could be an alternative for some...although i must admit that I prefer using normal file formats like txt and html.

ali · 06-23-2006, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Henrycat

Correct me if i'm wrong, but are you saying caching the whole book to memory, so it would only flip to another page when i jumped?

I suppose with text books it could work... my pdfs have been between 2-4 megas.

But my Beserk mangas in PDF are 120 megas (size of my CF), so how would you do it for that?

When i jump from pages it doesn't seem to take that long compared to just fliping to next/previous...

Nope, that's not what I meant. From what I saw in the vids, I'd say the slow page flip is mainly caused by the actual rendering of the pdf - neither accessing the filesystem nor updating the eink screen. This "caching" other's are talking about would essentially mean that while you read page 5, a background process would render pages 4 and 6 in advance, and possibly remember rendered pages once you leave them. Of course, this doesn't improve anything if you jump from page 5 to 700, or if you spend no time on page 5.

So the idea is to render everything on your desktop pc and create one grayscale image per page. 1024x768 pixels with 16 colors is uncompressed(!) 384kbytes. So instead of storing a 15-page pdf on the iliad, I'd store a format that holds 15 images. That should reduce rendering time to nothing, with no visual difference (you can't zoom tho). Page flipping would just be reading the correct portion from the file and copying it directly into the framebuffer.

It doesn't help at all with your 10-billion-pages monster pdfs, and it will probably not work for novels, where every page is about ~1k text in a single font. The pdf's I have use lots of differents fonts on every page, have diagrams and such. Sometimes they take multiple seconds to render a page on my 2GHz processor - what will this be on a 400mhz cpu without fpu?

Liviu_5 · 06-23-2006, 11:17 AM

Hi,

This is exactly how I read pdf's/scans on Nokia 770, except that I use jpg's 480x800, embedded into blank html (Fbreader reads those files) and rendered at lower quality so I have about 20-50kb per image. For all fiction books it works page to page, for technical books, sometimes 1-1, sometimes 1-2. It is unbelievable fast since you access an image at a time, but you cannot jump between pages. I guess that you can insert chapters inside the html, but I have not tried. I have books up to 2000 images (100MB) and it works nicely.
I guess the same should work on any eink with appropriate size images. It depends I guess on size and quality of screen.

Liviu

Quote:

Originally Posted by ali

So the idea is to render everything on your desktop pc and create one grayscale image per page. 1024x768 pixels with 16 colors is uncompressed(!) 384kbytes. So instead of storing a 15-page pdf on the iliad, I'd store a format that holds 15 images. That should reduce rendering time to nothing, with no visual difference (you can't zoom tho). Page flipping would just be reading the correct portion from the file and copying it directly into the framebuffer.

It doesn't help at all with your 10-billion-pages monster pdfs, and it will probably not work for novels, where every page is about ~1k text in a single font. The pdf's I have use lots of differents fonts on every page, have diagrams and such. Sometimes they take multiple seconds to render a page on my 2GHz processor - what will this be on a 400mhz cpu without fpu?

R2D2 · 06-23-2006, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ali

The pdf's I have use lots of differents fonts on every page, have diagrams and such. Sometimes they take multiple seconds to render a page on my 2GHz processor - what will this be on a 400mhz cpu without fpu?

I am using the Picsel Browser for Zaurus (VGA clamshell PDA with Linux OS and ARM CPU). It all it needs to render my monster PDF (science and educational stuff, with hires photos you can zoom into without loosing details and lot's of drawings) is enough memory.

While I am thinking that there are really smart coders at work at Picsel, I am therefore hoping that the handling of huge PDF files will be without problems on E-Book devices with a similar computing platform.

My picsel browser video review can be viewed here:
http://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php...opic=12436&hl=

Gameboy70 · 06-24-2006, 09:32 PM

I've tried in vain playing Henrycat's vids on 3 different computers, each with WMP, RP, and QT. In the cases where I don't get an error, all I get are song "visualizations," but I've never had problems playing AVIs before. What codecs are people using? TIA.

ali · 06-25-2006, 01:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gameboy70

I've tried in vain playing Henrycat's vids on 3 different computers, each with WMP, RP, and QT. In the cases where I don't get an error, all I get are song "visualizations," but I've never had problems playing AVIs before. What codecs are people using? TIA.

They use XviD; you need to install the codec.

Alexander Turcic · 06-25-2006, 05:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ali

They use XviD; you need to install the codec.

Or try Videolan VLC, which doesn't require any Windows codecs to be installed and still plays XviD just fine:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

THJahar · 06-25-2006, 08:46 AM

Hmmm rapidshare keeps coming up with invalid session for me so i can't download them.
Would anybody care to upload them to google video for me?

