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nmackay · 06-26-2007, 04:13 AM

A huge number of things that I want to read, and often read just once, come in electronic formats: manuals for software, a subscriber-only daily news email, blogs, RSS feeds, news paper items, items on websites, student papers and drafts, academic & professional journal articles, and as part of my work is in history, all those out of copyright texts on Gutenberg, and more (I have read novels on my Reader, but never bought one from Connect).

Like many people I want to read all this text in the comfort of my armchair or bed, not perched on an office chair looking at a computer screen, and do not want to print it out. Enter my Sony Reader, which I love. But enter a problem too: Sony seem to think that I should buy preformatted books from Connect and have put nothing into software that would allow text from all these sources to be easily reformatted to suit the reader. The frustration of trying to turn Letter/A4 PDFs into forms legible on the Reader is an example. The Reader then can’t do the job that I think is best suited for: READING ALL AND ANY ELECTRONIC TEXT THAT YOU OTHERWISE WOULD HAVE TO READ ON COMPUTER SCREEN. Look how many of the posts on this site have to do with smart people spending time on means to convert text forms to fit the Reader.

Of course the problems in trying to convert page sizes of electronic media to suit the Reader would be much less if the Reader was closer to the large page sizes we handle in paper.

06-26-2007, 04:13 AM	#1
nmackay Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2006	What do you use your Reader for? A huge number of things that I want to read, and often read just once, come in electronic formats: manuals for software, a subscriber-only daily news email, blogs, RSS feeds, news paper items, items on websites, student papers and drafts, academic & professional journal articles, and as part of my work is in history, all those out of copyright texts on Gutenberg, and more (I have read novels on my Reader, but never bought one from Connect). Like many people I want to read all this text in the comfort of my armchair or bed, not perched on an office chair looking at a computer screen, and do not want to print it out. Enter my Sony Reader, which I love. But enter a problem too: Sony seem to think that I should buy preformatted books from Connect and have put nothing into software that would allow text from all these sources to be easily reformatted to suit the reader. The frustration of trying to turn Letter/A4 PDFs into forms legible on the Reader is an example. The Reader then can’t do the job that I think is best suited for: READING ALL AND ANY ELECTRONIC TEXT THAT YOU OTHERWISE WOULD HAVE TO READ ON COMPUTER SCREEN. Look how many of the posts on this site have to do with smart people spending time on means to convert text forms to fit the Reader. Of course the problems in trying to convert page sizes of electronic media to suit the Reader would be much less if the Reader was closer to the large page sizes we handle in paper.