Hello,
I've already made a similar post on the Sony Reader forum, but I also need the advice of those who own an iRex iLiad.
I've been working on a project for the last 2 months, trying to create something really usefull for the Sony reader and all the other e-ink devices.
I've spent quite some time online, and found many e-books available, mostly books in the public domain, but I wasn't really satisfied by their presentation or the format being used.
This new project is based on LaTeX, an old technology, but still the best thing around when you need to create scientific papers for example. Using this website (I used Ruby on Rails for this), people will be able to download PDF files (A4, Sony Reader and Custom PDF) first, but it could be any kind of files in the near future as long as it's supported by LaTeX. Unlike most websites, we don't store books as files, we store them in a database, separated into parts/chapters/sections. This way we can create table of contents for these books too, or make a much nicer presentation overall.
The website should be divided into 3 main sections:
- Books in the public domain: the usual stuff, but with books generated using LaTeX. We'll provide a way for people to send books for this section of the website, and then check if these books really are in the public domain before publishing them (a bit like wikisource ?).
- Books written by you: using a simple Ajax interface, anyone will be able to send their own book. Books will be generated using LaTeX too, and this section will have most of those trendy web 2.0 things like tags.
- Newspaper: Should come in 2 flavours, rss generated and user generated. It will be possible to create your own newspaper using rss feeds and then share it with anyone on the website. You're a complete newbie and you don't know what RSS feeds are for ? Not a problem, just click on one of those popular rss generated newspaper that someone created for you. Using an ajax interface, people will also be able to write articles and create their own fanzine, publish their views on the world etc... It's like blogging but for e-newspaper (correct name for this ?)
We'll begin with content in english and french, but everything is unicode, website and LaTeX included, so it will be possible to write or read books/newspapers in any language.
I'm still working really hard on this project, but I guess it will be ready for beta near mid december. I'll receive my sony reader tomorrow, so I haven't generated pdf files for it yet. Included with this post, there's a sample using basic LaTeX and A4 (this is generated using my website).
I've just received the Sony Reader, but I don't think I'll own an iRex iLiad before a few months, yet I'd like to add support for this reader on my website. It'll be possible for anyone to create custom PDF files and save the template, but I'd like to give the possibility for those using the iLiad to download books, without going through this.
Which size for the books are you using on the reader ? Is A4 possible on the iLiad unlike the Sony Reader (it's possible but not really easy to read on this reader) ?
If you're interested in this project, here's the #1 demo, on how anyone can create a book with this website:
English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o-66_ZxTR4
French/Français:
http://www.dailymotion.com/Feedbooks...ooks-demo-1-fr