Alexander Turcic · 06-25-2006, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by THJahar

Hmmm rapidshare keeps coming up with invalid session for me so i can't download them.
Would anybody care to upload them to google video for me?

You may try this link for now:
https://www.mobileread.com/upload/custom/films.rar

Gameboy70 · 06-25-2006, 11:32 AM

Thanks for the help, Ali and Alexander. Both approaches worked fine.

The page turn delay is annoying, I'm sure it will be resolved soon. I'm relieved that writing on the Iliad doesn't look as sluggish as we were lead to believe. It's probably never going to be the tool of choice for stenographers, but the Iliad should be fine for casual notetaking and brainstorming.

The virtual keyboard for searching is a nice feature. It's too bad the Sony Reader lacks this, since it could still be implemented without a touchscreen, albeit more slowly, using the device's directional controls.

The viewers look like they still need some work. I'd prefer at least a little whitespace at the margins. Hopefully, that's a parameter that can be user configured.

Thanks for the videos, Henricat!

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06-23-2006, 08:33 AM	#61
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	@ali I wonder how long page-jumping takes in a .wol book on the Hanlin V8 or in a PDF using the V2. Page-turning from one page to the next in a .txt or html document seems to be rather fast on the V8 (the V2 isn't out yet so no way to test that) but i'll have to ask TaKir about page-jumping in books.

06-23-2006, 08:43 AM	#62
tribble iLiad Maniac Posts: 1,382 Karma: 2369 Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Germany Device: Bookeen Opus (i love that thing) and iPad (what an irony)	@ali: I know what your getting at, but that would need a complete prerendered book, as you said. I guess, you could add that to the viewers. On the other hand, page flipping like in real books will not be an option with the e-ink image refresh times that are available now. That will probably take a few more years, because i havent seen or heard of a prototype thats working with fast page updates yet. I personally yould like to see prerendering options an especially prerendered indexes and fast search algorithms which should render quite fast. Well, all e-ink device owners in the next few month will be pioneers anyway, so dont expect a perfect product. The good ones will show up in about two years. Then i will ditch the iLiad and get the iLiad 2.0 or a device from Plasticlogic or the reading design study from philips.

06-23-2006, 09:05 AM	#63
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	according to TaKir the V8 does a good job of page-jumpimg even in 7-8MB .wol books. Sometimes however it takes longer He had a laarge .txt file that took 15-20 secs to jump to page 600 from the beginning. This file alos took 3-4 minutes to load in notepad on the Pc, so it's probably an exception. normal books under 1000 Pages apparently take about 3 sec. to jump between pages that are further apart. (like 100pages) and about 1 sec. to turn pages. i'd love to see a vid of this, but I think TaKir doesn't have the equipment.

06-23-2006, 10:05 AM	#66
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	you can create wolf books either through a printer driver (large files, no zooming) or through a software (still buggy for english text, no support for PDF at the moment but small files and you can use zoom). If they made a better version of their book conversion software (or the rusians made one, I thin they're working on one) then using .wol could be an alternative for some...although i must admit that I prefer using normal file formats like txt and html.

06-24-2006, 09:32 PM	#70
Gameboy70 Connoisseur Posts: 84 Karma: 1002150 Join Date: Apr 2006 Device: Kindle Paperwhite, 3rd Gen iPad	I've tried in vain playing Henrycat's vids on 3 different computers, each with WMP, RP, and QT. In the cases where I don't get an error, all I get are song "visualizations," but I've never had problems playing AVIs before. What codecs are people using? TIA.

06-25-2006, 08:46 AM	#73
THJahar Zealot Posts: 107 Karma: 58 Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Leicester, UK Device: Jinke V2 Prototype	Hmmm rapidshare keeps coming up with invalid session for me so i can't download them. Would anybody care to upload them to google video for me?

06-25-2006, 11:32 AM	#75
Gameboy70 Connoisseur Posts: 84 Karma: 1002150 Join Date: Apr 2006 Device: Kindle Paperwhite, 3rd Gen iPad	Thanks for the help, Ali and Alexander. Both approaches worked fine. The page turn delay is annoying, I'm sure it will be resolved soon. I'm relieved that writing on the Iliad doesn't look as sluggish as we were lead to believe. It's probably never going to be the tool of choice for stenographers, but the Iliad should be fine for casual notetaking and brainstorming. The virtual keyboard for searching is a nice feature. It's too bad the Sony Reader lacks this, since it could still be implemented without a touchscreen, albeit more slowly, using the device's directional controls. The viewers look like they still need some work. I'd prefer at least a little whitespace at the margins. Hopefully, that's a parameter that can be user configured. Thanks for the videos, Henricat!

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