[reak]

Hi,

My "name" is reak. This is my first posting here even though I've been reading the forums for quite some time. Yet, after all this time, I still haven't been able to find answers to some of my doubts. I'm thinking about buying a Sony but it's no small sum of money to me, so I'd like to know beforehand what it is that I'd be getting. I'm sure that somebody with experience would be able to help me, so if you've got a minute, please write a few lines.

One of the uses I see for such a device is to do what I tried to do with Plucker on a Palm. When I stumbled on a website with some interesting information which I wanted to read through, I used to download it into Plucker and take with me and read while commuting. I'm sure you all know what Plucker is, but if not, it is a sort of off-line web reader for Palms. On your PC, you run the downloader, which you supply with the starting page URL and the depth of links you want to download, and click the "Go" button. Then you upload the resulting file to your Palm and read it when you want. Of course, the screen of the Palm is small so an eInk reader would be so much better.

Now, I haven't been able to answer the simple question: if this kind of functionality is available for the sony. Please don't think I haven't tried to find it out by myself. I've read all the 37 pages on HTML2LRF thread. I've installed libr500 and tried to use WEB2LRF to see if it works. I'm not an "IT professional" but I think I'm a fairly competent PC user. Yet, I'm still at a loss as to whether the technology is readily available for use *with an arbitrary website*.

1/ I see people ecstatically converting their HTML books to LRF so I assume, it must be working. However, I tried converting a web page I had saved to disk and all I got in lrfviewer (from libprs500) when I opened the resulting .lrf file was something resembling the html source and not a normally rendered html file. So, obviously there's something I don't understand here.

2/ I also tried to use WEB2LRF but it wouldn't accept an URL from me. I used the command line like this:

web2lrf --url="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/exclusive/"

as per the help message. The program would just print the same help message on the screen as if it was run with no parameters. Version is 0.4.22

3/ I read the docs re. WEB2LRF but they are talking about an RSS source in XLM format and how to write a custom profile for that. What I need is not an XLM source but an ordinary website, to download it once and read happily thereafter. Is it possible with WEB2LRF? The docs don't say that.

4/ So I tried flatLrf I saw listed on a "list of converters for sony..." As the URL, I just pasted the URL of a page on this very forum I was reading at the moment. The program did produce an output .lrf file, which didn't load in lrfviewer (reporting an error of a button not having a button property or something of the kind).

Now, finally the question I've been getting to (sorry for such a long posting).

=- Am I right that there's JUST NO WAY to use Sony to easily read arbitrary web sites off-line, the way one can do on Palm with Plucker or iSilo, at the present moment? =-

Please, somebody with the actual experience and more knowledge, could you give me an answer. If it is possible then how do I do that, and how do I test it without the reader itself?

Thank you very much in advance!