Pocketbook 360 test diary

[coredump]

I am digging that test diary!
Droid font looks best, btw.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by coredump

I am digging that test diary!
Droid font looks best, btw.

Thanks!

Droid: I think so, too!!

If there are free fonts around that others want me to try, please let me know! No fantasy fonts, please!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Thanks!

Droid: I think so, too!!

If there are free fonts around that others want me to try, please let me know! No fantasy fonts, please!

Linux Libertine looks good.
You can also download "Microsoft Web Fonts" from many, many places (see the bottom of Wikipedia page) and try some of their fonts.
I have also found Grandesign Neue Serif.ttf - a nice slab serif.
I also like temporarium_regular.ttf but I did not find matching italics.

I have tried perhaps 30 fonts.
I found out, that you want to find a font that was designed as a ttf font.
I was able to get the famous Caecilia to play with a little - I used to do lots of professional desktop publishing. The problem was I got it in otf format. I converted it using FontForge, but the result on PocketBook screen was very disappointing. The font lost its hinting info in the conversion and I quickly returned to unconverted ttf fonts.
I have also tried a few versions of Garamond font, but it somehow did not look right on my screen.

Also see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_so..._Unicode_fonts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...type_designers

[fjtorres]

Try Georgia.
(The 4 font set is currently part of the standard Windows font load.)
It's a fairly dark serif font that is popular with a lot of readers. Me included.
Seems to work well on eink screens.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Try Georgia.
(The 4 font set is currently part of the standard Windows font load.)
It's a fairly dark serif font that is popular with a lot of readers. Me included.
Seems to work well on eink screens.

Georgia is NOT a free font, sorry!

[Yar-PocketBooker]

mtravellerh,

Thanks for the review!

[mtravellerh]

So coming to this PDF posting I have been promising for 2 days now.

First:

PB firmware has two different apps to view PDFs: The imaginatively titled pdfviewer, an open source viewer and Adobe Reader that's part of ADE. The differences between those viewers are quite subtle but existant.

pdfviewer is fast for a PDF viewer (sorry, couldn't help myself there ), reliable and works great with fiction (some pictures are not rendered that well, especially technical ones)

Adobe Reader has been elegantly tweaked by the PB folks to work well on such a small acreage and behaves well, but sometimes needs a little time to think between pages (1-2 secs, especially with graphically heavy pages) and does not always do the margin cropping quite as good as the pdfviewer! You may freely choose between both of these apps for non DRMed files, Adobe Reader is the default, reader, though

Both apps have essentially 4 zoom options that can be fine tuned further.

1 Normal view:

This view begins with a 100% view of the centered page. PB does not try to cram one whole page on one screen, one just scrolls down to see the rest of the page (done with the navigational cross). A fine dotted line shows where the earlier view was limited. In this Normal view, you may increase or decrease the zoom percentage in 5 percent steps until the page looks right to you. PDF pages that are not reflowed are essentially scrolled, changing to the next page when the first page has been scrolled all the way down!

2 A zoomout option shows 4 or nine pages in a miniature way. You can navigate between those pages and open them to normal view.

3 A view where the side margins are entirely cropped. pdfviewer is faster to achieve this, Reader is sometimes a bit squeamish!

4 Reflow: Reflow works fine for both apps. As usual, pdfviewer is a bit faster, Reader includes pics better. Reflow retains the font and paragraphs of the original text, finer layout features are lost. In this view, the pages are turned normally. Gaps between pages may appear!

A fifth option lets you read PDFs with columned text column by column, zooming out the column text to screen width and jumping from the end of one column to the beginning of the second.

The zoom options and place are saved and maintained through the document.

