Hello everybody !

arioste · 12-25-2008, 01:49 PM

New here...and in many other places of this world !!!

I'm a frenchman who likes read and admire american and british litterature. I am very happy to be here with you, my fellows companions in dreams and letters...

As a traveller around my town to takes photographs of old houses of he suburbs, I like to carry a book every in buses, metro, rer, trains etc..
And as a great user of numerics tools, I bought a Sony PRS 505.
Now...I have a big problem !
HOW CAN I GET A BOOK WORKING WITH THIS MACHINE ?
In France The FNAC company sells only 120 or 150 copies...
Amazon US prefer to provide it's own system
And SONY stay mute on the subject !

Here, in Europe, we have the Gutenberg site where you are supposed to get may very good books for free.
BUT if you need to adapt the font's size to your view.... the paragraphs are cuts without any respect for the text...Giving some unreading marmelade.

Well...I hope this is the firs and only grave difficulty of this experience..And that you will laugh of my stupidity

Thanks anyway
JD

pilotbob · 12-25-2008, 02:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by arioste

Well...I hope this is the firs and only grave difficulty of this experience..And that you will laugh of my stupidity

Thanks anyway
JD

JD... hello and welcome to the forum.

The first trick to learn is that all ebooks were not created equally. Some were hatched from an egg and plopped onto the sidewalk from their Wordstar files. The generally have no TOC, not really formated and might be in txt (see PG). Others are lovingly built by hand, proof read and put into the correct ebook formats with TOC and pictures propertly sized. These you will find here in our ebook section.

So, my good man... I would suggest you get a few books from the Mobilread libraries in the format native to your reader and give those a try. You will enjoy them much more.

I look forward to your commentry.

BOb

MickeyC · 12-25-2008, 02:17 PM

Hi JD and welcome to the Forum

slayda · 12-25-2008, 02:26 PM

You might also try the Baen Free Library for the properly formated books there. Then look at their "For Sell" books.

Oh & welcome to the forum.

arioste · 12-26-2008, 04:00 AM

Excellent advice....Thank you....I see we have the same PRS 505. What is the best format for this machine ?...And...sorry again...What is a TOC my good fellow ?
Now : I'll have a good look at Mobilread libraries
JD

zelda_pinwheel · 12-26-2008, 07:46 AM

Bonjour arioste et bienvenue !
i'm sure you'll find all the answers to your questions here. to get you started, i can tell you that TOC = "Table Of Contents" (table des matières).

most people will advise you to choose lrf or epub formats for the 505 ; lrf is the sony proprietary format which can only be read on the sony ; epub is the new industry standard format which will become progressively more widespread, based on xhtml and css. epub is still in the process of being defined, and the viewers are still being improved, but for archival purposes, epub is much better and already gives a satisfactory reading experience. personally i would strongly recommend epub. this also gives you much more freedom since you are not limited to the sony bookstore or the fnac's (very limited...) offer.

you can find a lot of books in lrf or epub format here in mobileread's library. i also recommend feedbooks for more free books in english and in french. both of these sources offer the classic texts of Project Gutenberg but nicely formatted and often proofread and corrected, or enriched with illustrations, etc. another really great site for francophones is ebooks libres et gratuits, with more public domain texts in french. you can also find some recent texts by authors who distribute their work under a CC licence.

you can check the wiki for a list of bookshops for more recent books and in the french forum we have a few discussions about where to find recent ebooks in french as well, please don't hesitate to join in.

i would also recommend to you the free appli Calibre for format conversion and library management. with calibre you can transform almost any ebook into a format you can read on your sony.

i am sure you are going to love your liseuse ! stop by soon to tell us about your experiences and share some tips.

and by the way, if you live in paris, don't miss our next mobileread apéro, the 31st of january.

