Cybook Gen3: I have seen the 1.00 firmware!

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by simple dave

Thanks, Derek. Pretty soon we won't need your review because you have already told us everything about the Cybook...

Don't give up hope!!! I'm about half-way through the re-write of my review and should have it posted by this evening. Ummm... even though I'm a NAEB officer and a Cybook user, I try to not hide the warts. Don't know if that's going to play well with Bookeen.

Derek

[jbenny]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

I've seen the newest version of the firmware and it offers the menu options to:

Fit Page
Fit Width
Fit Height

Portrait
Landscape
Flipped (Yes, it flips the page top for bottom.)

Go To... (uses the same Go To as regular ebooks on the Cybook)
Show Status Bar (Shows the PDF title, page of and page count and how much the 'Fit' options have 'zoomed' the page - no way to zoom.)
Advanced... (standard 'Advanced' menu - no zoom/pan controls)

Back to Library

And if the document is a standard letter/A4 page using typical printed font sizes, it looks crappy in Portrait and barely readable in Landscape.

Derek

So, when you "fit width" in landscape mode, you can't zoom the text to get rid of the margins? If not, then Bookend needs to add this in a future firmware.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by jbenny

So, when you "fit width" in landscape mode, you can't zoom the text to get rid of the margins? If not, then Bookend needs to add this in a future firmware.

I'm not sure I'm understanding the question. First, yes, the page, either Portrait or Landscape, will chop off the bottom of the page as it moves the PDF document page edge to the edges of the display. No, it does *NOT* move the text right to the edge of the display. Nor does it have user-specified 'zoom' or 'pan' capabilities.

Yes, these are features that *must* be added if one wants to do a lot of Letter/A4 PDF reading!

Derek

[Robert1325]

I've got some LIT files on my computer that i'd like to use, how can I read those on the cybook?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Robert1325

I've got some LIT files on my computer that i'd like to use, how can I read those on the cybook?

I just tested if conversion from lit to mobigen worked on Linux and it did. You "explode" the lit file with clit (ConvertLit). Then you can use mobigen to build a Mobipocket file. In Linux you can run mobigen with wine as described in another thread here.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

I just tested if conversion from lit to mobigen worked on Linux and it did. You "explode" the lit file with clit (ConvertLit). Then you can use mobigen to build a Mobipocket file. In Linux you can run mobigen with wine as described in another thread here.

And under BookDesigner (Windoze) you can just open the LIT file and re-compile it to Mobi. All the ConvertLit stuff is run by BD.

Derek

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by tompe

Then you can use mobigen to build a Mobipocket file.

This works well; give mobigen the .opf file as its starting point:

mobigen.exe file.opf -c1 -s0 -jpeg

[Robert1325]

thanks a bunch

Tomorrow is going to be a great day for some of us

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

This works well; give mobigen the .opf file as its starting point:

mobigen.exe file.opf -c1 -s0 -jpeg

You can also import the .opf file into Mobipocket Creator; that seems to be less picky about the contents than mobigen is.

[jbenny]

There is a discussion about how the Sony displays Gutenberg TXT files here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15780. In particular, see post #12 by Kacir. Note how the Sony displays the file as-is, with all the line breaks in the original text file.

This brings up a good question. How does the Cybook handle this? Does it have any additional smarts about displaying text files like the Gutenberg ones, or does it do like the Sony and display them as-is?

I have attached the Gutenberg text of Grimms Fairy Tales, which is what Kacir used. Would someone with a Cybook please try this and let us know how it looks, using the same part of the text? A picture would be really nice, if you could manage it.

[JSWolf]

The Gen3 won't be any better for text files. The lin breaks are still going to be as they are on the Sony. Sorry, but if you are expecting to kae most PG text or HTML and read as is without any cleaning up, you will be sadly mistaken that it will look nice. A lot of the html has page numbers which will make the HTML on the gen3 look not so good. Text as was just said won't look so good. The best solution is to run the text or HTML though Book Designer and clean it up from there. That goes for the 500/505 and Gen3.

[tompe]

Why don't you choose a font size that can display 80 character per line or so? Then it should look OK.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why don't you choose a font size that can display 80 character per line or so? Then it should look OK.

Because then you'll end up with a rather small font unless you go landscape.

[jbenny]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The Gen3 won't be any better for text files. The lin breaks are still going to be as they are on the Sony. Sorry, but if you are expecting to kae most PG text or HTML and read as is without any cleaning up, you will be sadly mistaken that it will look nice. A lot of the html has page numbers which will make the HTML on the gen3 look not so good. Text as was just said won't look so good. The best solution is to run the text or HTML though Book Designer and clean it up from there. That goes for the 500/505 and Gen3.

I appreciate your opinion on this, but I was hoping that someone with a Cybook would test this and let us know for sure. As the device and firmware are still very new, we don't know for a fact how it will handle this problem until someone with a unit in hand tells us.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by jbenny

I appreciate your opinion on this, but I was hoping that someone with a Cybook would test this and let us know for sure. As the device and firmware are still very new, we don't know for a fact how it will handle this problem until someone with a unit in hand tells us.

I have done this. Lord knows I have enough TXT files laying around. And, if I choose for hard-returned line length, then the font size is a bit too small for me when I'm using my distance glasses - but quite decent with my reading glasses. This is, of course, in Portrait mode. In Landscape mode, the problem of too-tiny font size goes away.

However, I've found that Ebook Tidy does a really good job of eliminating these in-paragraph hard-returns and it's free to use. Oh sure, there will be *some* editing involved, but not nearly as much as cleaning these TXT files up by hand.



Derek