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Old 10-17-2007, 11:13 PM   #1
xristy
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contentLister displays mobipocket file names after opening

configuration: er0140 /002 2.11

I've gotten some mobipocket ebooks and am finding that when the books are initially copied onto the CF card the titles (and sometimes other information) is displayed in the contentLister - a reasonably friendly behavior.

However, once I have opened a book then the contentLister displays the filename like "xxxxxx.prc" - generally unfriendly behavior.

Also the contentLister sorts the mobipocket books by filename rather than by title.

I am not placing the mobipocket books in any particular directory just where they need to be according to subject and so on in relation to other ebooks that I have on the CF card.

Has anyone seen this behavior or does anyone have a suggestion about how to inhibit the contentLister behavior?

Thanks
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Old 10-17-2007, 11:56 PM   #2
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I noticed that when MobiPocket Reader first opens a file (e.g. file.prc) that isn't in the special "MobiPocket" directory it makes a subdirectory named file.prc and copies the original file.prc into it with a manifest.xml and a file.mbp. The manifest.xml contains "file.prc" as the Title, and this is why contentLister displays this (I think). You may be able to edit the manifest.xml to show something else - but I don't know much about how manifest files work. The .mbp file is something particular to MobiPocket Reader, and it isn't plain text, but it may well contain the kind of information that the contentLister "should" be displaying.

For files not yet opened by the MobiPocket Reader (e.g. opened by FBReader, or by nothing at all), most list the filename in the contentLister but a few list the ebook's formal title (presumably taken from inside the file). The pattern I think I see is that these are the .mobi files, rather than .prc files. But they might be uncompressed files (or some other special case - all are without encryption). I don't know if there is any difference between .mobi and .prc MobiPocket e-books, except the extension itself.

I would like the contentlister to list both the filename and the book title. Without the filename it can be hard to line up the contentLister with the directory listing when connected via usb to a desktop.

Last edited by wallcraft; 10-17-2007 at 11:59 PM.
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Old 10-18-2007, 12:22 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft View Post
The pattern I think I see is that these are the .mobi files, rather than .prc files.
Rebutting my own post - it isn't the file extension that is significant, but rather the file type. A MobiPocket e-book can either have TEXtREAd or BOOKMOBI as bytes 61-68. The former is supposed to uniquely identify an Aportis Doc (PalmDoc) e-book, but it is used in many MobiPocket ebooks which are (perhaps) also Aportis Doc compatible. Generally, the .mobi extension implies BOOKMOBI but a .prc could have either TEXtREAd or BOOKMOBI.

So, my current theory is that BOOKMOBI ebooks initially have their formal title listed by the contentLister but TEXtREAd ebooks list the filename.
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Old 10-18-2007, 02:44 AM   #4
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You can always go in via the USB to edit the manifest.xml file to set the Title that is displayed. You can also set the Description to set what gets displayed below the title.

The default formatting of the manifest.xml file is dreadful though, it has no line breaks. I generally run:

Code:
for F in `find . -name manifest.xml`; do tidy -i -xml -wrap 999 $F > $F.new && rm $F && mv $F.new $F; done
from the root of my iLiad filesystem before I edit the manifest files so that they are readable.

Once I have finished with it, a typical manifest file looks like this:
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<package>
  <metadata>
    <dc-metadata>
      <Title>Dark Lover</Title>
      <Description>J R Ward</Description>
      <Date>2007-09-13T21:17:30</Date>
      <Format />
      <Identifier />
      <Language />
      <Type>book</Type>
    </dc-metadata>
    <y-metadata>
      <startpage>darklover4.prc</startpage>
      <version>000</version>
      <ItemSize>335872</ItemSize>
      <image>DLover.jpg</image>
    </y-metadata>
  </metadata>
</package>
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Old 10-18-2007, 08:11 AM   #5
xristy
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Wonderful!! Thanks to all for the helpful information.

