Cool Reader on Android

[Westlyn]

I've recently become the proud owner of an android phone and the first app I installed is Cool Reader. I love it.

But I have a couple of feature requests that I'd love to see in Cool Readerto make my reading experience just a fraction better.

1) A force Left-Justify mode.

I really don't like full justification and hate the word splitting that occurs with the hyphenation enabled so what I'd like is an option to disable hyphenation and full justification to force the text to be Left justified. I realise not everyone would like this but a few have already asked for it in this forum. This option would obviously override any settings in the file or external CSS. At the very least CR3 should respect left justify if that is the layout specified in the EPUB.

2) An ability to open and read .LIT files. I know I can use Calibre to convert to EPUB but I have a large collection of .LITs (as a former winmobile user) and I'm not sure I want to add them to Calibre just to convert them to epub. Plus Calibre doesn't always make pretty EPUBs from .LITs in my experience.

And the icing on the cake for me.....

3) An ability to open and read non DRM .PDB or .PRC files. Again I know I can convert to EPUB but if Cool Reader supported .LIT, .PDB/PRC, I would have all my favourite book formats covered in one reader.

Thanks if any or all of these feature requests are do-able.

[ivanjt]

To convert your rather ancient LIT format books there is clit18 a command line tool that will convert encrypted LITs as well. Also the free ABC Amber lit converter - win only - will convert to several formats.

I don't see any need to add LIT to Cool Reader because you are about the last person with unconverted files ;-)

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Westlyn

I've recently become the proud owner of an android phone and the first app I installed is Cool Reader. I love it.

But I have a couple of feature requests that I'd love to see in Cool Readerto make my reading experience just a fraction better.

1) A force Left-Justify mode.

I really don't like full justification and hate the word splitting that occurs with the hyphenation enabled so what I'd like is an option to disable hyphenation and full justification to force the text to be Left justified. I realise not everyone would like this but a few have already asked for it in this forum. This option would obviously override any settings in the file or external CSS. At the very least CR3 should respect left justify if that is the layout specified in the EPUB.

2) An ability to open and read .LIT files. I know I can use Calibre to convert to EPUB but I have a large collection of .LITs (as a former winmobile user) and I'm not sure I want to add them to Calibre just to convert them to epub. Plus Calibre doesn't always make pretty EPUBs from .LITs in my experience.

And the icing on the cake for me.....

3) An ability to open and read non DRM .PDB or .PRC files. Again I know I can convert to EPUB but if Cool Reader supported .LIT, .PDB/PRC, I would have all my favourite book formats covered in one reader.

Thanks if any or all of these feature requests are do-able.

The option is already their you just need to make a css overide file and put it in .cr3 directory in your sdcard
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Cool_Reader

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

The option is already their you just need to make a css overide file and put it in .cr3 directory in your sdcard
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Cool_Reader

I'm afraid that I'm not a CSS guru so that really isn't much of an option for me and it's not hugely user friendly for non-technical users as a solution.

Freda Reader that I used on winmobile to read epubs has explicit options to force the type of justification.

I could be wrong but my impression is that CR3 forces full justification no matter what justification is set within the EPUB.

It would be nice to get the layout as specified in these situations rather than forced full justification. But equally even if the epub is created fully justified then I think it would be desirable to have an option to force left justification for those of us that would prefer that. Alternatively the current hyphenation dictionary for english needs significant improvement - to give an example from something I was reading last night:

the last word on a page was monitor, due to hyphenation and full justification this resulted in monit- as the last characters on one page and then the next page started 'or '. This really doesn't aid readability. With no justification/hyphenation monitor would simply have been the first complete word on the next page. The current hyphenation forced me to go back a page to reread the last line because 'or' seemed out of context.

Please don't misunderstand me I LIKE CR3 a lot but that isn't to say that it can't be improved.

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by ivanjt

To convert your rather ancient LIT format books there is clit18 a command line tool that will convert encrypted LITs as well. Also the free ABC Amber lit converter - win only - will convert to several formats.

I don't see any need to add LIT to Cool Reader because you are about the last person with unconverted files ;-)

I have, and have used, both of these tools but ABC leaves a lot to be desired in terms of the resulting formatting and CLIT18 creates a html file that I have to further process to create my preferred epubs.

If I need to fix/reformat a lit then these are the tools I use to get an editable format and epub.

