Hello Sony, stuff missing in the PRS-505

[JSWolf]

What would be nice is to be able to specify the amount of size change and even to decrease the size of the fonts on screen. I think that would be better then the arbitrary going up so much based on whatever size small is. Being able to go -5-15 points would be good. That would make it 2 menues worth starting at -5-5 for the first menu. Which I think would be fine for most and the 2nd menu could be used for those that needed more enlargement.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

harry said:
but i don't necessarily think it's the case that we _must_
enforce such simplicity. any e-book viewer worth its salt
-- (and yes, quite sadly, there are _many_ that are not) --
should be aware of the _structural_ aspects of the book,
i.e., which parts of it are headers, which are block-quotes,
which are tables, and so on. and it should let an end-user
specify _how_ each structure is rendered (font, color, size).

note that this is quite different from mere "font families";
that's another way to do this, but i'd call it the wrong way.

Sure - that's basically the purpose of cascading style sheets in HTML. Very powerful indeed, but (to the best of my knowledge) none of the popular eBook readers support CSS.

this is my opinion. but this is the way i built _my_ viewer.

What is your viewer?

[LOL2005]

Originally Posted by bkilian

Essential? Really? How do you use your dictionary in a day-to-day environment? I actually haven't opened a dictionary in close to 10 years, so for me it would certainly not be essential.

Look at the www.mobipocket.com bestseller list. The most sold book is a dictionary

You may have not opened a dictionary in 10 years because it was not convenient but the reader technology should bring us the ease of use.

[BenG]

I have 2 or 3 dictionaries on the bookshelf. Merriam-Webster's and Oxford dictionaries on my computer, and on my PDA I used µbook with a dictionary. I love dictionaries, but I rarely stop reading to look something up, even with µbook where it was just matter of a tap or two. Usually the meaning of a word is obvious from the context.

[nathantw]

Originally Posted by LOL2005

Look at the www.mobipocket.com bestseller list. The most sold book is a dictionary

You may have not opened a dictionary in 10 years because it was not convenient but the reader technology should bring us the ease of use.

I'm confused as to how these dictionaries would work with a Sony Reader. I went to the website and it appears it caters to the PDA crowd. There's no way to enter letters or words into the Sony Reader or am I missing something? Could you use the directional and enter key to put in letters and words? If not, they should.

[KlondikeGeoff]

Originally Posted by nathantw

I'm confused as to how these dictionaries would work with a Sony Reader. I went to the website and it appears it caters to the PDA crowd. There's no way to enter letters or words into the Sony Reader or am I missing something? Could you use the directional and enter key to put in letters and words? If not, they should.

I don't know how it could work either, but it might be possible if they put their minds to it. With the old Rocket eBook with a touch screen, you just touched a word to highlight it, went to the dictionary, and there was the definition.

Well, sometimes. I found that almost all of the times I did not know a word and looked it up, their dictionary did not have it either!

[bowerbird]

kovidgoyal said:
> A level of control where the user gets to specify font sizes of
> individual structural elements is simply out of place in a viewer.
> It would make sense in an editor, but certainly not a viewer.

i am of the position that the more power you give the end-user
to customize their reading experience, the more they love you. :+)

***

harry said:
> What is your viewer?

i've written a ton of 'em in the last two decades. the latest
is called "g.i.v.e." -- gutenberg intelligent viewer for e-text...

if anyone wants to see a beta of it, e-mail bowerbird@aol.com

it's part of an overall package including "zen markup language"
-- also known as z.m.l. (slogan: "it's two steps past x.m.l.") --
which is now rapidly approaching a state of solid coherence...

the package grew out of research on the project gutenberg corpus
-- programmatic recognition of the structures inside the e-texts --
and i'm now working to make it robust across the entire tool-chain,
from authoring through web publication to cross-plat offline-viewers.
the essential philosophy is high-powered functionality via simplicity...

all of the pieces are there now, some more unpolished than others,
so if there's anything in particular you'd like to see, just let me know.

or hey, i guess i've even already announced some of it:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/babelfish19.pl
> http://z-m-l.com/go/vl3.pl
> http://z-m-l.com/go/zmldingus093.pl

in terms of the specific interest here -- that is, _mobileread_ --
i'm of the opinion that the only mobile-readers that will survive
will be the iphone type -- i.e., internet-enabled, high-resolution,
with "reasonable" horsepower -- so that's all i'm worried about...

it's not that my apps couldn't run on a machine like the sony
-- my format and code is all relatively simple at its base --
but until that machine shows viability, i won't think about it...

-bowerbird

[bowerbird]

milestone time. this is my 100th post... :+)

-bowerbird

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

i am of the position that the more power you give the end-user
to customize their reading experience, the more they love you. :+)

In theory, yes. In practice, not so much :-)

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by ArcherPDA

Um...

