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

[TedPark]

Originally Posted by flamaest

I asked God about the 505 FW.. God said he cannot comment to me about this.

If enough people ask this question, maybe they will come to understand that we need this. I'm putting together a post on some analysis I've been doing (stay tuned) - but the upshot is that one really useful idea is to store a thousand or more documents for quick reference. If this includes a lot of different authors, then this type of application is DOA unless you can get the authors to sort right.

I'm willing to go to a LOT of work to make this happen. In fact, I have gone through about 1200 files, one at a time, and by-hand, and set up the Author Reading attribute in anticipation that my reader will work this way someday soon. That is how important this is to me. But I am willing to do it, beause once it's done, it's done. Then I reap the benefit for ever and ever.

[tcv]

Has anyone posted photos of PDF reflow? I would dearly love to see...

[TedPark]

My most burning issue is this: Someone please take a (too big?) file that used to blow up the old firmware and see if the new firmware can handle it.

[jerryleejr]

So does this mean the most 505 users will buy secure Adobe or Epub? If so will we see lrf fade into obscurity. I think that would be a safe bet especially if more and more devices start supporting the format.

JJ

[soilwork]

Originally Posted by tcv

Has anyone posted photos of PDF reflow? I would dearly love to see...

I posted some example photos of PDF in the following thread.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26756

In addition, as summarized here, you can download Sony ebook library program to see how PRS 505 handles PDF reflow.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26908

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by =X=

Hadrien
You mentioned ePub can handle some real complicated layouts.

Is there a sample ePub out there that has these complicated layouts. I'd be intersted in seeing how the SONY 505 handles them.

=X=

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

[mlove]

I tried to install the firmware on my 505. Hours later it still says it is updating with the yellow light on the 505 flashing away. Is there some way to start over on the installation? Thanks.

[igorsk]

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

Thanks! It's a very nice document showing off many features of EPUB including embedded fonts.

Originally Posted by mlove

I tried to install the firmware on my 505. Hours later it still says it is updating with the yellow light on the 505 flashing away. Is there some way to start over on the installation? Thanks.

Reset the reader and try again.

[Tanzaku]

Originally Posted by seajewel

A couple people in a different thread are reporting that they see "less contrast" .. blacks are not as black and whites are not as white as before.
I would also really like to hear about any noticeable effects on battery life.

During the last 4 days I've been traveling to and from a conference and had lots of time to read using the new firmware and epub books from Feedbooks.

Funny, but all weekend I kept thinking, "The display looks like it has more contrast!" Not a reasonable observation, but for some reason it does seem easier to read. Hmmmm . . . better font rendition? Is the "paper base" whiter with epub than with a PDF?

2.) I felt there was a definite increase in battery life. Before the firmware upgrade, I typically used Custom PDFs from Feedbooks. A long weekend of heavy reading would drain the battery at least half way, sometimes more. The only thing I read this weekend was epub books and after four days of heavy reading the battery life was still reading "full." I was amazed.

3.) Has anyone else noticed the incredible decrease in file size? What was a 4mb PDF for a longish book is now 800k for the same text! I've now downloaded about 40 epub books from Feedbooks and all of them are about 20-25% the file size of the same book formatted as a PDF. That's the functional equivalent of increasing the memory of the Reader by a factor of 4-5 or so! I may stop using the SD card (which I understand drains even more battery life).

4.) Boot-up is faster. Navigation is faster. Waking up from sleep is really faster. Yay!

5.) The PDF reflow works (sort of) with choppy line endings (as others have mentioned). At least is does actually reflow and change the text size.

6.) The font size changes with epubs is excellent. (With only one slight glitch in the chapter titles of the Feedbooks epubs I've been reading -- at the Medium font size, the first line of the chapter titles seems to be flush right and sometimes cuts off some of the text.)

I'm so impressed with the epub format! I think I'll replace all my PDFs with the equivalent epub versions and not look back. Thanks, Sony. Thanks, Hadrien.

Brooks

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Tanzaku

Funny, but all weekend I kept thinking, "The display looks like it has more contrast!" Not a reasonable observation, but for some reason it does seem easier to read. Hmmmm . . . better font rendition? Is the "paper base" whiter with epub than with a PDF?

Actually with the older firmware, they kinda messed up the PDF support. Open those same PDFs again and you'll notice that the font is much more crisp and that the background is whiter. From now on, I'll use a smaller font size for my PDF files on the Sony.

I'll keep on using customized PDF: the files are larger and I can't change the font on the fly, but I get a very good looking justified text with hyphenation.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by Tanzaku

Funny, but all weekend I kept thinking, "The display looks like it has more contrast!" Not a reasonable observation, but for some reason it does seem easier to read. Hmmmm . . . better font rendition? Is the "paper base" whiter with epub than with a PDF?

It seems there was a mistake in initial implementation of PDF viewer for 505 which resulted a not completely white background and slightly fuzzy text. Apparently that is fixed in the new one.

[llasram]

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

Whoa! That EPUB document is amazing. Do you have any idea what tool it was produced with? It has the look of a paper produced with LaTeX, except in EPUB and with the math converted to SVG.

It also does raise one question: how are font vendors going to consider including non-free fonts in DRM-free EPUB documents? This book contains a copy of the Adobe font Minion Pro, which Adobe sells as "embedding: editable." From their web site's summary of their font licensing conditions, this allows the font to be embedded in documents the document-recipient can edit, does not allow document-recipient to install the font on their system for use in other documents.

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?

-Marshall

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by llasram

Whoa! That EPUB document is amazing. Do you have any idea what tool it was produced with? It has the look of a paper produced with LaTeX, except in EPUB and with the math converted to SVG.

My guess would be InDesign.

[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...

[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...

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.