calling all mobileread people

[bowerbird]

i have developed something that i call "z.m.l." --
zen markup language, or zero markup language
-- that uses plain-text formatting for e-books
(i.e., with none of that angle-bracket nonsense)...

project gutenberg e-texts exemplify the type of
file that i'm talking about, and indeed i used them
as my primary cornerstorne while inventing z.m.l.

the idea was to spruce up those boring, ugly files.

i've written a cross-platform viewer-program that
displays z.m.l.; when you load a plain-ascii .zml file
into this viewer, it springs to life as a full-on e-book.

all of the headers are big and bold, and a _hotlinked_
table of contents is created _automatically_ for you...
the title-page and front-matter pages are formatted
in much the same way you'd see them in a paper-book.
footnotes are handled as you would expect them to be.
you can specify if you want the text to be full-justified
or leave it ragged-right if you like it that way instead.
tables get auto-adjusted to the window-size. and so on.

further, the display is the 2-up facing-pages "spread"
that's familiar to us from our experience with p-books.
(at least that's the way it is on a regular monitor;
but that approach won't work on most handhelds.)

and of course you can choose things like the fontsize,
the font, the leading, the colors, the background, etc.

in addition to this offline-viewer, i'm writing routines
that translate a z.m.l. file into .html for web-viewing.

people can also use that .html on handheld machines
(either by converting it, or viewing it right on the web),
which is where you mobileread wizards can help out...

after the first of the year, i will put up some samples.
if you can download and convert them to _your_ format
(whichever format that might be) and give me feedback
on what works and what doesn't, i would appreciate it.

before then, if you can give me some advance pointers,
that would also be quite helpful. for instance, i've been
using c.s.s. in my web-versions so far. is that gonna work?
(please say yes. i'd hate to have to go and redo all of that.)

i'm a mobile virgin, so anything you can tell me is _good_.
even better would be .html that has already proven itself
as providing a high-quality conversion over to handhelds,
because i can use that as a template for my own efforts...

for owners of a nokia770, or any other handheld that can
browse the web, i have already put up sample books that
i _believe_ you should be able to look at fine right now, so
i'd appreciate it very much if you could confirm that for me:
> http://www.greatamericannovel.com/mabie/mabiec001.html
> http://www.greatamericannovel.com/myant/myantc001.html
> http://www.greatamericannovel.com/sgfhb/sgfhbc001.html

again, these give a 2-up display, which isn't optimal on a handheld
(although it should work fine on the landscape nokia770 screen),
but what i'm wondering about now is just if the .html itself works.

***

i know that the project gutenberg library has been a huge source
of material to handheld owners in the past. what i'm trying to do
is to jack up both the typographic quality and e-book functionality
of those plain-text files, to give you a better reading experience.
(z.m.l. also makes the job of _authoring_ material much easier!)
so i'm asking for you to help me so that i can help you. :+)

thanks in advance for your cooperation...

-bowerbird

[sic]

hi

this is all great... where is it though?

[bowerbird]

my samples will appear starting next month...

in the meantime, material that might serve
as a prototype for me would be welcomed...
you can e-mail it to me at bowerbird@aol.com.

the links above show a methodology based on
a page-by-page rendering of the book, since it
is the engine used for a proofreading interface.
(the text is displayed alongside its image-scan.)

another methodology would split the book into
chapters, and render each of them individually.

or, of course, the whole book can be one file.

i'm not even sure which of those stark choices
is the one that handheld owners would prefer,
although i assume the whole-book one is best.

-bowerbird

[jæd]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

(at least that's the way it is on a regular monitor; but that approach won't work on most handhelds.)

Um... Its this *mobile*-read.com...?

Originally Posted by bowerbird

after the first of the year, i will put up some samples.
if you can download and convert them to _your_ format

So... You want us to convert your samples into formats that are fine for us...? I think we're doing that already... Just with whole books not just someone's samples...

Btw... Your post formatting seems a bit odd...

[bowerbird]

i will need to know if the .html i am creating
converts well to the formats you are using...

if not, then i will need to know how to
change it, so that it will convert well...

is that clear?

-bowerbird