100 million Linux e-readers

rsperberg · 03-07-2006, 09:38 AM

On one of my periodic checkins with the One Laptop Per Child/$100 computer project (laptop.media.mit.edu/), I noted again their goal of manufacturing and distributing 100 million computers this year and next.

Of course, the project aims to get computers into the hands of schoolchildren, and so an e-reader will surely end up in the included software. And there aren't many non-Java Linux e-readers around -- only three that I know of: FBReader, the forthcoming ThoutReader 2 (perl-based, from Osoft), and GTK+ Plucker Viewer.

The OLPC computer runs Red Hat Linux. Has anyone tried the desktop FBReader on a Red Hat computer?

I think FBReader would be a good choice for OLPC, but ThoutReader has bookmarking, highlighting, and annotations that can be exported/imported and shared with others (like you would want to do with a class). It will also support the OpenReader format (also "forthcoming") and make it easy to add additional XML-based formats.

I know FBReader intends to add bookmarking, highlighting and annotations. I hope they can be shared (exported, imported, and different sources segregated). And I hope its inherent flexibility makes adding formats easy for others to do.

doctorow · 03-07-2006, 02:00 PM

I tried installing FBReader on Ubuntu, but I couldn't get it to work. First I installed the libenca0 from here (freshly compiled), and then I tried to run FBReader from this package. Unfortunately, FBReader still complains that it cannot find the enca libraries:

./FBReader: error while loading shared libraries: libenca.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The problem with FBReader is that it isn't so much widespread (its format). Even if you put FBReader on the $100 computer, most online e-texts would be unavailable because they are usually offered in PDF format.

rsperberg · 03-08-2006, 10:15 AM

Um, Doctorow, in what world are e-readers and PDF viewers expected to be the same?

Do any of the e-readers listed here in the MobileRead forums read reflowable e-text formats and PDF? The requirements are so different — basically you need two rendering engines.

(This isn't to say that we won't see a couple such bi-format e-readers this year.)

At any rate, FBReader displays html and plain text formats better than other e-readers I've seen, as well as Plucker pdb, Aportis doc, Weasel zTxt, and TCR (psion text). I'm hopeful that additional formats will be added too (not any proprietary ones, though). Since I read only part of my texts in FB2 format in FBReader, I don't consider the fact that that's the native format of the program to be a detriment.

Actually, since FB2 is an XML-format not directly based on XHTML (that's different), converting other formats to it and converting to other formats from it works really well. There are a lot of tools to do this. I found most of them on the software page at fictionbook.org (which is down right at the moment). Other locations with tools are at www.fictionbook.org/index.php/Eng:Converters , www.gribuser.ru/xml/fictionbook/index.html.en and haali.cs.msu.ru/pocketpc/scripts.html

Another thing that makes FBReader a good choice for OLPC is that it automatically detects a great many encodings: utf-8, us-ascii, windows-1251, windows-1252, koi8-r, ibm866, iso-8859-*, Big5, GBK. And it has built-in hyphenation algorithms for English, Esperanto, French, German and Russian.

The release for FBReader desktop is new with this version; your feedback will clearly help identify the problems there. I know from experience that Misha and Nikolay are responsive to bug reports.

Plus, there's something I keep forgetting — this is still a pre-1.0 release. There's more to come, and bug-removal is part of that.

Laurens · 03-08-2006, 10:32 AM

I think the point doctorow was trying to make was that many e-texts are only offered as PDF. For many educational texts this holds true, since they've been formatted and paginated as books or leaflets in the first place.

rsperberg · 03-10-2006, 02:27 PM

I would be surprised if the OLPC computer omitted one of the open-source PDF viewers for Linux. I'm thinking whether it will get more or less use than the reflowable-text e-reader is irrelevant. People obviously need both.