But I have a bunch of files (from Baen for eg) that are just great as they are. I know in many cases I could download the same book in a different format but this doesn't seem like a good use of time/bandwidth when I already have the book......

Calibre does a fairly good job of conversion but requires that I import my collection and then convert.

Your comment about being the last person with LIT files seems a bit confrontational to me.

Why not make the same comment about the people who have posted about wanting .pdb or .prc readers or for .imp or .rb files - they too can just convert everything they have. Simple answer is most people would prefer to get a reader that can open everything. CR3 already supports a wide range of input formats - for me personally .lit and .pdb/.prc import would give me one reading tool that can open all my collection.

I have, for historical reasons ie I used a windows mobile smartphone, a large collection of lit files, I would much prefer to find a reader that can read them without conversion than spend my time converting, reformatting etc. The same goes for my smaller collection of .pdb files. At the end of the day I want to spend time reading not playing with converter tools. Don't get me wrong for some specific files I have made the effort to convert but I don't want to convert hundreds of books I already have.

Will I buy/acquire .lits in future? NO. But do I want to convert the large collection I have? Also no.

At the end of the day, I asked for a feature - if Buggins can deliver then great, if not then that's fine too. But please don't post in way that came across as insulting me because I have Lit files.

[eksor]

Originally Posted by Westlyn

I have, and have used, both of these tools but ABC leaves a lot to be desired in terms of the resulting formatting and CLIT18 creates a html file that I have to further process to create my preferred epubs.

If I need to fix/reformat a lit then these are the tools I use to get an editable format and epub.

But I have a bunch of files (from Baen for eg) that are just great as they are. I know in many cases I could download the same book in a different format but this doesn't seem like a good use of time/bandwidth when I already have the book......

Calibre does a fairly good job of conversion but requires that I import my collection and then convert.

Your comment about being the last person with LIT files seems a bit confrontational to me.

Why not make the same comment about the people who have posted about wanting .pdb or .prc readers or for .imp or .rb files - they too can just convert everything they have. Simple answer is most people would prefer to get a reader that can open everything. CR3 already supports a wide range of input formats - for me personally .lit and .pdb/.prc import would give me one reading tool that can open all my collection.

I have, for historical reasons ie I used a windows mobile smartphone, a large collection of lit files, I would much prefer to find a reader that can read them without conversion than spend my time converting, reformatting etc. The same goes for my smaller collection of .pdb files. At the end of the day I want to spend time reading not playing with converter tools. Don't get me wrong for some specific files I have made the effort to convert but I don't want to convert hundreds of books I already have.

Will I buy/acquire .lits in future? NO. But do I want to convert the large collection I have? Also no.

At the end of the day, I asked for a feature - if Buggins can deliver then great, if not then that's fine too. But please don't post in way that came across as insulting me because I have Lit files.

Hi:

You are not alone, I have two dictionaries in lit format. Microsoft reader and mobipocket reader search a definition eficiently. Also I'd like to comment that Microsoft reader for ppc it's awfull except for the anntotarion feature, included many years ago, one point for this.

Some lit are hard to convert to epub or other formats, a formatting issue (color fonts, symbols,...) and my fault, probably. I have tried all the tools mentioned above.

Pdb'ers and prc'ers are not alone too, I still download wikipedia articles (1 level of recursion) with sunrisexp and read them with vademecum.

Edited to include some non off-topic comments :-). I don't think the inclusion of lit format in the compatible coolreader features is a priority, in my opinion. The same for pdb or prc. I'll miss a lot those features but I understand that making freely available the coding work of the author is enough.

Peace and regards.

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by eksor

Hi:

Edited to include some non off-topic comments :-). I don't think the inclusion of lit format in the compatible coolreader features is a priority, in my opinion. The same for pdb or prc. I'll miss a lot those features but I understand that making freely available the coding work of the author is enough.

Peace and regards.

Agree that .LIT import may not be a high priority and it is entirely Buggins' right to prioritise how he sees fit - I made a feature request, I won't stop using CR3 if it isn't immediately implemented .

But there is no harm in asking...

There is open source code out there to open these ebook formats eg see Calibre. I can't judge how easy it would be to add that to CR3 but maybe Buggins could add the capability for very little effort - internally a lit file is just an HTML file for the content and a bunch of XML plus image files to capture metadata, covers etc. Once 'decompressed' from the .lit the existing HTML CR3 parser/display engine could probably be reused......

[AlexSno]

I am just loving it! and the multitude of formats it can offer is just amazing.

