Website for the Sony Reader: Ajax, LaTeX and RSS

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by alex_d

"If we find a way to make good looking LRF files (embedded fonts, table of contents, footnotes...) we'll do it."

That's a self-centered, presumptious attitude (lol, you frenchies). There are clear benefits to rtf/lrf, and you should let the users weigh those against the drawbacks. Incorporating these formats is actually quite easy (in fact due to their simplicity), so that shouldn't be what stops you.

Anyway, I've put in my 2 cents. Can't wait to see what comes out of this.

Hmm I don't quite get how that's presumptious since these are only technical choices... Well, RTF is in fact quite easy to generate since it's supported by LaTeX, but that's not the case of LRF. But one of the best thing about the way we generate books compared to most other websites, is that we have table of contents in our books (the reader can't handle these in RTF files). So yeah, you're 50% right about this: we could really easily add RTF but with limited support compared to what PDF can offer.
PDF is not the right choice when you can't make the right PDF for you. If you can get the PDF with the right font and size, then it gets a whole lot better...

[alex_d]

dammit, dude. the benefits of rtf/lrf:
dynamically change font size depending on lighting conditions, whim, etc
small fonts are much more legible (there is a bug with pdf support)
page turns are much faster

saying "i like pdf, so everyone should like pdf" is exactly the definition of self-centered. but whatever, I really don't want to keep talking about this.

When I asked: are you just doing a school project or do you actually care about such trifles as users, this is exactly what I meant by that question. The American adage "the customer is always right" may not be 100% true, but it's definately at least 85% true. I wish you the best in your entrepreneurial pursuits.

[vitualis]

Originally Posted by alex_d

page turns are much faster

Are you sure about this?

As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no difference in the pages turns between my purchased (i.e., the Sony format) books and my PDF books (Adobe Acrobat 7 - sized for the Reader).

Furthermore, I am forced to agree with Hadrien. LRF is clearly the best format for the Reader but tools are lacking. RTF though nice clearly lacks some of the features supported by PDF; and a well formated PDF for the Reader looks great.

Furthermore, in the greater world outside of Sony Reader land, PDF would offer the best compatibility (when considering consistent output across platforms). Unless, I were planning on downloading text for editing, I would normally choose PDF.

That's a self-centered, presumptious attitude (lol, you frenchies).

I suppose this is where the rest of the world roll their eyes, sigh, and say "Americans!".



Regards,
Michael Tam

[alex_d]

Vitalis, the question wasn't pdf vs. rtf, but pdf vs. pdf + rtf (+ doc + a whole range of formats). I never said pdf wasn't probably better overall or something I would never use, just that I'd be upset if the choice was made for me.

Besides, my original point was that if you commit to the huge task of creating a database, or especially try to convince other people to construct the database for you, you've gotta make the best use of the resource. Otherwise it's like, wth was the point (a question never asked by professors, btw).

[vitualis]

It think that his argument is that RTF output wouldn't add much to his project.

TOO MUCH choice often detracts from a project as well.

In any case, for someone who had declared that he wouldn't use the website, you sure are making a lot of noise, and in case you've missed the more subtle hints, your comments have been somewhat obnoxious and your racist overtones unwelcome.

Regards.

[alex_d]

france isn't a race

[vitualis]

Thank you for demonstrating my last point so well.

Let us go move on now.

[Hadrien]

New screencast (last one before the beta !): http://youtube.com/watch?v=remG1b-QHnE

[Kosst Amojan]

Originally Posted by alex_d

france isn't a race

Of course not, it's a country. The race is called "cheesious eatious bastardous" People aren't sure if they're a subspecies of human or in a different genus altogether.

Actually I met my first french person ever a few weeks ago (from france, I'm french myself but of the Louisiana creole variety). I'm not sure if she is famous or not but this chick Sabine Herold is supposed to be some big time libertarian in France. Of course I work in DC and they're a dime a dozen here (unfortunataly liberals a nickle a case). Anyway she was cool so I guess they're good frenchmen like some of the members here.

