Gregg's Nearly Interminable Adventures in Linux Land

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by signum

That's about as far as I can go with this. I saw a vague reference to a black bar in chrome under "low memory conditions", but couldn't find anything more about it. The suggestion was to use Firefox instead!

Your best bet now is to ask your question in the Firefox support forum. Go to

forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=38

If they can't handle it, well...

thanks signum. Will check out the forum. It's no big deal though since I can see what's under the black bar.

(And if both Firefox and Chrome have black bars then use...)

[Glorfindel]

Originally Posted by Glorfindel

While we are discussing low powered computers... I have a tablet running Win95 with a 200 MHZ CPU, 64 MB RAM, and all of a 5GB hdd

I just checked, it's 32MB RAM

[Glorfindel]

But it does have a fully functioning touch screen Now that you mention it it may have been $90,000. I'll ask my dad.

[PeterT]

This might be of interest --> https://www.edx.org/course/linuxfoun...1#.U33_8PldUrU

Introduction to Linux

Develop a good working knowledge of Linux using both the graphical interface and command line, covering the major Linux distribution families.
About this Course

Linux powers 94% of the world’s supercomputers, most of the servers powering the Internet, the majority of financial trades worldwide and a billion Android devices. In short, Linux is everywhere. It appears in many different architectures, from mainframes to server to desktop to mobile and on a staggeringly wide variety of hardware.

This course explores the various tools and techniques commonly used by Linux programmers, system administrators and end users to achieve their day-to-day work in a Linux environment. It is designed for experienced computer users who have limited or no previous exposure to Linux, whether they are working in an individual or Enterprise environment.

Upon completion of this training you should have a good working knowledge of Linux, from both a graphical and command line perspective, allowing you to easily navigate through any of the major Linux distributions. You will be able to continue your progress as either a user, system administrator or developer using the acquired skill set.

Best of all, you can just Audit the online course at no cost.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by PeterT

This might be of interest --> https://www.edx.org/course/linuxfoun...1#.U33_8PldUrU



Best of all, you can just Audit the online course at no cost.

Registered, Peter. Now I gotta wait till August for it to start, but it should be good. Thanks! Plus it was good getting turned on to that whole edX system.

[Gregg Bell]

That's about it. The details: (I have Xubuntu 14.04.) I am a little confused. Xubuntu has an "E-book Viewer"in the graphics section of the applications menu. It's a great viewer. But then when I open up an epub to view in Calibre it comes up in the selfsame "E-book Viewer" from the graphics section of the applications menu.

So, #1) Is that "E-book Viewer" part of my default Xubuntu stuff or part of Calibre?

Then I need an Ebook viewer that will highlight. "E-book Viewer" will highlight stuff but when you go to highlight something else the previous highlighting disappears.

So, #2) Is there a way to get "E-book Viewer" to retain the highlighting?

And lastly #3) If "E-book Viewer" will not retain the highlighting, what is a good free Ebook viewer that I can get that will do highlighting?

Thanks guys!

[eschwartz]

E-Book Viewer is a part of calibre. It can be accessed through calibre, as the "internal viewer", or used standalone from the applications menu. Just like Edit Book is available standalone.

Kovid plans someday on improving the viewer into a more fully-featured viewer that includes annotations support (beyond the current, bookmarks-only support) but, well, he has a lot of things he wants to do with calibre so who knows when he will find time to work on this?

E-book_software#Linux

FBReader sounds like a good bet. Cross-platform, runs on linux,

Highly customizable. Choose colors, fonts, page turning animations, dictionaries, bookmarks, etc. to make reading as convenient as you want.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

That's about it. The details: (I have Xubuntu 14.04.) I am a little confused. Xubuntu has an "E-book Viewer"in the graphics section of the applications menu. It's a great viewer. But then when I open up an epub to view in Calibre it comes up in the selfsame "E-book Viewer" from the graphics section of the applications menu.

So, #1) Is that "E-book Viewer" part of my default Xubuntu stuff or part of Calibre?

Calibre is available for Linux and OS/X as well as Windows. It's written in Python, which is cross platform. I believe what Ubuntu offers as eBook Viewer is in fact Calibre, and the menu entry is a link to the eBook Viewer portion of Calibre.

Then I need an Ebook viewer that will highlight. "E-book Viewer" will highlight stuff but when you go to highlight something else the previous highlighting disappears.

Why do you need to highlight?

I think that behavior is pretty standard. When you highlight something in an application, like an editor, it is setting marks at the beginning and end of the highlighted section, and displaying what you highlighted differently.

