newbie question

[kenbaldwin]

I'm still waiting for my Reader to arrive. In the meantime I'm browsing Project Gutenberg (and reading MobileRead, of course). I'm not really clear what the preferred method is for puting Gutenberg content on the Reader. Should I download TXT from Gutenberg, or generated RTF, PDF, or LRF from Manybooks? Should I create RTF or PDF myself? What are the advantages or disadvantages of each? Thanks

Ken

[Bob Russell]

I think we're still working on that question to find new approaches and get a consensus on the best ways.

But it probably depends a lot on what you want to get out of it. Branko Collins from TeleRead (or search for his name here at MR for info also) has provided some incredible information for those wanting to go "whole hog" and turn Gutenberg texts into something really nice. Others have written about that also. Pdf is probably the way you want to go for that on the Sony Reader. Others can tell you better than me.

My own approach seems to work pretty well for me, simply putting text files onto the Reader, and not making it fancy. Here's one place I described what I do:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...0958#post40958
RTF seems to be much quicker for the Reader to open and turn pages than pdf. I import it with the Reader desktop Connect software, which may give you some performance advantages, especially for the first time you open it.

Others report that ManyBooks LRF books can be moved to an SD card and work great. Haven't done it myself yet, but I'd actually recommend that method first because it take no work on your part if it's available in LRF. (The one LRF from Manybooks that I tried to import with the Sony software caused it to error out, but I never got around to trying to load it directly on my SD card.)

Good luck, and enjoy your Reader!

[raevyn1]

I humbly offer my results. Tried a few manybooks.net formats for the same book (A Brief History of the Internet by Michael Hart) on the Sony Reader with some good and mixed results:
PDF (normal) - text too small even with resizing
Large Print PDF - better than normal PDF but still barely readable
iRex iLiad PDF - readable with resizing (M setting)
Custom PDF - made w/size set at 90x117mm with 2mm borders is very readable
RTF - easily read as expected
.LRF - I had no luck with this book. Not sure if this is available yet for this title. Have tried other .LRFs and gotten error message on the Reader.

[kenbaldwin]

Thanks, guys. Would it be useful to prepare a short sample text in multiple formats and make it available to download for testing purposes?

Also, does anyone know if the Connect software installer can be downloaded from Sony? I'd like to play with it while I wait for my Reader to ship.

Ken

[ultim8fury]

Hackers Dictionary in LRF from manybooks works just fine for me. I just dropped it onto an SD card and popped it in the reader. Picked it up straight away. The margins are slightly larger than I might like but it's quite readable.


EDIT:: That said, many other book downloads result in files of 0KB which don't even show up on the reader. I suggest RTF

[NatCh]

I found the 0kb thing on several Manybooks LRFs myself, but the ones with content have worked fine for me. I'm not sure I've settled down on a method yet, but I'm thinking I'll probably go LRF unless the file's empty, and RTF in that case.

I wonder if Manybooks has maybe not converted all their texts to LRF, since the Librie didn't do all that great. Maybe they'll convert more after the Reader's been out a while (assuming it does well, which seems reasonably likely), and they'll rename the format to Sony Reader.

[fireproof]

Sorry about all those 0k files -- I had no idea! I've run a script to delete those 'bad' files, so they'll be re-built automatically.

Has anyone tried "Custom PDF" from manybooks? You can set font-size, margins, and font to your liking.

I've found RTF to work pretty well with Sony's eReader, but page turns get slower and slower the further you get in that title... by the end of a 600 pg book each page turn takes 9-10 seconds! Has anyone else noticed this?

[fireproof]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Maybe they'll convert more after the Reader's been out a while (assuming it does well, which seems reasonably likely), and they'll rename the format to Sony Reader.

Good point! Sony Librié, Sony Reader (or is it eReader?), maybe it should just be "Sony" format...

[NatCh]

It's "Reader" -- they were very, um, clear about that while we were out there.

I think "Sony" format sounds dandy, IMHO, anyway. Goes well with their 'minimalist' name, I think.

Also, I hadn't made the connection that Manybooks was your baby, Fireproof -- I want to thank you for you work there!

[bingle]

Originally Posted by ultim8fury

Hackers Dictionary in LRF from manybooks works just fine for me. I just dropped it onto an SD card and popped it in the reader. Picked it up straight away. The margins are slightly larger than I might like but it's quite readable.


EDIT:: That said, many other book downloads result in files of 0KB which don't even show up on the reader. I suggest RTF

Have the LRF files worked completely? I've been using BookDesigner to convert to LRF, and VVV and I discovered that LRF files that work fine on the Librie fail on the Reader. (Not all of them, but definitely many). The book will not have all of the pages; it will stop some fraction through.

If that's not the case with the manybooks LRFs, maybe that will provide a clue as to what's going wrong in the BookDesigner conversion process...

EDIT: I answered my own question ;-) The LRFs from manybooks aren't subject to the same issue.

[BobVA]

Originally Posted by kenbaldwin

I'm not really clear what the preferred method is for puting Gutenberg content on the Reader.

Ken

What I've been doing is:
- Import HTML Gutenberg file into Microsoft Word.
- "Save As" an RTF file
- Put the cursor in the text body and see how many "Font Size Up" button clicks it takes to get to 15 or 16 point type (usually 4).
- "Select All" text
- Bump up the font size by four (or whatever) clicks. (This up-sizes the headings, etc proportionally)
- Set the font to Arial (I like how sans serif looks on the Reader. "Serif to taste.")
- Save the file
- Import it into the Connect software and save it to the card or Reader.

Looks very nice.

One trick I've been using to deal with the flat file system is making large single files of all of an author's works, putting a tag and pagebreak at the start of each actual book.
I then search for the tags in the Connect software and set a bookmark at each one. Just takes a few seconds to do this (two mouse clicks a book).
Then, when you open the file on the reader and select the Bookmarks item, you'll see a list of all the separate books.

Cheers,
Bob