E-BookStores offering titles in *.lrf

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Well, since ePub can be converted to LRF (if you really just want LRF output), I'd consider that an acceptable alternative.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

LRF isn't even trying to become a standard.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Well, since ePub can be converted to LRF (if you really just want LRF output), I'd consider that an acceptable alternative.

Well, since Sony has indicated (if not announced) that they will be supporting Digital Editions/EPUB format, I think lobbying for that, once the support materializes, is probably a better use of effort.

[Cthulhu]

Pardon my ignorance (cannot even use affect/effect correctly):

Is there a thread, either in Content, of SONY Reader forums, that discusses where to get e-book beyond the Connect Store? I'm afraid that if there is, it is defunct. Of course, if it existed, it might devolve into another DRM debate-baiting thread.

Any suggestions for alternatives to Connect?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Pardon my ignorance (cannot even use affect/effect correctly):

Is there a thread, either in Content, of SONY Reader forums, that discusses where to get e-book beyond the Connect Store? I'm afraid that if there is, it is defunct. Of course, if it existed, it might devolve into another DRM debate-baiting thread.

Any suggestions for alternatives to Connect?

There are no alternates to the Connect store. Nobody else sells LRX (LRF with DRM) books. The only solution you have is to purchase LIT format, break the DRM, and convert to LRF.

[Cthulhu]

But I was given to understand that the Reader supports other formats, such as RTF & HMTL. Is that incorrect, or can the Reader do so one uses a conversion program which translates the file into a more palatable form for the Reader?

[RSaunders]

Remember, we keep a list of sources here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11052

There are other sources of "native" books, but none
as exhaustive as the sources in other formats. Please
add sources to the other thread, if you find one.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

But I was given to understand that the Reader supports other formats, such as RTF & HMTL. Is that incorrect, or can the Reader do so one uses a conversion program which translates the file into a more palatable form for the Reader?

That's exactly right... you use a program, like BookDesigner, to convert RTF or HTML to LRF. I use BookDesigner to convert all of my novels (I'm also on that list of e-book suppliers... yay!), and I can recommend it. There are others that other people in this thread can probably recommend, too.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

But I was given to understand that the Reader supports other formats, such as RTF & HMTL. Is that incorrect, or can the Reader do so one uses a conversion program which translates the file into a more palatable form for the Reader?

The Reader will read RTF, but not HTML. The RTF reader inside the Reader is not all that good. It does not support bookmarks or graphics. You can use html2lrf to convert HTML to LRF or Book Designer to do it along with RTF. Sometimes you'll find the HTML is just fine as is using html2lrf, but RTF is best converted using Book Designer.

[RWood]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The Reader will read RTF, but not HTML. The RTF reader inside the Reader is not all that good. It does not support bookmarks or graphics. You can use html2lrf to convert HTML to LRF or Book Designer to do it along with RTF. Sometimes you'll find the HTML is just fine as is using html2lrf, but RTF is best converted using Book Designer.

I use RTF as a bridge between the TXT format of Project Gutenberg and BookDesigner. I do as much cleanup of the text in Word and save the results in RTF for archive and loading in BD. I also use Stingo's Word macro to correct the hard returns at the end of each line in the files from Project Gutenberg. (There are links to BD and Stingo's Word macro in the conversion section of the MobileRead Wiki.)

[monkius]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

But I was given to understand that the Reader supports other formats, such as RTF & HMTL. Is that incorrect, or can the Reader do so one uses a conversion program which translates the file into a more palatable form for the Reader?

I have been getting a lot of books from baen.com from their free library as well as some you can purchase and download.

Pros:
- All of the files are available without DRM.

Cons:
- I have to use some perl scripts to bump up the font size on the rtf files and have to manually add the author / title information so the Reader can see it.

For me, getting the book without DRM is the biggest issue. It is not that I want to pirate the books, but rather I want to be able to read the books I purchase for years to come. While the Reader is good now, I want my library to transfer to whatever electronic book I use in the future.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

... cannot even use affect/effect correctly ....

But ... you did use them correctly!

[Cthulhu]

Thanks for all the input.

What I take from everyone's post is that someone like me (read lazy, and mostly non-script literate) has few options as regards texts that are "optimised" for pleasant, easy reading on the Reader.

However,

If I use one or a multitude of programs (available here on the forum, and for minimum to no cost), I can convert text I purchase on the intertubes via my pc and port them to the Reader's internal memory or memory card.

As a philosophic position, I am against DRM software, and appreciate that if I want a text that I can "flow" to other formats, I may need to scrub & dub my files.

Reckon that nothing good is ever too easy.

;-

[NatCh]

I'd recommend you give BookDesigner a shot first. Once you get it set up the way you want it (and there's a great tutorial to help with that) you basically just feed it files and it spits out reasonably well formed books -- even if you don't want to do much or any clean up. If you want faincy stuff like tables of contents, sure that 'costs' extra (time), but nothing says you have to have them.

[Arek_W]

I am with NAT, BD seems to be best alternative, especially converting *.lit's to *.lrf.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by monkius

I have been getting a lot of books from baen.com from their free library as well as some you can purchase and download.

Pros:
- All of the files are available without DRM.

Cons:
- I have to use some perl scripts to bump up the font size on the rtf files and have to manually add the author / title information so the Reader can see it.

For me, getting the book without DRM is the biggest issue. It is not that I want to pirate the books, but rather I want to be able to read the books I purchase for years to come. While the Reader is good now, I want my library to transfer to whatever electronic book I use in the future.

html2lrf (part of libprs500) handles Baen books really really well. The trick is to give the *_toc.htm file as the root for conversion. I use the following switches:

-o "$title".lrf --cover="$cover" "./$ISBN"_toc.htm --font-delta=-1 --disable-chapter-detection --baen

where $title is the book's title, $cover is the isbn.jpg file, "./$ISBN"_toc.htm is the table of contents file. The --baen switch cleans up a few unfortunate things in the html before converting.

I've chosen --font-delta=-1 so that the S size works for me in landscape mode, and the M size works for me in portrait mode. Your mileage may vary.

Give it a try -- I've found the converted .lrf files are much more convenient than the rtf files are. Especially for collections, where the table of contents links matter.

Edit-- The other thing is that all the html versions of stuff from Baen are extremely stylized. This makes it easy to write a script that does right by any Baen html book, complete with extracting title and author meta-data, getting the cover art, and so on.

I note that I've converted everything from Baen into lrf files with this technique. At this point my scripts are set up well enough that when Kovid fixes bugs in html2lrf, it's a one line command to re-convert all those hundreds of books and stick the .lrf files in the right places on my disk.