If you go to another place and highlight, it removes the old begin and end marks and sets new ones. Applications assume you will highlight one thing at a time, and if you highlight a new section the old one goes away.

So, #2) Is there a way to get "E-book Viewer" to retain the highlighting?

AFAIK, no.

And lastly #3) If "E-book Viewer" will not retain the highlighting, what is a good free Ebook viewer that I can get that will do highlighting?

You want to highlight multiple sections, have them displayed differently, and have the highlights retained for future viewings?

There is no eBook viewer that will do that. The closest you can come will be to create a bookmark for each highlighted section that you can return to in a future viewing. What you want would require editing the eBook file and placing highlighting marks at desired places in the text. eBook viewers can't do that.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

E-book_software#Linux

FBReader sounds like a good bet. Cross-platform, runs on linux,

FBReader is what I use, under Windows and Linux. There is a Java port called FBReaderJ I use on my Android tablet. (There is a PDF viewer plugin for the Android port, so I can use one app to access eBooks in ePub, Mobi, or PDF format.)

The C version for Windows and Linux also views files created for the Plucker offline HTML viewer for Palm OS devices. I've used Plucker for years, and have accumulated about 4,000 volumes in Plucker format. It's nice to be able to view them on something other than a PDA.
______
Dennis

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

E-Book Viewer is a part of calibre. It can be accessed through calibre, as the "internal viewer", or used standalone from the applications menu. Just like Edit Book is available standalone.

Kovid plans someday on improving the viewer into a more fully-featured viewer that includes annotations support (beyond the current, bookmarks-only support) but, well, he has a lot of things he wants to do with calibre so who knows when he will find time to work on this?

E-book_software#Linux

FBReader sounds like a good bet. Cross-platform, runs on linux,

Thanks Boss. And thanks for the E-book viewer explanation. (I could find no identifying or "about" aspects on it.) I saw a post on MR where Kovid said highlighting is in the works, so yeah, maybe some day.

As far as ereaders go, I think Calibre's E-book Viewer is fantastic. It's just that when I read a good book I like to highlight things and go back and look at them later. I can do that on the Kindle Cloud Reader. I tried to send a mobi version of the book to Kindle Cloud Reader but it didn't work. (Maybe I should break down and buy a damn Kindle!) Thanks.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Calibre is available for Linux and OS/X as well as Windows. It's written in Python, which is cross platform. I believe what Ubuntu offers as eBook Viewer is in fact Calibre, and the menu entry is a link to the eBook Viewer portion of Calibre.


Why do you need to highlight?

I think that behavior is pretty standard. When you highlight something in an application, like an editor, it is setting marks at the beginning and end of the highlighted section, and displaying what you highlighted differently.

If you go to another place and highlight, it removes the old begin and end marks and sets new ones. Applications assume you will highlight one thing at a time, and if you highlight a new section the old one goes away.


AFAIK, no.


You want to highlight multiple sections, have them displayed differently, and have the highlights retained for future viewings?

There is no eBook viewer that will do that. The closest you can come will be to create a bookmark for each highlighted section that you can return to in a future viewing. What you want would require editing the eBook file and placing highlighting marks at desired places in the text. eBook viewers can't do that.
______
Dennis

Thanks Dennis.

Why do you need to highlight?

I like to highlight stuff I might refer to again, rather having to hunt it down.

It's weird because you can highlight on the Kindle Cloud Reader and they even have a feature where you can go to a page where all your highlights are gathered. I just assumed all ereaders did that sort of thing. You can do it in LibreOffice. It just seemed ubiquitous.

[eschwartz]

Dennis, my Kindle is an ebook viewer. It saves highlights.

Not in the ebook itself, obviously. In a sort of per-book appdata. Kobos store highlights in a database I believe.

Annotations are supported by most every smartphone/tablet ereading app, and ereaders. But desktop support of any sort seems to be patchy.

calibre's ebook viewer actually does store annotations inside the EPUB. It only does bookmarks, but those are stored inside the .epub in a special file. I believe it is (relative to epub archive's root) "/META-INF/calibre-bookmarks.txt"

[Gregg Bell]

Guys! I gotta have highlighting. Are there any mobi readers (desktop) (not Kindles, you know what I mean) that have highlighting? I know MobiPocket reader does but it doesn't work on Linux. See, I would even convert the epub into mobi in Calibre and then read it in the Mobi reader. There's got to be some sort of work around to make this happen. Right? Think! (lol)

[eschwartz]

Does FBReader do highlights? I've never used it but it sounds like a promising lead which is why I mentioned it.

[avantman42]

You could use Calibre's ebook editor to edit the file