Cybook Gen3 e-reader in September 2007 for $350

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mercury7

I have a question for you guys.

Why do so many eBook readers have trouble with PDF? Couldn't they just display half of the page in landscape mode, as the levirothschild's post suggests.

Pressing down once would go to the second half. Pressing down again would go to the next page. You would have a bit of overlap when displaying the halves so that you could ensure a line didn't get split between the pages.

Is it really any harder than that?

Go and do your maths

An A4 page is 297 x 210 mm

eInk readers such as the Sony Reader and the CyBook Gen 3 have a 120 x 90 mm screen. Displaying the A4 document in "landscape" mode you therefore end up trying to display a 210mm wide document on a 120mm wide screen.

In order to make it fit, you have to reduce your 210mm down to 120mm - ie reduce it to 57% of its original size. Many documents will not will readable at barely half their original size.

Does that answer your question?

[mercury7]

Thanks for the reply, Harry!

I did a quick test.

• Printed out an A4 page in 12pt Times with .25 inch margins.
• Then I put it in the copier and reduced it to 57% of the original.
• I then printed out a few more pages at various font sizes for comparison.

The results:
12pt Times gets translated into about 7.3pt. That's still readable! If the A4 page was published at 14pt or larger (I hear there is an option to buy some books in a large-print format) it would be even more viable.

Granted, 7.3pt is pretty dang small, but in a pinch, it would be fine to read -- at least, while my eyes are young.

Conclusion:
It wouldn't be a good idea for every book, but for some that only come in PDF, this would work just fine.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by mercury7

I have a question for you guys.

Why do so many eBook readers have trouble with PDF? Couldn't they just display half of the page in landscape mode, as the levirothschild's post suggests.

Pressing down once would go to the second half. Pressing down again would go to the next page. You would have a bit of overlap when displaying the halves so that you could ensure a line didn't get split between the pages.

Is it really any harder than that?

Not any harder.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mercury7

Thanks for the reply, Harry!

I did a quick test.

• Printed out an A4 page in 12pt Times with .25 inch margins.
• Then I put it in the copier and reduced it to 57% of the original.
• I then printed out a few more pages at various font sizes for comparison.

The results:
12pt Times gets translated into about 7.3pt. That's still readable! If the A4 page was published at 14pt or larger (I hear there is an option to buy some books in a large-print format) it would be even more viable.

Granted, 7.3pt is pretty dang small, but in a pinch, it would be fine to read -- at least, while my eyes are young.

Conclusion:
It wouldn't be a good idea for every book, but for some that only come in PDF, this would work just fine.

A thing to bear in mind is that the screen has a relatively low resolution - 166dpi. 7pt text will not be as clearly readable on the screen as it will be on the photocopied page.

You're right, though - there are documents it'll be OK for, but there are others that it won't. Just have to try it and see. There are things you can do to improve it, such as cropping the document to remove the margins, which will mean that you can make the text a little larger.

[wallcraft]

E-book readers tend to have low performance cpus, so the best bet at the moment is off-line conversion to images optimized for the device. The best example so far is PDFLRF, and post #26 of this thread includes screenshots. These might look even better in landscape. Even off-line conversion may not be good enough on a small screen, but it illustrates what will eventually be possible in real-time on future devices. Unfortunately, PDFLRF is Sony-specific at present but there are similar utilities that produce HTML and therefore target a wider range of devices.

[SUSGOD]

A newbee, I have never owned an e-book reader, but I am on the BAEN-NAEB list to purchase the Bookeen Cybook Gen3. If I upload html pages from my PC on to the SD card, will I be able to view the pages on the Cybook?

I do genealogical research and have converted a lot of material to HTML. I would love to be able to check data stored in the Cybook when I am researching in Archives.

See The Branches of Susan's Family Trees
http://home.att.net/~jg245/

Can I leave the background="whiteweave6.jpg" on the descendent family trees htmls or should I remove the background images when I move them to the SD?

Susan

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SUSGOD

A newbee, I have never owned an e-book reader, but I am on the BAEN-NAEB list to purchase the Bookeen Cybook Gen3. If I upload html pages from my PC on to the SD card, will I be able to view the pages on the Cybook?

Yes.

Can I leave the background="whiteweave6.jpg" on the descendent family trees htmls or should I remove the background images when I move them to the SD?

Susan

Try it both ways and see which looks best. No need to edit the HTML if you don't want the background - just don't upload the JPG.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by SUSGOD

If I upload html pages from my PC on to the SD card, will I be able to view the pages on the Cybook?

As HarryT says, single page HTML will definitely work, although we don't yet know the details of how well it will display such documents. I expect it to ignore your backgroud .jpg for example. Another option is to convert the files to MobiPocket. If you download MobiPocket Reader version 6.0 for Windows it will read your HTML files by first converting them to .prc files, and these .prc files will also be readable on the Cybook. On my PC the .prc files end up in "My Documents\My Ebooks\Mobipocket". Unfortunately, this only works with Windows (not Mac or Linux).

[SUSGOD]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes.

Try it both ways and see which looks best. No need to edit the HTML if you don't want the background - just don't upload the JPG.

Originally Posted by wallcraft

As HarryT says, single page HTML will definitely work, although we don't yet know the details of how well it will display such documents. I expect it to ignore your backgroud .jpg for example. Another option is to convert the files to MobiPocket. If you download MobiPocket Reader version 6.0 for Windows it will read your HTML files by first converting them to .prc files, and these .prc files will also be readable on the Cybook. On my PC the .prc files end up in "My Documents\My Ebooks\Mobipocket". Unfortunately, this only works with Windows (not Mac or Linux).

Thank you both! I will be able to access several hundred pages of research as easily as opening an e-book! Wonderful!

[Wizard-mag]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

As HarryT says, single page HTML will definitely work, although we don't yet know the details of how well it will display such documents. I expect it to ignore your backgroud .jpg for example. Another option is to convert the files to MobiPocket. If you download MobiPocket Reader version 6.0 for Windows it will read your HTML files by first converting them to .prc files, and these .prc files will also be readable on the Cybook. On my PC the .prc files end up in "My Documents\My Ebooks\Mobipocket". Unfortunately, this only works with Windows (not Mac or Linux).

Can this work in a batch mode? (For example converting all the HTML files in a given folder (that does not have any subfolders).)

Do you expect that images normally linked in the HTML file and supplied in the directory with it will be displayed on the device's greyscale?

[wallcraft]

MobiPocket has a batch tool, mobigen, and if you want to put multiple HTML pages in a single e-book then MobiPocket Creator can do this, see downloads at the: Mobipocket Developer Center. There are other options, see E-book conversion.

Advantages of converting to .mobi are that you can preview (and use) the result on other devices and you get a single file per book (that includes images and potentially multiple html source files). The advantages of staying in HTML are that it is easier to edit later on and is viewable via a web browser. I expect local images referenced by HTML pages to be displayed.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

MobiPocket has a batch tool, mobigen, and if you want to put multiple HTML pages in a single e-book then MobiPocket Creator can do this, see downloads at the: Mobipocket Developer Center. There are other options, see E-book conversion.

Advantages of converting to .mobi are that you can preview (and use) the result on other devices and you get a single file per book (that includes images and potentially multiple html source files). The advantages of staying in HTML are that it is easier to edit later on and is viewable via a web browser. I expect local images referenced by HTML pages to be displayed.

If I had my primary reader able to handle MobiPocket, I'd convert to Mobi format and keep both the source files and the Mobi file. Then if I wanted to convert to some other format I'd have the source to do the conversion with.