Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
I was looking into writing a viewer for epub, lit, mobi and other html based formats using the webkit engine (full spoort for css and even javascript). It looks like it would be pretty easy, the only major sticking point would be you'd have to give up pages and just get used to reading books like you do websites, in continuous flow mode.
|
Rather than starting from scratch, why don't you add your talent to Openberg Lector? It already does epub. It does need some help with paging, TOC viewing, etc. Although having a standalone app, instead of a FF plugin has some advantages. For that matter, how about helping improve FBReader?
As for javascript in an ebook reader I question whether it is really needed. At the very least, I would make that something that the user could disable. Not having it at all would certainly make the reader app smaller.
Paging would be desirable. However, FBReader doesn't do paging. The closest it comes to it is starting a chapter heading at the top of the screen (with some formats).
Edit. More on paging: I don't know what rendering engine they use, but MS Reader figures out the paging of an ebook when it is first opened. This of course depends on screen size, font, font size, etc. You can start reading a book while the paging is being done in the background. As long as you don't try to jump to the end of a very long book before the process is finished, this method works very well.