à bientôt !

arioste · 01-02-2009, 03:46 AM

Hello

Thousands thanks for your detailed advice. Mainly concerning the FORMAT...One more question (if you don'tmind)...
I loaded "PRICE and PREJUDICES" free from Gutenberg. But, when I change the size of characters...the text does not take a good position For example, a letter can be separated from a line and come alone on the following line (sorry for this english...Hope you understand!)
On the contrary : I bought a book at the Fnack and the text organize itself whatever the size of character.
Does the Sony format or the other give a better editing ?

Thanks again, Happy New Year and sorry for the apero. I should have come if
I had read your msg in time !!! As a journalist curious of the numeric world I'd like very much to meet the new readers of the XXI eme
JD

zelda_pinwheel · 01-02-2009, 06:50 AM

concerning Pride and Prejudice, a text directly from project gutenberg is often "un peu brut de décoffrage", in a very basic format (usually .txt or html). that means that you can have hard line breaks (retour à la ligne) which interfere with the correct reflow of the text. if you would like to read P&P i highly recommend you take instead the version here (with illustrations too !) because it has been formatted in a proper way for a liseuse. the texts from PG often need a bit of work to make them more comfortable to read ; sometimes there are errors from the original scans of the books, and often the format is very basic with no styles for chapters, no text in italic, etc. if you want to learn how to format a text from pg yourself to make it more agreeable to read there are a lot of threads about the topic and if you have any questions feel free to ask ! an excellent and very easy ressource for creating ebooks from public domain texts is feedbooks.com which has a wysiwyg interface as well.

the books from the fnac are already in epub which is the ideal format for ebooks, so they will perform much better in general. the major visible difference at the moment between lrf (sony) format and epub is that epub for the moment does not support justified text. some people find this very annoying ; personally, i hate automatically justified text, as it can present very irregular spaces between words and i find that really ugly.

so i prefer text aligned left. and then of course there is the more fundamental difference of open format (epub) vs. closed proprietary format (lrf).

bonne année à toi, and for the apéro, read again, it is the 31 JANVIER, so if you want to come you are not too late.

fais-nous signe dans le file idoine. where are you a journalist ?

12-25-2008, 01:49 PM	#1
arioste Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2008 Device: Sony PRS 505	Hello everybody ! New here...and in many other places of this world !!! I'm a frenchman who likes read and admire american and british litterature. I am very happy to be here with you, my fellows companions in dreams and letters... As a traveller around my town to takes photographs of old houses of he suburbs, I like to carry a book every in buses, metro, rer, trains etc.. And as a great user of numerics tools, I bought a Sony PRS 505. Now...I have a big problem ! HOW CAN I GET A BOOK WORKING WITH THIS MACHINE ? In France The FNAC company sells only 120 or 150 copies... Amazon US prefer to provide it's own system And SONY stay mute on the subject ! Here, in Europe, we have the Gutenberg site where you are supposed to get may very good books for free. BUT if you need to adapt the font's size to your view.... the paragraphs are cuts without any respect for the text...Giving some unreading marmelade. Well...I hope this is the firs and only grave difficulty of this experience..And that you will laugh of my stupidity Thanks anyway JD

12-26-2008, 04:00 AM	#5
arioste Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2008 Device: Sony PRS 505	Hello Forum people, Pilotbob Excellent advice....Thank you....I see we have the same PRS 505. What is the best format for this machine ?...And...sorry again...What is a TOC my good fellow ? Now : I'll have a good look at Mobilread libraries JD

01-02-2009, 03:46 AM	#7
arioste Member Posts: 22 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2008 Device: Sony PRS 505	Thanks for your advice Hello Thousands thanks for your detailed advice. Mainly concerning the FORMAT...One more question (if you don'tmind)... I loaded "PRICE and PREJUDICES" free from Gutenberg. But, when I change the size of characters...the text does not take a good position For example, a letter can be separated from a line and come alone on the following line (sorry for this english...Hope you understand!) On the contrary : I bought a book at the Fnack and the text organize itself whatever the size of character. Does the Sony format or the other give a better editing ? Thanks again, Happy New Year and sorry for the apero. I should have come if I had read your msg in time !!! As a journalist curious of the numeric world I'd like very much to meet the new readers of the XXI eme JD

