Questions about PRS-300

[Stephanos]

I am considering the PRS-300 and have some questions for those (few) who already have gotten one. Mostly my texts are in RTF format, for ease of correction in a word processor.

1) If the text is justified in the source file, does it appear justified in the reader? I know that the answer is no for epub, but how about other file types such as RTF?

2) Does the margin setting in the source file influence the margin on the reader?

3) Is formatting such as bold and italic in the RTF reproduced in the reader?

Thanks to anyone who can help answer these questions.


Stephen

Originally Posted by Stephanos

I am considering the PRS-300 and have some questions for those (few) who already have gotten one. Mostly my texts are in RTF format, for ease of correction in a word processor.

1) If the text is justified in the source file, does it appear justified in the reader? I know that the answer is no for epub, but how about other file types such as RTF?

2) Does the margin setting in the source file influence the margin on the reader?

3) Is formatting such as bold and italic in the RTF reproduced in the reader?

Thanks to anyone who can help answer these questions.


Stephen

I just converted a Word DOC to RTF and tried it out. Here's what I notice:

1) Yes, text that is jutified in the RTF file displays justified on the PRS-300.

2) Didn't check this. But I would say it appears to do better with margins than BeBB books.

3) Bold in the RTF is displayed as bold in the PRS-300. Italics in the RTF is displayed as italics in the PRS-300. All the other formatting appears to be displayed correctly as well. My document has some underlined text, a lot of bulleted and numbered lists, and some other formatting that often gets messed up when converted to eBook formats. However, everything looks terrific on the PRS-300.

The file looks very good and I must say that Sony definately did an excellent job on RTF compatibility. This is the first RTF file I've loaded. Normally I convert my DOC files to PDF before loading them because ePub and BeBB conversions are not always good. From now on I will be using RTF files instead.

HINT: I must state that I'm a retired technical writer and I go to great lengths to correctly set up templates for complex documents like the one I tried out on the PRS-300. If you create lists on-the-fly they might not convert as well; ditto for other types of complex formatting. So your results might vary. However, if you use template styles they seem to convert very well. This applies to whatever type of conversion you do, whether to PDF, RTF, ePub, BeBB, HTML, etc. Non-conventional formatting can get screwed up, but careful attention to using template styles, and using them in a consistent manner, typically results in much better conversions. The bottomline is this: Sloppy formatting tends to yield ugly documents when they are converted to another format.

[Andybaby]

you can download Ebook Library 3 and it will give you an acurate render of what it would look like on the reader.

[Stephanos]

Jack,

Thanks for checking the RTF compatibility of the PRS-300. My experience is the same as yours about the importance of styles/templates in setting up source files. The file type parsers in ebook readers seem to prefer global styles to "ad hoc" formatting.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Stephanos

1) If the text is justified in the source file, does it appear justified in the reader? I know that the answer is no for epub, but how about other file types such as RTF?

Yes.

2) Does the margin setting in the source file influence the margin on the reader?

Yes.

3) Is formatting such as bold and italic in the RTF reproduced in the reader?

Yes.

[DrMoze]

Originally Posted by Stephanos

2) Does the margin setting in the source file influence the margin on the reader?

My general experience is that it does at the default (S) font size. At (M) and (L), the margins usually disappear and text goes edge-to-edge when the text is reflowed.