PRS505 Firmware update: epub, DE, and reflow -- oh my!

[Taylor514ce]

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=...2249#yvComment

I hate to bury this here, but didn't think this worthy of starting a new thread, either.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Nah, I think that they produced directly this file using XML and maybe a bit of XSL.
The really impressive part is the SVG in this document: I hope we'll see similar documents with MathML in the near future...

Being pedantic out of the way, I don't know... It's really odd. The SVG I can only see being produced programmatically, either by a modified TeX pipeline or via TeX->PDF->SVG. The position of the line-breaks in the body text suggests to me that the mark-up there was also machine-generated. The class attributes and styling suggest it was created directly from the LaTeX source rather than one of the TeX output formats... Maybe there's just a commercial TeX->HTML+SVG translator which does a much much better job than the open source ones?

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by llasram

MathML with SVG fallback? MathML isn't required by the OPS and as far as I can tell ADE doesn't support it, or at least this blog entry claims it doesn't.

Sure, it would be MathML with SVG fallback for the moment. But I do hope that in the next version of the OPS standard, MathML will be included. There's a lot of work in the XML community around XHTML+MathML+SVG and I do believe that this would be the perfect fit for scientific papers.

[methlp]

Thanks Soilwork,

These pics look great. Not sure if this popped up in a later firmware than I had on my PRS-500, but it looks like PDF increase size also now has a Large option, which I didn't have before (only small and medium).

Originally Posted by soilwork

I posted some photos to another thread. This may be of help.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...38&postcount=9

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Try this one for a good example of SVG for scientific papers: http://www.hindawi.com/epub/sample.2.2008.07.28.epub

Thank you, this file was impressive and looked very nice in the reader.

[soilwork]

Originally Posted by methlp

Thanks Soilwork,

These pics look great. Not sure if this popped up in a later firmware than I had on my PRS-500, but it looks like PDF increase size also now has a Large option, which I didn't have before (only small and medium).

Glad if they are helpful. You are right about PDF zoom. Before this firmware, PRS-505 also had only 2 level zoom but the zoom was almost useless. The new firmware brought two useful zoom levels but I wish it also has an option to make fonts thicker. The current firmware is a great enhancement in terms of PDF support but I still prefer output from Calibre (pdf2lrf).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=...2249#yvComment

I hate to bury this here, but didn't think this worthy of starting a new thread, either.

Now, both the Kindle and Sony Reader can read Mobipocket files, and you can get a version of Mobi for most smartphones (sorry Apple) and the Mobi desktop client is Windows only (sorry again Apple, sorry Linux!), but perhaps that will change? The Mobipocket Creator will convert all sorts of file types to Mobi files--including MS Word, txt, and PDF--so creating Mobi readable files isn't too difficult.

Sony Readers will not read Mobipocket without some sort of conversion. Again another misconception and total cock-up. Also, why have a photo of a 500 when the 505 is the current model and the 500 is discontinued?

[Taylor514ce]

I did correct them. I also pointed them all here.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by llasram

It's pretty trivial to unzip the OpenType fonts from the EPUB zip archive, but where is the license violation -- in extracting and re-using the font file, or in distributing the document containing the unprotected font file in the first place?

Answering myself, after a bit of reflection it's pretty obvious that re-using the "embedded" font is at least the sensible line of violation. Especially because fonts can be extracted from PDF documents just a little less easily.

[Luigino]

Hello all!...

Do you all think the James Patterson's version of Sony PRS-505 would have already the new firmware? Plus, if I would buy a PRS-505 from the U.S. sonystyle for USD $299,99, would they ship also to Italy?...

ciao
Luigi

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Luigino

Hello all!...

Do you all think the James Patterson's version of Sony PRS-505 would have already the new firmware? Plus, if I would buy a PRS-505 from the U.S. sonystyle for USD $299,99, would they ship also to Italy?...

ciao
Luigi

For the firmware, it doesn't really matter, you can easily upgrade it yourself.
As far as I know, sonystyle won't ship to Italy.

[Peto]

Not from Sony USA. Maybe from the new bookstore in UK, opening in September (look around the forum for the name, I don't remember). Otherwise, try on ebay once it is out. There is also a shop in internet that sells PRSs worlewide, but I don't remember the name aither. Probably someone can add the names here?

Of course, it will be more expensive (on ebay) than the regular versions. A cheaper way to customize your Reader would be Skinit...

[mattgb]

You'll have to pay import duty, VAT & handling charges though (allow 30% extra).

Click here: B&H PRS-505

[Hadrien]

Ever since Sony/Adobe released this update, I've been working on improving the output on Feedbooks. First I fixed the issue with the metadata, and yesterday, I did some work on the margins and chapter headers.

For the chapter headers: previously, they were designed purely with sizes in em. This caused a few problems: with a very large font, the numbers couldn't be displayed on the same line and it pushed the title of the chapter to the right. Since this graphic element doesn't necessarily need to scale like the rest of the text, I moved this element from em to px. It'll always be displayed at the same size from now and should fix all the problems.

Margins are a different issue. In CSS, I can't control the top or bottom margin of a page (I need to CSS3 paged media module for this). Because of this, I decided to add an Adobe extension to all files on Feedbooks, with default values for the margin and multi-column display. Now, the problem is with those little numbers displayed on the right. If I add a CSS margin, they're displayed in the margin. But if I add a margin using XSL-FO (XPGT) they're displayed in the text area, rather than the margin, and they may be displayed over the text sometimes.

Here's an example of an upgraded file (not online on Feedbooks yet). I don't know how I'll solve the margins problem yet, I must say that this number on the right column is pretty annoying and useless (we already got the page number at the bottom of the screen anyway).

[Peto]

Originally Posted by mattgb

You'll have to pay import duty, VAT & handling charges though (allow 30% extra).

Click here: B&H PRS-505

Not necessarily through ebay. I didn't. If it happens, it can be up to €90 more. But it is not that usual. With B&H it is more likely to happen, since the parcel will be coming from a real shop.