1. User input RSS feeds !

2. User input RSS feeds !

3. User input RSS feeds !

4. User input RSS feeds !

5. User input RSS feeds !

Please! Now!

I use my own RSS feeds on the PRS-500 everyday. Feedbooks can generate PDF with your RSS feeds for the PRS-500/505. I'm working right now on a cache system for it that'll make it a lot faster, and we'll have epub output for the RSS feeds soon enough too.

[Trina Oliver]

Originally Posted by LOL2005

I have been intensively using the Sony reader the last two weeks. The device is great but Sony could make it even better.

I would suggest them the following enhancements


Hardware:
* make it a bit lighter (low priority)
* improve the screen (High priority), Vizplex is good but there is still room for improvement
* improve the device speed (medium priority)
* improve the buttons (medium priority), I think we need to press just a bit harder than we should to turn pages. Please keep the two wheels for those of us who turn pages with the left hand

Software
* Add multi language support (French, Spanish, German, Russian...) - (medium priority)

* Add more formats
- HTML(High priority)
- Epub (High priority)

* Add support for dictionary(ies) (super high priority)
2000+ books and no dictionary, it doesn't make sense

* Add possibility to change the screen orientation in the image menu option (we should not need to go back to the main option menu) - (medium priority)

* improve pdf support
- pdf background is darker than other format backgrounds. This is not good, please fix it (high priority). Thanks to www.feedbooks.com , a good pdf support is far from been useless in the reader
- Possibility to zoom in pdf (medium priority)

* Add the possibility to search in a document. (Medium priority)


*Add the possibility to change the font. (I like Arial not Times - (High priority)



Other enhancements:

Connect books, It should be possible to expand the reading area of Connect documents. We lose a lot of screen real estate with the useless margin around the text. The reading area is a bit two small to fully enjoy the reading experience. We should get 6' of reading area not 4'


Regarding pricing: $300 is a fair price for the device you get. I would compare the Sony Reader with the first generation Ipod. Increase functionalities, not the price


What did I miss?

I'm a very proud owner of a Sony Reader PRS-505. But I quite agree with the suggested enhancements, especially with regard to the dictionaries. May I just add these:

a. Clock display should be placed at the lower right hand corner beside the page indicator. This is very important for a person like me who has the habit of snatch reading in between short appointments. It is a bit of a bother to keep on flipping back to Settings to check the time (HIGH PRIORITY).

B. Add foreign language works in the classics section of the eLibrary. I read French and Spanish classics, and although free foreign classics are available at other internet sites, I prefer the formatting used by the eLibrary.

C. The addition of the Bible among the classics selection would further dignify the Sony ereader.

D. I wish that there were a more versatile choice of fonts that would include Garamond. Garamond is the classic font for novels. Sony wants to achieve a book-like quality, they must go all the way by using this classic font.

--Trina Oliver

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Trina Oliver

C. The addition of the Bible among the classics selection would further dignify the Sony ereader.

There are probably sensitivities associated with doing that. It could be a nightmare for them if they added the Christian Bible but not the "holy books" of other religions. Probably safest to offer none rather be accused of regilious bias.

[JSWolf]

Someday I might have a go at reading the Bible. My wife bought a bible that's translated from the original Hebrew and it is supposed to be as neutral as possible. So it would be interesting to read the Bible with no slant on it at all.

[HarryT]

The majority of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew (which I can't read), and the New Testament in Koine Greek (which I can read). A few parts of the later OT books were Greek (eg the book of Daniel).

Reading the original certainly gives you a different slant on it to reading translations. One very simple example: the word "angelos" is the ordinary everyday Greek word for "messenger" and the NT very often uses it in that everyday sense. Many translations mistranslate some uses as the word as the English derivation "angel" which has all sorts of "overhead meanings" of supernatural beings who sit around on clouds playing harps associated with it. It sometimes does indeed refer to a "messenger from God" but it's clear from the context that in most cases the "beings" involved were perfectly normal looking people. Goodness knows where the wings and harps stuff came from .

[tompe]

Originally Posted by nathantw

I'm confused as to how these dictionaries would work with a Sony Reader. I went to the website and it appears it caters to the PDA crowd. There's no way to enter letters or words into the Sony Reader or am I missing something? Could you use the directional and enter key to put in letters and words? If not, they should.

In Bookeen Cybook Gen3 as seen in a video on their web page you navigate with buttons to choose a world in a text and press a button to look it up. It looked very usable and probably more convenient than using a stylus since you do not have to move your hand to get the stylus. For this functionality I will accept to buy a DRM:ed book. i also have a Palm T5 so the dictionary will be useful there if the mobipocket reader does not cause a lot of crashes which it might do...