Few questions about the V2

[AndrewLB]

Hi,
I'm very, very interested in e-ink based devices, and have been lusting after them since long before the libre was released, but I've got an awful lot of questions, and relatively few answers from the internet, so I figured I might try here.

First off, I have a question about this wolf linux. Seeing as how it's linux, would it be possible to a) create applications for it b) use different font sets (eg. Chinese/Japanese/Korean) beyond just PDF support and c) use it to view JPG/GIF/etc?

Second is about e-books themselves.
I've never gotten a chance to actually see one, and I don't really know where I'd go to get that chance. I've been wanting a way to "curl up" with my host of e-books for ages, but just how booklike are these things? For example, what's the contrast like, how do they feel, etc. Like, a lot of the pictures I've seen look great, it's straight white, it looks clean and whatnot, but others make the thing out to look like an old palm V3. Not sure which to believe.

Third, what about things that go beyond the usual bookmarks? Such as notes or extra markings. That is to say, take a play, or one of the old greek classics. In Herodotus' and Thucydides' works, the actual page number means diddly, it's the book/"chapter" numbers. Would such things appear in say, a PDF, and would I be able to search for them? Also, how would things like footnotes/endnotes be handled? Could you just click on the things like in pdfs?

I've got a bunch of other questions, of course, but even the questions I've asked just now are probably a bit much, heh. Anyway, since the V2 hasn't been released yet, it's probably difficult to say.

Thanks

[CommanderROR]

Welcome to the Forum!

I'll try to answer some of your questions:

The V2 runs LINUX and is planning to release an SDK, so developing Software should be possible. Different Font sets are planned as well, but I'm not sure when/how they'll be implemented. The V2 is apparently done where the Hardware is concerned, but Software is something the "Partner" all over the world willbe codeveloping apparently, so it's har to be sure what will get in and what will be left out. Viewing picture formats is possible I think, but as far as I can tell at the moment you'll have to convert them to .wol format before you can view them on the V2. Also, with 4 levels of grey, the usefullness of images is greatly reduced. Book pages in .gif format should be ok, must illustrations will probably suffer if they aren't b/w or lowlevel greyscale from the start.

About the screens and the "booklike nature" of the devices...
Nobody apart from a few librié and Hanlin V8 users can say so far. Next week several Forum members, me included, will recieve their iRex Iliad and then we'll be able to say more. So far, from the pictures I've seen it looks like the screen isn't brilliant white, it's more a very light grey. But normal book-paper isn't pure white either so that shouldn't be a problem.
There are photos of an eink screen next to a computer screen and a paper book for comparison on this forum, they should also give you a good idea. About feeling and handling...I think it'll always be a compromise, but I got used to reading from my ouny little PDA (Yakumo Delta 300) after about 2-3 hours reading, so I guess it's a question of habit.

Beyond usual bookmarks?
Annotation is a feature that is handled a bit differently in every device. The V8/V2 do it with the help of the Slave display, the iRex Iliad could handle it quite nicely with full-screen WACOM penabled touchscreen if they ever get the software to work...
At the moment it's all a little hodge-podge and not really a usefule feature in any device. Future will show...
The Chapter/Page number thing is a bit difficult to answer since I don#t really understand the question...but I think this is something that will have to be solved on the formats-reflowing and -handling front.
Footnotes and endnotes are something i'm also wondering about. I guess it's again something that would have to be handled by the makers of the ebook. Every format apart from plain .txt should be able to incorporate this, but since the contents have to be resized to fit the screen the viewers will have to be flexible enough to put the footnotes at the bottom of the correct page...should be solveable however. Doing it with "links" wouldn't be a good idea I think since that would mean a lot of jumping around (look at Terry Pratchett books, if you had to click a link for every footnote he puts in there you'd never put the stylus away...).

Hope that helped a bit.
Next week some more answers should be around when the first iRex Iliad devices start arriving and get their first scrutiny...^^

[AndrewLB]

And half of those footnotes would be about how tidy of a mind the Librarian has, I'm sure (This being his 57th strangest experience).

Thanks a lot for taking your time to answer the question.
I'll just paste a short message I recieved from the Hanlin folks when I emailed them the other day, add to the knowledge pool, if you will. Not sure where the movie part came from (since I never asked that...) but it's all good.

Dear Andrew,
The contrast is 10:1. This is the best epaper display. V2 can read .jpg/gif formats, and/or Japanese language .txt/html/pdf files. V2 can support various languages, but it need to install the language package.

V2 can't be seen the movie, because the display do not permit.

Best Regards,
Mei Yan

Anyway, again, many thanks for answering my questions.