PC .imp viewer question

[surrealmind]

Has an ever tinkered with a PC .imp viewer program? The viewer that comes with eBook Publisher is decent in many ways, but since we can now extract and resurrect annotated .imp files from the EB1150, it would be nice to have the ability to find markups. In fact, simply having the find word feature enabled would be nice. In short, has anyone looked into the possibility of making a full-fledged (or at least a more-fledged ) .imp PC viewer?

I know it would be an impossibly gargantuan task to start from scratch, but maybe someone has connections over at ETI? Are they still actively developing eBook Publisher? Aware that we can extract annotations and would enjoy a more advanced PC viewer? Willing to release code? Heh, and while I'm in fantasy land here, would it be impossible for ETI to simply release an emulator of the actual EB1150 software?

Finally, on a more practical level, is there a way to get clean-looking hand-drawn notes on the current version of viewer? I was less than impressed with my barely legible, black-and-white "interlaced" results as shown in the attached screenshot. It's certainly a lot less sharp than the extracted handwriting shown in nrapallo's attached image here (from this thread).

Also, I find that bookmarks do not show up in Viewer. Is this normal?

[DaleDe]

I know they are continuing to update eBook publisher which includes the viewer but most of the recent changes are oriented toward ePUB compatibility. Do you have the latest version? 2.3.15

Dale

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by surrealmind

Has an ever tinkered with a PC .imp viewer program?

I did, but could never get the SBPubX COM interface to work with my perl scripts. It may be that the documentation doesn't truly represent how the PC Viewer is invoked, or I just didn't do it right. And I tried a lot of times...

That said, I do like the PC Viewer and never really had any reason to "better" it. In fact, it's a sort of "ROM emulator" in that it displays precisely how the .imp file would be displayed on the EBW1150 (or REB1200) screen. Though with the REB1100 .rb files, it always crashes on me. I guess it's missing other elements of the ETI GUI but for displaying ebooks it's 100% accurate!

The viewer that comes with eBook Publisher is decent in many ways, but since we can now extract and resurrect annotated .imp files from the EB1150, it would be nice to have the ability to find markups. In fact, simply having the find word feature enabled would be nice.

It DOES have a (crippled) word find enabled, but is dealt with a in different way than on the reader itself. Just tap the word you want to find again, and then navigate with the drop-down search buttons to find the next one. However, you cannot use this feature if you don't see the word already on the page, but it will find all occurrences ONCE you locate that word the first time.

In short, has anyone looked into the possibility of making a full-fledged (or at least a more-fledged ) .imp PC viewer?

I know it would be an impossibly gargantuan task to start from scratch, but maybe someone has connections over at ETI? Are they still actively developing eBook Publisher? Aware that we can extract annotations and would enjoy a more advanced PC viewer? Willing to release code? Heh, and while I'm in fantasy land here, would it be impossible for ETI to simply release an emulator of the actual EB1150 software?

If ETI would be willing to share their code, I would certainly look into this!

Finally, on a more practical level, is there a way to get clean-looking hand-drawn notes on the current version of viewer? I was less than impressed with my barely legible, black-and-white "interlaced" results as shown in the attached screenshot. It's certainly a lot less sharp than the extracted handwriting shown in nrapallo's attached image here (from this thread).

I extracted my markups' images from the pdf created when it was printed out using the PC Viewer. I just saved the .pdf as images, but you can also just take a screen snapshot of that .pdf when it's displayed.

BTW, how did you get manage to get "interlaced" results?

Also, I find that bookmarks do not show up in Viewer. Is this normal?

It's a (another) feature that's not yet implemented, I guess.

[surrealmind]

Thanks for the posts, guys. I had this sneaking feeling that if anyone had tried it, it would be . . .

Anyway, for what it does the Viewer is decent. It's really nice for previewing .imps before putting them on the device. And I suppose if I'm that worried about cycling through annotations, I can just set my EB1150 on my bookstand next to the PC. It would just be so slick to be able to go through my collection of re-uploaded .imps, cycle through the markups, and grab the text directly for copy-and-paste quoting.

It DOES have a (crippled) word find enabled, but is dealt with a in different way than on the reader itself. Just tap the word you want to find again, and then navigate with the drop-down search buttons to find the next one.However, you cannot use this feature if you don't see the word already on the page, but it will find all occurrences ONCE you locate that word the first time.

Ah yes, I see. I suppose if one is really desperate, he could hack into the unimp'ed source files, try to find the raw text, and then add the search term to the beginning of the book. Heh.

BTW, how did you get manage to get "interlaced" results?

This is actually fairly distressing. My drawings look fine on the EB1150 itself, but as you can see from the attached image on my first post, the black-and-white striations are fairly prominent...and annoying. I am assuming, then, that you've not had this problem? Changing the "inking" thickness does not seem to help, either. Maybe it's some defect in my screen? Who knows.

Anyway, thanks again, you guys have confirmed my suspicion. Now who has an "in" with the ETI crew? Does Garth Conboy ever sneak a peak at our messages here?