03-07-2006, 09:38 AM	#1
rsperberg Zealot Posts: 114 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: NJ Device: Kindle Voyage	100 million Linux e-readers On one of my periodic checkins with the One Laptop Per Child/$100 computer project (laptop.media.mit.edu/), I noted again their goal of manufacturing and distributing 100 million computers this year and next. Of course, the project aims to get computers into the hands of schoolchildren, and so an e-reader will surely end up in the included software. And there aren't many non-Java Linux e-readers around -- only three that I know of: FBReader, the forthcoming ThoutReader 2 (perl-based, from Osoft), and GTK+ Plucker Viewer. The OLPC computer runs Red Hat Linux. Has anyone tried the desktop FBReader on a Red Hat computer? I think FBReader would be a good choice for OLPC, but ThoutReader has bookmarking, highlighting, and annotations that can be exported/imported and shared with others (like you would want to do with a class). It will also support the OpenReader format (also "forthcoming") and make it easy to add additional XML-based formats. I know FBReader intends to add bookmarking, highlighting and annotations. I hope they can be shared (exported, imported, and different sources segregated). And I hope its inherent flexibility makes adding formats easy for others to do.

03-08-2006, 10:15 AM	#3
rsperberg Zealot Posts: 114 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: NJ Device: Kindle Voyage	Um, Doctorow, in what world are e-readers and PDF viewers expected to be the same? Do any of the e-readers listed here in the MobileRead forums read reflowable e-text formats and PDF? The requirements are so different — basically you need two rendering engines. (This isn't to say that we won't see a couple such bi-format e-readers this year.) At any rate, FBReader displays html and plain text formats better than other e-readers I've seen, as well as Plucker pdb, Aportis doc, Weasel zTxt, and TCR (psion text). I'm hopeful that additional formats will be added too (not any proprietary ones, though). Since I read only part of my texts in FB2 format in FBReader, I don't consider the fact that that's the native format of the program to be a detriment. Actually, since FB2 is an XML-format not directly based on XHTML (that's different), converting other formats to it and converting to other formats from it works really well. There are a lot of tools to do this. I found most of them on the software page at fictionbook.org (which is down right at the moment). Other locations with tools are at www.fictionbook.org/index.php/Eng:Converters , www.gribuser.ru/xml/fictionbook/index.html.en and haali.cs.msu.ru/pocketpc/scripts.html Another thing that makes FBReader a good choice for OLPC is that it automatically detects a great many encodings: utf-8, us-ascii, windows-1251, windows-1252, koi8-r, ibm866, iso-8859-, Big5, GBK. And it has built-in hyphenation algorithms for English, Esperanto, French, German and Russian. The release for FBReader desktop is new with this version; your feedback will clearly help identify the problems there. I know from experience that Misha and Nikolay are responsive to bug reports. Plus, there's something I keep forgetting — this is still a pre-1.0 release. There's more to come, and bug-removal is part of that. Last edited by rsperberg; 03-08-2006 at 10:26 AM.*

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03-07-2006, 02:00 PM	#2
doctorow Guru Posts: 914 Karma: 3410461 Join Date: May 2004 Device: Kindle Touch	I tried installing FBReader on Ubuntu, but I couldn't get it to work. First I installed the libenca0 from here (freshly compiled), and then I tried to run FBReader from this package. Unfortunately, FBReader still complains that it cannot find the enca libraries: ./FBReader: error while loading shared libraries: libenca.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory The problem with FBReader is that it isn't so much widespread (its format). Even if you put FBReader on the $100 computer, most online e-texts would be unavailable because they are usually offered in PDF format.

03-08-2006, 10:32 AM	#4
Laurens Jah Blessed Posts: 1,295 Karma: 1373 Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: The Netherlands Device: iPod Touch	I think the point doctorow was trying to make was that many e-texts are only offered as PDF. For many educational texts this holds true, since they've been formatted and paginated as books or leaflets in the first place.

03-10-2006, 02:27 PM	#5
rsperberg Zealot Posts: 114 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: NJ Device: Kindle Voyage	I would be surprised if the OLPC computer omitted one of the open-source PDF viewers for Linux. I'm thinking whether it will get more or less use than the reflowable-text e-reader is irrelevant. People obviously need both.

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