I will upload here some more extreme tech texts that I downloaded from the Internet. These texts were formatted in a big format for a PC screen, so the size limits of the 360 are most apparent here. I think I found a very acceptable way to read those texts on the 5" screen:


Normal landsape view (MS text on Silverlight)

Some more Silverlight with a Reflow screenshot mixed in

Of course, teachings on color are best read on the PC screen


I chose those PDFs according to Midnight Run's suggestions here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...0&postcount=50



On the german part of my diary, I have uploaded some screenshots from a randomly chosen PDF fiction book (The Brass Bed, freely available from Suvudu) Here the 360 really shines:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...0&postcount=63

And a few column shots:


Random text from Pulpgen (no I do NOT hate women!) http://www.pulpgen.com
Sorry for the really disgustingly appalling font


Ray Gun Revival 54 (I absolutely positively love that free mag)
freely downloadable at: www.raygunrevival.com All 54 mags full of space opera glory!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Georgia is NOT a free font, sorry!

Well, Georgia is one of the fonts in the
Core fonts for the Web package (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web) that Microsoft released.
I mentioned this package in one of my previous posts

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

The project was terminated in August 2002, allegedly due to frequent EULA violations.[1] However, that same EULA allows redistribution if the packages are kept in their original format and filenames and not used to add value to commercial products. As a result, they are still available for download on third-party websites, though the EULA in question is not.

So, it might not be legal for PocketBook distribute Georgia on their reader, yet You can download the font legally to your reader.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by kacir

Well, Georgia is one of the fonts in the
Core fonts for the Web package (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web) that Microsoft released.
I mentioned this package in one of my previous posts


So, it might not be legal for PocketBook distribute Georgia on their reader, yet You can download the font legally to your reader.

This is a mood point anyway, as I don't own a Win partition!

[kacir]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

This is a mood point anyway, as I don't own a Win partition!

You do not have to own a win partition.
I use MSWindows VERY rarely at home myself. At the moment my main desktop is Mint Linux, before it was PC-BSD and before that FreeBSD. (I am going to install FreeBSD 8.0 on one of my "testing" partitions to see if I do not change my preffered OS again ;-) )
I own many computers and most of those I have purchased Second hand. Some of them came with legal version of Windows. Not that I use it, but it can come handy if I *have* to run a windows only SW such as firmware flasher or [shudder] Sony Library software [/shudder].

This font package is freely installable from ports on FreeBSD or standard repositories for Ubuntu. The only catch is, the fonts are downloaded from a third party site during installation.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

So coming to this PDF posting I have been promising for 2 days now.

This is the most full-featured PDF app I have heard of on an EInk device. The two column mode is something that any serious EInk PDF app should have and so few do. PocketBook 8" and/or 9.7" devices are going to rock for PDFs.

Does the dictionary, and search, work in text based PDFs?

How about the TOC and hyperlinks?

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

This is the most full-featured PDF app I have heard of on an EInk device. The two column mode is something that any serious EInk PDF app should have and so few do. PocketBook 8" and/or 9.7" devices are going to rock for PDFs.

Does the dictionary, and search, work in text based PDFs?

How about the TOC and hyperlinks?

Dictionary: Yes, of course!

TOC and hyperlinks will work when they do in the original file! Well, the "two column mode" is not only two columns but can be adjusted (I know 5 columns are okay but I do not know if that is the upper limit. I have to check that!)

[Forkosigan]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Does the dictionary, and search, work in text based PDFs?

How about the TOC and hyperlinks?

Search and dictionary work in the text based PDFs. I have not tested the PDF with hyperlinks, you can give one, so I tried it, they should work.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Forkosigan

Search and vocabulary work in the text based PDFs. I have not tested the PDF with hyperlinks, you can give one, so I tried it, they should work.

It really depends if they work in the first place. Some PDFs are just not made with working links! If the links are active, they may be used! The Ray Gun Revival Mag for example (did I mention that I love those, there are 54 freely downloadable) has a nice working TOC and working links!

[Forkosigan]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

It really depends if they work in the first place. Some PDFs are just not made with working links! If the links are active, they may be used! The Ray Gun Revival Mag for example (did I mention that I love those, there are 54 freely downloadable) has a nice working TOC and working links!

Thank you mtravellerh!