Displaying HTML files on the 360

[Lindsaym]

Hi all,

I've been reading ebooks on my laptop for about a year, and a lot of times with the books I've downloaded to date, I've deleted everything that came with the HTML version of the books (css file, graphics) except the html file itself. Despite my deleting the style instructions, these files display fine in my Firefox browser.

Will they display the same way in the 360? Or am I in trouble if I don't have the full folder of contents that came with the html version of the ebook?

[Bookster]

Originally Posted by Lindsaym

Hi all,

I've been reading ebooks on my laptop for about a year, and a lot of times with the books I've downloaded to date, I've deleted everything that came with the HTML version of the books (css file, graphics) except the html file itself. Despite my deleting the style instructions, these files display fine in my Firefox browser.

Will they display the same way in the 360? Or am I in trouble if I don't have the full folder of contents that came with the html version of the ebook?

Hi

no, they should work fine if they're displayed correctly by Firefox, no problem

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Lindsaym

I've deleted everything that came with the HTML version of the books (css file, graphics) except the html file itself. ...

PocketBook 360 default application for reading html files - the fbreader - ignores css at the moment, and most of the formatting too. Some people complain that this is a shortcoming, I personally view it as a great feature. FBReader can override any formatting that is in html file, so you do not need to preformat files for PocketBook. Just copy a single html file. If pictures are important for the book - like picture of a letter the murderer sent, or a map, copy them too, they will be displayed.

If you want your PocketBook display html file with complete formatting, convert it to epub or other format using Calibre or BookDesigner or other program.

[Lindsaym]

Thanks, you guys, that completely answers my question!

[Kameli]

Is there some reason to actually put html files in PB360? I just use Calibre and so far .lit's and .html's have been automatically converted to epub's.

Is epub "best" format to use with fb2 or should I change my Calibre settings?

[Bookster]

Originally Posted by Kameli

Is there some reason to actually put html files in PB360? I just use Calibre and so far .lit's and .html's have been automatically converted to epub's.

Is epub "best" format to use with fb2 or should I change my Calibre settings?

Well, I did it (i.e. putting html files) a couple of times "on the run" with some articles or even longer texts I saved straight from Firefox to the sd card. Works very well, even with graphics.

I usually convert ebooks in the epub format purely for space reasons, but if there's no drm I have no problem with the PB 360 in keeping them in fb2, mobi, prc or any format supported. Another reason can be an unreadable file (it can happen ) that will be converted in epub from mobi or the other way around, depending on the source.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Kameli

Is there some reason to actually put html files in PB360? I just use Calibre and so far .lit's and .html's have been automatically converted to epub's.

For a long time I used book reading devices that required the books to be uploaded in a very strictly defined format. So I had to open every single file I wanted to put on my reader and make conversion. Set sanserif font, small margins, replace all "funny" characters, like curly quotes, em-dashes, ellipses ... . At one point I was using Cassiopeia A-11 and that device had problem with anything longer that 200KB. So I had to split larger books into chunks. Up to 10 chunks for really large books. At that time there was no Calibre or other drag & drop magical file converter available for us - pioneer e-book readers.

Even when I purchased Sony PRS-500 - that has been a huge improvement - I had to reformat the books, because I didn't like how they were displayed by default. An I still had to remove accented characters, curly quotes and other characters. (At that time I didn't know that there is program you can use to convert an rtf file to UTF8 encoding that seems to work with Sony Reader PRS-500)

When I got my PocketBook 360° I was in Seventh Heaven. Suddenly I could just drop most of the files to the reader and they worked. Just worked. No more tinkering with books for 15 minutes per file. The files not only worked, I was also able to override any crazy formatting the file might have. Like Comic Sans font, or 15mm wide margins, or full justification, that together with large font, wide margin and non-existing proper hyphenation created rivers you could sail tanker through.

To answer your question why I put html files directly on my device: Because now I can.

Originally Posted by Kameli

Is epub "best" format to use with fb2 or should I change my Calibre settings?

fb2 is the native format for FBReader - the main book reading application in PocketBook.
So if you use PocketBook, why convert from fb2?

[Kameli]

Originally Posted by kacir

fb2 is the native format for FBReader - the main book reading application in PocketBook.
So if you use PocketBook, why convert from fb2?

Thanks. I never realized fb2 was format. Now I set Calibre to produce fb2's. I wonder if PB can handle those faster and better than epub's?

[orwell2k]

You can also easily convert HTML to FB2 and read them on the PB360. Just use BookDesigner or the OOoFBTools for OpenOffice. Much better than ePub, IMHO...

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Kameli

Thanks. I never realized fb2 was format. Now I set Calibre to produce fb2's. I wonder if PB can handle those faster and better than epub's?

Each of those formats has some virtues.
If you want to use some very specific formatting, you use epub, AND open it with Acrobat Reader on PocketBook. If you wish to override all formatting with settings on your PocketBook you open the epub in FBReader.

FB2 format, is THE format the FBReader application was originally built for.
The main feature of fb2 is that it does not describe presentation of the book, it leaves the presentation fully to the setting of reading application. fb2 format only describes structure of the document and it has the most complete set of tags you might want to use for description of the structure of the book. An fb2 file is XML documents and there are special "recipes" that describe how the fb2 document should be translated to other formats. You just run the book and the recipe through a parser written in Java. But this is more interesting to programmers that want to work with fb2.
fb2 book can contain covers (and PocketBook can display those in cover view) and other files. So you have a book in a markup language and yet, you do not have to maintain the covers, images, illustrations and other stuff in separate files as you would have to do in html.

You can even compress the fb2 file and the PocketBook can read Name_Of_Book.fb2.zip files directly.