Anyway, I was wondering how many people we have willing to work on this and how good they are with various languages? Second is promotion, how are we going to get people who are not from mobileread and a few other blogs to come to this site? Is there going to be a wiki page? Is this site going to be linked from the e-ink entry? How do we get this noticed on Cnet and maybe even Sony themselves?

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Kosst Amojan

Anyway, I was wondering how many people we have willing to work on this and how good they are with various languages? Second is promotion, how are we going to get people who are not from mobileread and a few other blogs to come to this site? Is there going to be a wiki page? Is this site going to be linked from the e-ink entry? How do we get this noticed on Cnet and maybe even Sony themselves?

I haven't tried to promote Feedbooks a lot yet, mostly because this website is still beta material and I need to add and/or fix a few stuff, and make sure that we could generate a whole lot of PDF files at the same time.

With the beta release, I'll try a few forums dedicated to people who like to write. When we'll reach something much more closer from a first final release, we'll add someone dedicated to the promotion of the website in our development team. Websites such as Digg, blogs like Lifehacker should be the main target but I'll also create a mailing list including all the techies that reviewed the Sony Reader for various magazines and websites. On second thought, they could discover this way that you can do much more on any e-ink devices than just buy books from an online shop like the Connect one.

But the one and only way to make this work, is to create a whole community around it. We'll open a blog and poll the users on different subjects during the beta to make sure that everything's going the right way.

[Hadrien]

Just released the beta: http://beta.feedbooks.com

The new topic for it is: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...?threadid=9165

[ghostwheel]

Hello Hadrien,

Your project look very promising! I am anxiously waiting for its release! I have just a few comments:

1. It would be really great if you can put the latex source on the site for download.

2. It would also be good to have an RTF version available. Currently I like rtf on the sony reader more than pdf because of the problem of small fonts being illegible in pdf, but easily readable in rtf. (you can create it with latex2rtf)

3. If you create the contents with latex, you could use the package hyperref to make the table of contents links work.

thanks!

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by ghostwheel

Hello Hadrien,

Your project look very promising! I am anxiously waiting for its release! I have just a few comments:

1. It would be really great if you can put the latex source on the site for download.

2. It would also be good to have an RTF version available. Currently I like rtf on the sony reader more than pdf because of the problem of small fonts being illegible in pdf, but easily readable in rtf. (you can create it with latex2rtf)

3. If you create the contents with latex, you could use the package hyperref to make the table of contents links work.

thanks!

Well we're already using hyperref, and the links work with PDF files. But are you sure that RTF files generated with LaTeX can have clickable table of contents too ? If it's the case, then yes, we might add RTF support (although we'll still be missing some features, like support for foreign languages).
Have you tried support for math formulas with latex2rtf too ?

Edit: Juste made a test and it doesn't look good...

template-minibook.tex:2 Unknown style option geometry ignored
template-minibook.tex:3
Input Encoding <utf8> not supported
template-minibook.tex:4 Unknown style option url ignored
template-minibook.tex:5 Unknown style option graphicx ignored
template-minibook.tex:6 Unknown style option hyperref ignored
template-minibook.tex:7 Unknown style option tabularx ignored
template-minibook.tex:8 Unknown style option lastpage ignored
template-minibook.tex:9 Unknown style option colortbl ignored
template-minibook.tex:10 Unknown style option fancybox ignored
template-minibook.tex:11 Unknown style option tocloft ignored
template-minibook.tex:12 Only partial support for fancyhdr
template-minibook.tex:13 Unknown style option eurosym ignored
template-minibook.tex:14 Unknown style option fncychap ignored

It seems that RTF doesn't support much...

[ghostwheel]

You are right - latex2rtf will not create links as far as I can tell. I have not figured out yet if rtf supports links, and if it does, if the reader supports them, too. In any case, in some cases rtf files created with latex2rtf can be highly readable. I attached a sample.
But it would still be very usefull if you at least put the latex version up...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ghostwheel

You are right - latex2rtf will not create links as far as I can tell. I have not figured out yet if rtf supports links, and if it does, if the reader supports them, too.

No - no links in RTF.