12-25-2008, 02:17 PM	#3
MickeyC Grand Sorcerer Posts: 16,731 Karma: 12185114 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Florida Device: iPhone 6 plus, Sony T1, iPad 3	Hi JD and welcome to the Forum

12-25-2008, 02:26 PM	#4
slayda Retired & reading more! Posts: 2,764 Karma: 1884247 Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: North Alabama, USA Device: Kindle 1, iPad Air 2, iPhone 6S+, Kobo Aura One	You might also try the Baen Free Library for the properly formated books there. Then look at their "For Sell" books. Oh & welcome to the forum.

12-26-2008, 07:46 AM	#6
zelda_pinwheel zeldinha zippy zeldissima Posts: 27,827 Karma: 921169 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Paris, France Device: eb1150 & is that a nook in her pocket, or she just happy to see you?	Bonjour arioste et bienvenue ! i'm sure you'll find all the answers to your questions here. to get you started, i can tell you that TOC = "Table Of Contents" (table des matières). most people will advise you to choose lrf or epub formats for the 505 ; lrf is the sony proprietary format which can only be read on the sony ; epub is the new industry standard format which will become progressively more widespread, based on xhtml and css. epub is still in the process of being defined, and the viewers are still being improved, but for archival purposes, epub is much better and already gives a satisfactory reading experience. personally i would strongly recommend epub. this also gives you much more freedom since you are not limited to the sony bookstore or the fnac's (very limited...) offer. you can find a lot of books in lrf or epub format here in mobileread's library. i also recommend feedbooks for more free books in english and in french. both of these sources offer the classic texts of Project Gutenberg but nicely formatted and often proofread and corrected, or enriched with illustrations, etc. another really great site for francophones is ebooks libres et gratuits, with more public domain texts in french. you can also find some recent texts by authors who distribute their work under a CC licence. you can check the wiki for a list of bookshops for more recent books and in the french forum we have a few discussions about where to find recent ebooks in french as well, please don't hesitate to join in. i would also recommend to you the free appli Calibre for format conversion and library management. with calibre you can transform almost any ebook into a format you can read on your sony. i am sure you are going to love your liseuse ! stop by soon to tell us about your experiences and share some tips. and by the way, if you live in paris, don't miss our next mobileread apéro, the 31st of january. à bientôt !

01-02-2009, 06:50 AM	#8
zelda_pinwheel zeldinha zippy zeldissima Posts: 27,827 Karma: 921169 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Paris, France Device: eb1150 & is that a nook in her pocket, or she just happy to see you?	concerning Pride and Prejudice, a text directly from project gutenberg is often "un peu brut de décoffrage", in a very basic format (usually .txt or html). that means that you can have hard line breaks (retour à la ligne) which interfere with the correct reflow of the text. if you would like to read P&P i highly recommend you take instead the version here (with illustrations too !) because it has been formatted in a proper way for a liseuse. the texts from PG often need a bit of work to make them more comfortable to read ; sometimes there are errors from the original scans of the books, and often the format is very basic with no styles for chapters, no text in italic, etc. if you want to learn how to format a text from pg yourself to make it more agreeable to read there are a lot of threads about the topic and if you have any questions feel free to ask ! an excellent and very easy ressource for creating ebooks from public domain texts is feedbooks.com which has a wysiwyg interface as well. the books from the fnac are already in epub which is the ideal format for ebooks, so they will perform much better in general. the major visible difference at the moment between lrf (sony) format and epub is that epub for the moment does not support justified text. some people find this very annoying ; personally, i hate automatically justified text, as it can present very irregular spaces between words and i find that really ugly. so i prefer text aligned left. and then of course there is the more fundamental difference of open format (epub) vs. closed proprietary format (lrf). bonne année à toi, and for the apéro, read again, it is the 31 JANVIER, so if you want to come you are not too late. fais-nous signe dans le file idoine. where are you a journalist ?