Quote:
Originally Posted by Doranwen
Hi everyone, this is my first post (it helpfully suggested introducing myself in the Introductions Forum, but I'm just going to do that here as part of all of this post since I won't be able to make this a regular part of my Internet activities).
I've been contemplating an e-book reader for a couple years now, but previously had no money to speak of (so buying one was quite out of the question, and I wasn't likely to get any relatives to purchase one for Christmas/b-day present). At one point I was considering a different device (can't even remember what now, it wasn't anything well-known), but upon discovering they were somewhat fading out, and this one is inexpensive, is based on more open lines than the very very proprietary Kindle and Nook (I'm very much into open source/Creative Commons sorts of things and really hate DRM), and allows more file formats than just about any other . . . I have e-books as html, txt, pdf, lit, doc, rtf, (rarely) pdb, (very rarely) cbr, even some mht files I saved (which I know I'll have to convert to something else to transfer over). My main desire for an e-book reader was to have somewhere away from a computer that I could read fanfic, lol! (Granted, I have a few e-books I would love to read elsewhere than a computer, but my library has way more fanfiction in it than real books--and some of the fanfics are BETTER than most published books, mind you.  )
Anyway, I just ordered two of the 5" ones, one for me and one for my brother. My brother is trying to collect all of Ellen G. White's writings (he was going to get physical copies of all the books, and presumably still is, but that may take a while and they're not as portable as an e-book reader). Since she died a little before 1920 (1914-1919 or so, I forget when), all of her books are public domain and most can easily be found multiple places. They can also be found in multiple formats, which brings me to my main question (and purpose for this post):
How does the file format affect the availability of searching for words? I have little use for this but my brother needs it for his purposes, so I need to know what format/s I should be trying to find the books in. I read something somewhere (but now I can't remember where or seem to find it again) about certain file formats having search capability and others not . . . I'm going to guess that pdf is one of those that would not. Since he's going to be visiting for just a short time I wanted to get a head start on stocking up all the books to put on his, and realized that I don't know which file format/s I should be going for.
And a minor (maybe related?) question:
Most of my regular ebooks are pdf (I find them much easier to read on the computer than most other formats); most of my fanfics are either txt or html. Are some formats harder to zoom in on than others? For instance, if I have a pdf with tiny text, will I be limited in how much I can zoom in compared to a txt file? I have an awful lot of pdf files, so restrictions on pdfs are something I'm particularly interested in learning about. (Any such restrictions aren't going to change my mind about getting the EZ Reader, because I have so many files in formats I know should be just fine that I can't WAIT for it to get here so I can finally read my favorite stories in bed without a clunky laptop across my lap!)
I'm sure these have been answered somewhere, I just can't seem to find it. I must not be running the right searches. Apologies if the answer is right in front of me and I'm just oblivious.  |
First of all, welcome!
And congratulations on your Pocket Pro! I've got one, and I love it! And to be honest... I love fanfic as well! In fact, lately that's mostly what I've been reading. The shows I like don't have much to offer in the area of books, especially ebooks, so I get my fix that way. I love sci fi, and there is plenty of fan fiction out there!
I've found that I convert most of mine to .rtf and read them in the CoolReader program that was in the latest firmware upgrade. Unfortunately, that firmware has been taken down because of battery drain issues, and I'm not sure what the CoolReader looks like in the previous issue. I like the way a book is formatted better in epub, so anything in epub will work well. You can search and also easily increase text size in epub, so I would recommend that for your brother's books.
Do you have Calibre? That's a great (free!) program for converting books to whatever format you need.
I know .txt and .html can be read on the Pocket Pro, but I haven't tried it, so I don't know how it looks. I think the next time I download a fanfic I'll try it in html and save myself a step.
PDF can zoom, but if I'm going to zoom I prefer epub. .rtf zooms well in CoolReader, but again that's the latest one, and I'm not sure how the December one does. (Really the main reason I like the newer firmware is because you can set it to have a visible clock in the CoolReader program, and I need that so I don't get carried away and read way too late.
)
If I didn't answer something, or didn't answer clearly enough, let me know! I'll be back to the forums either later tonight or tomorrow. But there are many others here who can help you out, as well! Welcome!