[ivanjt]

Hi Westlyn, I didn't intend to appear confrontational but my experience of a few years ago, where I spent over two months converting LIT files for an increasing number of people, made me think that it was a dead format. How people knew I was converting lit files is beyond me but they did and I got email requests from all over Europe.

As you say a LIT file is an encoded HTML, XML and images. The problem might not be the coding to decode the files but the hardware to do it on in reasonable time. Older Android hardware might not be up to it in the fly.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by ivanjt

The problem might not be the coding to decode the files but the hardware to do it on in reasonable time. Older Android hardware might not be up to it in the fly.

There also is not much of any reason to bloat the code of a reader to display an obsolete format, when there are plenty of format converters available to make the conversion before reading. That is probably especially true of the LIT format, as the few non Windows based readers that read the LIT format ( ie. Hanlin V series) seem to do LIT much more poorly than other formats.

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by ivanjt

Hi Westlyn, I didn't intend to appear confrontational but my experience of a few years ago, where I spent over two months converting LIT files for an increasing number of people, made me think that it was a dead format. How people knew I was converting lit files is beyond me but they did and I got email requests from all over Europe.

As you say a LIT file is an encoded HTML, XML and images. The problem might not be the coding to decode the files but the hardware to do it on in reasonable time. Older Android hardware might not be up to it in the fly.

OK sorry if I was too quick to challenge you. But I was trying to get across it isn't that I can't convert, its the fact that I'd like to avoid converting because I have a large collection and my experience of conversion is that the formatting is not 100% retained post conversion.

Fair point re speed but my HTC Prophet winmobile v5 is much older hardware and it can open .LIT just fine. I suspect most Android phones have faster processors than my old phone.

Plus CR3 can already read .zip and other compressed formats like epub so probably isn't going to be any slower decompressing the .LIT than any other already CR3 supported compressed format.

Bottom line it's a format that I'd like CR3 to support so that I can use one (and one only) ebook reader on my new android phone.

It if doesnt happen fine, but it would have saved me and others just soming to Android from WinMobile a whole bunch of time doing conversions.

There is surely no harm in asking and it's really up to Buggins to decide which requests he takes on.

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

There also is not much of any reason to bloat the code of a reader to display an obsolete format, when there are plenty of format converters available to make the conversion before reading. That is probably especially true of the LIT format, as the few non Windows based readers that read the LIT format ( ie. Hanlin V series) seem to do LIT much more poorly than other formats.

I may have misread the Calibre manual wrong, but I understood the preferred base book format they recommend for the Calibre library is .LIT because it can be converted to other formats, is compressed and contains multiple files for covers, metadata etc. so maybe it's not inherently a bad book format to support?

I also don't buy this bloat argument.

Adding a few 10s of Ks of format reading code to an existing application surely beats the bloat of having to install multiple multi-megabyte book readers to get all formats covered and has the added benefit that you don't have to learn to like/use a whole bunch of different user interfaces.

And the very fact that many people choose to install multiple readers so as to get .pdb or mobi support or PDF support or lit support etc suggests that there is not an appetite amongst many book reader software users, in general, to spend large amounts of time converting their legacy library.

You may be prepared to spend the time converting but I'd suggest there is a large population of winmobile phone and PDA users abandoning winmobile to move to Android who will have lit file collections that they just want to be able to continue reading.

And remember I also asked for .PDB/.PRC support because that file format predates winmobile and comes from the Palm kit that I had before winmobile.....

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by Westlyn

maybe it's not inherently a bad book format to support?

Can you point out even one case of successful LIT support outside the Windows camp? All I have ever seen is complaints about the LIT support provided by the Hanlin line of readers.

Originally Posted by Westlyn

And remember I also asked for .PDB/.PRC support because that file format predates winmobile and comes from the Palm kit that I had before winmobile.....

There are converters for Palm formats too. I started there myself, and have converted ALL of my old Palm format books to both FB2 and EPUB to future proof them.

[RainingLemur]

Without having to sift through the whole thread, is Cool Reader better than FBReader? I use FBReader, but would be willing to convert if there's better options available.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

Without having to sift through the whole thread, is Cool Reader better than FBReader? I use FBReader, but would be willing to convert if there's better options available.

The best way to find out is to try it yourself. Everyone has different tastes and their own opinions. FWIW, I like CR3 better than others that I have tried, but that is just me.