It would seem to me that a future version of the contentLister should reflect the manifest.xml (if present) for any directory which has a name of the form xxx.prc regardless of the parent directory.
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Old 10-18-2007, 10:57 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mocelet View Post
Once I have finished with it, a typical manifest file looks like this:
Code:
    <y-metadata>
      <startpage>darklover4.prc</startpage>
      <version>000</version>
      <ItemSize>335872</ItemSize>
      <image>DLover.jpg</image>
    </y-metadata>
Did you add DLover.jpg manually? I assume this is to get a thumbnail of the cover as the item's icon in the contentsLister. Does it matter how large the image is? How do you extract the image from the .prc file (or is it from somewhere else)?

A screenshot of the contentLister displaying book covers would be worth a thousand words. These are now very easy to make: fbshot via the contentlister.
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Old 10-18-2007, 12:36 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft View Post
Did you add DLover.jpg manually? I assume this is to get a thumbnail of the cover as the item's icon in the contentsLister. Does it matter how large the image is? How do you extract the image from the .prc file (or is it from somewhere else)?

A screenshot of the contentLister displaying book covers would be worth a thousand words. These are now very easy to make: fbshot via the contentlister.
Yep, added manually, and yes you get the image in the content lister. I have put images of all sizes in there (some larger than the associated book when measured in bytes!) and they get scaled down. I believe small images do not get scaled up though. I generally get the image from the place I buy the ebook, or Amazon if all else fails. Note that the filename is case sensitive, and sometimes it just doesn't work (you get a black icon). In these cases, I usually open the image in Gimp, and resave it, and all is well. I assume there is a limitation on encoding schemes or something.

Also, errors in the XML file break the icon, title and description, but running tidy over the file again after editing (with the options as above) will warn if there are any errors in the file.

I would take a screenshot, but the iLiad is my wife's, and I haven't got the developer package installed.
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Old 10-18-2007, 10:32 PM   #8
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The 3 attached screenshots illustrate the issue.

The 1st shows files that have been copied to the CF card, but not opened. In some cases the contentLister lists the book's title but in other cases it lists the books filename.

The 2nd shows what happens after the files have been opened by the MobiPocket Reader. They are now in individual subdirectories, and in all cases the contentLister lists the books filename (which is also now the subdirectory name). This is because that is how the MobiPocket Reader has configured the manifest.xml files.

The 3rd illustrates what manually editing the manifest.xml files and adding a cover image can do. I left the filename as the title, and added the book name and author in the description field. There are obviously other possible layouts. It is a shame that there isn't room for a 3-line description.

The thumbnails look better in the screenshot on a large desktop display than they do on the iLiad. This is one case where color would help a lot (much more than with larger images). Still, I think they are an improvement over the current default.

Note that all this information, including the cover image (in most cases) is in the .prc or .mobi file. There is no reason why the MobiPocket Reader could not produce a layout like the 3rd screenshot instead of the 2nd screenshot.

As usual, depending on your browser defaults, you may need to click on the expanded image again to get the full sized screenshot.
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Old 10-19-2007, 03:35 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft View Post
The 3rd illustrates what manually editing the manifest.xml files and adding a cover image can do. I left the filename as the title, and added the book name and author in the description field. There are obviously other possible layouts. It is a shame that there isn't room for a 3-line description.

The thumbnails look better in the screenshot on a large desktop display than they do on the iLiad. This is one case where color would help a lot (much more than with larger images). Still, I think they are an improvement over the current default.

Note that all this information, including the cover image (in most cases) is in the .prc or .mobi file. There is no reason why the MobiPocket Reader could not produce a layout like the 3rd screenshot instead of the 2nd screenshot.
Thanks for posting these. I agree that the content lister is much better with covers in the icons, but I would really like the images to be extratracted from the prc file automagically, and to have a content lister mode that shows 9 or 16 covers on the screen. with minimal wordage around them.
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Old 10-19-2007, 09:00 AM   #10
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The covers are cool. They almost make the "only 6 per page" limitation bearable, but I agree it would be nicer to have a 4x4 grid of covers available as a display option in Content Lister.

I wish iRex would open up the Content Lister source. There's so much that could be done with it.
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Old 10-19-2007, 09:12 AM   #11
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Just a reminder that we have Bert's Manifest Creator.
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Old 10-21-2007, 05:30 AM   #12
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Why not just rename the file to reflect the book title (before copying it to the iLiad? That's what I do, and it works fine. The iLiad certainly doesn't object to files with spaces in the title.
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