MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

rsperberg · 11-19-2005, 03:45 PM

I have been trying different Plucker books in the viewer on the Nokia 770, which I received a week ago. At first I was simply trying it with e-books I made using Plucker distiller, and I know that the Windows version of that is way out of date. So when I had problems I thought it was with my files.

A couple days ago, I tried some books made elsewhere, longer books, and I had the same problem -- although the pdb file seems to be full and complete, only a certain number of pages or lines are displayed in the Plucker Viewer. I make it as about 49 pages in the 770 screen size.

This occurs even when the only application I have open is the Plucker Viewer, and even after resetting the 770. If it is a memory issue, it doesn't seem to be coming from the 770 but from Plucker.

Is this something others have experienced?

For instance, I tried reading the Project Gutenberg-generated version of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha (downloadable at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2500 ). The last thing I can see in this text is the end of the paragraph beginning, "This myth, this rumour, this legend resounded."

In the online version of Siddhartha at http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/wor...=2304&pageno=1 , this point appears midway on page 11. The PG text itself extends to page 79.

The last word I can read in the text is the 28,595th character in the book. In a different book (in html), the last word is the 31,292nd character; removing the markup, the last character is the 28,815th character.

If this is simply something I can and should adjust in the Viewer on the 770, perhaps someone could advise me about this.

If not, perhaps the GTK+ or the 770-ported version has a restriction on how long a single page can be.

To explore this issue further, I experimented by taking PG's text, converting it to HTML and breaking it into 12 files, linking each chapter to the preceding and following chapter and to a Table of Contents (itself linked to all the chapters, of course). This created no problems whatsoever. (This is the version used in the screen captures mentioned in the previous post.)

I also opened the CIA World Factbook with high-res color illustrations from memoware (http://memoware.com/?screen=doc_deta...5510&back=main ). At 7.7 mb, it is more than 85 times larger than the original Siddhartha pdb file. It has some 225 separate pages, one for each country and dependency or special-sovereignty-area, all connected to a TOC. Again no problems.

I do not own a Palm so I can't check these texts in the canonical Plucker Viewer, but since so many pdb files seem constructed from a single long text (at least: 'longer than 11 pages') I don't think this is a Plucker issue per se.

* * *

Another problem I'm experiencing is with characters displaying properly. When I make Plucker pdb files using the Windows distiller, any special character -- dash, bullet, true-quote -- shows up as garbage characters or unrecognized characters, no matter what encoding I use for the text or for the output. The Nokia 770 is, of course, a Linux computer. Instead of Windows-1252, what encoding do Linux devices like?

* * *

One more thing: in the Nokia 770 version (as others have noted), after adding a book to the library, I've found I must first exit Plucker and relaunch to see the title. To delete a title from the library I must also delete the file from the MMC card or else its entry persists.

Thanks,

Roger Sperberg

PS: I've posted this report and questions on the Maemo-users mail-list. Apologies in advance for cross-posting, but I think the overlap is minimal.

Update: I just started a new thread with another question I have about Python. It only now occurs to me that some or all of my problems might be related to that problem. The thread is Plucker and Pythons, plural

11-19-2005, 03:45 PM	#2
rsperberg Zealot Posts: 114 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: NJ Device: Kindle Voyage	Problems with page length I have been trying different Plucker books in the viewer on the Nokia 770, which I received a week ago. At first I was simply trying it with e-books I made using Plucker distiller, and I know that the Windows version of that is way out of date. So when I had problems I thought it was with my files. A couple days ago, I tried some books made elsewhere, longer books, and I had the same problem -- although the pdb file seems to be full and complete, only a certain number of pages or lines are displayed in the Plucker Viewer. I make it as about 49 pages in the 770 screen size. This occurs even when the only application I have open is the Plucker Viewer, and even after resetting the 770. If it is a memory issue, it doesn't seem to be coming from the 770 but from Plucker. Is this something others have experienced? For instance, I tried reading the Project Gutenberg-generated version of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha (downloadable at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2500 ). The last thing I can see in this text is the end of the paragraph beginning, "This myth, this rumour, this legend resounded." In the online version of Siddhartha at http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/wor...=2304&pageno=1 , this point appears midway on page 11. The PG text itself extends to page 79. The last word I can read in the text is the 28,595th character in the book. In a different book (in html), the last word is the 31,292nd character; removing the markup, the last character is the 28,815th character. If this is simply something I can and should adjust in the Viewer on the 770, perhaps someone could advise me about this. If not, perhaps the GTK+ or the 770-ported version has a restriction on how long a single page can be. To explore this issue further, I experimented by taking PG's text, converting it to HTML and breaking it into 12 files, linking each chapter to the preceding and following chapter and to a Table of Contents (itself linked to all the chapters, of course). This created no problems whatsoever. (This is the version used in the screen captures mentioned in the previous post.) I also opened the CIA World Factbook with high-res color illustrations from memoware (http://memoware.com/?screen=doc_deta...5510&back=main ). At 7.7 mb, it is more than 85 times larger than the original Siddhartha pdb file. It has some 225 separate pages, one for each country and dependency or special-sovereignty-area, all connected to a TOC. Again no problems. I do not own a Palm so I can't check these texts in the canonical Plucker Viewer, but since so many pdb files seem constructed from a single long text (at least: 'longer than 11 pages') I don't think this is a Plucker issue per se. * * * Another problem I'm experiencing is with characters displaying properly. When I make Plucker pdb files using the Windows distiller, any special character -- dash, bullet, true-quote -- shows up as garbage characters or unrecognized characters, no matter what encoding I use for the text or for the output. The Nokia 770 is, of course, a Linux computer. Instead of Windows-1252, what encoding do Linux devices like? * * * One more thing: in the Nokia 770 version (as others have noted), after adding a book to the library, I've found I must first exit Plucker and relaunch to see the title. To delete a title from the library I must also delete the file from the MMC card or else its entry persists. Thanks, Roger Sperberg PS: I've posted this report and questions on the Maemo-users mail-list. Apologies in advance for cross-posting, but I think the overlap is minimal. Update: I just started a new thread with another question I have about Python. It only now occurs to me that some or all of my problems might be related to that problem. The thread is Plucker and Pythons, plural Last edited by rsperberg; 11-20-2005 at 08:48 AM.