Cool Reader on Android

[Mastiff]

Originally Posted by Westlyn

And should I choose flac or APE or WMA lossless as my archival format? It all comes down to personal preference and for some people at least the best option may be to retain the original CD and convert only when necessary.

You should use the format that has most support. Simple as that. As for the original if you've got room for it, keep it. And use it as a base for conversion, instead of trying to force it into an iPod.

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by Mastiff

You should use the format that has most support. Simple as that. As for the original if you've got room for it, keep it. And use it as a base for conversion, instead of trying to force it into an iPod.

I think which format has has most support changes as someone comes up with a new format or new app or a new OS that ticks the boxes for people.

If, lets say, the latest winamp supported ape but not flac but winamp was just so superior that you had to use it - do you think flac would remain the most popular? How would you feel if there was technically no way you could convert from Flac to the new format (whatever that was?)

And I think a lot of less sophisticated people would tell you that MP3 is the most popular 'standard' not flac.

I'm old enough in the IT sense to have repeatedly fallen foul of the 'de facto' vs 'de jure' standard issue.

The problem with de facto standards like flac is that it's only a standard as long as it's the most popular (see my comment about mp3 too) and the fact that it is not a de jure standard means that a new variant of flac with subtle changes eg 96KHz vs 48KHz sampling, say, could render your collection unplayable or force another conversion round.

In the media streaming world this is actually happening today because the latest version of MKV introduces a header compression feature that prevents playback on devices that were 100% compliant with the earlier MKV format.

The company I work for is currently paying megabucks to convert engineering drawings from a popular document format - PDF, back into it's original format so that it can be edited/updated. All because someone thought making it into a standard PDF format and throwing away the original made sense.

This same sort of issue bedevils us with converting ebooks too. For some (repeated) conversion will be fine, for others, keeping fidelity with the original may be important. YMMV.

[Mastiff]

Well, I have about 30 years experience with IT so I'm no spring chicken myself either. But I still have all the files I have made since I started out (mostly audio and Word Perfect/Word files). As long as you think ahead you're OK. I have three complete 486DX pc's with DOS and Windows 311 and three complete Pentium computers with Windows 95 and NT in my brother's barn, and I have copies of all files three places: There, at home and in online backup. And when I need something I convert it in stages (early Word Perfect into later Word Perfect and then into Word) or look at them on the computers from that age. What I do not do is to expect anybody to support the older file formats in anything.

But I agree that throwing away the originals is stupid if you have room for them in the format they are in. I would never throw away my old files. But I don't work on the old systems if I don't have to. Which is exactly my point: Conversion is almost always possible, if you are willing to do the leg work. I'm guessing that you could have done quite a few conversions into a newer format or managed to find a format that would actually work in the time you have spent explaining your reasons here...

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by Mastiff

What I do not do is to expect anybody to support the older file formats in anything.

....I'm guessing that you could have done quite a few conversions into a newer format or managed to find a format that would actually work in the time you have spent explaining your reasons here...

I don't expect anyone to support older file formats - I do think its perfectly acceptable to ask that they might consider supporting them for reasons given.

As I repeatedly said above, I have converted some books and expect that I will convert some more in the future but my experience of conversion was that it wasn't 100% fidelity and I've seen at least one other poster confirm that. Its the equivalent of using the MP3 codec rather than the flac codec in terms of conversion results. If the book convertors were perfect then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

To answer your last comment, I would argue that if a developer can spend a couple of hours adding the code necessary to support a new format AND that they are willing to do so, then if that saves me and hundreds of other people hours of effort converting books then this seems like a good net result. I've devoted the time debating this because I think there many people like me who would benefit from increased format support in CoolReader.

No-one is saying the developer must do this but, just maybe, he would be willing to do it for the benefit of a lot of users of his application.

[nickdma]

On the first few pages there was talk of dropbox support. Someone even posted the link to the API.
Any plans to implement dropbox support? It would be awesome if Coolreader could sync read positions via dropbox so you could read across devices, similar to nook and kindle. No android app I'm aware of (other than fbreader with root) support this, especially for sideloaded books.

[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.

From the looks of it your last request is going to be their in the next release
http://crengine.git.sourceforge.net/...ine;a=shortlog

[molly38]

I have been trying to find a setting that will turn pages like a flick of a page turning.. can Cool Reader do this?

[Mastiff]

You mean visually? Options, middle choice (looks like a picture being cropped), "Page animation", "Paper book".

[eksor]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

From the looks of it your last request is going to be their in the next release
http://crengine.git.sourceforge.net/...ine;a=shortlog

Hi:

Excuse me, could you tell me if pdb/prc support means that cr will open output pdb files from sunrisexp or plucker?

Regards

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

From the looks of it your last request is going to be their in the next release
http://crengine.git.sourceforge.net/...ine;a=shortlog

If it works OK then that will allow me to uninstall eReader so definitely a win now that I'm tight on memspace. (I have Android 2.1 so no app2sd capability).

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Westlyn

If it works OK then that will allow me to uninstall eReader so definitely a win now that I'm tight on memspace. (I have Android 2.1 so no app2sd capability).

I don't have pdb files to try it you can get it from here I don't think it has been released to the market yet

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cren...r3/cr3-3.0.45/

[Westlyn]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

From the looks of it your last request is going to be their in the next release
http://crengine.git.sourceforge.net/...ine;a=shortlog

Just downloaded and installed the latest version. I only had one pdb and one prc available just now but both opened and displayed OK - not had chance to read far into the files but looks ok so far.

Have yet to compare the formatting in ereader or on my winmobile reader but it's probably good enough to read without needing to convert the files.

[boogaloo]

Originally Posted by Mastiff

Well, I have about 30 years experience with IT so I'm no spring chicken myself either. But I still have all the files I have made since I started out (mostly audio and Word Perfect/Word files). As long as you think ahead you're OK. I have three complete 486DX pc's with DOS and Windows 311 and three complete Pentium computers with Windows 95 and NT in my brother's barn, and I have copies of all files three places: There, at home and in online backup. And when I need something I convert it in stages (early Word Perfect into later Word Perfect and then into Word) or look at them on the computers from that age. What I do not do is to expect anybody to support the older file formats in anything.

You need to discover VMWare Player and create some virtual machines for DOS WFW3.11, 95, and NT (suppose you have 3.51 and 4)

[Mastiff]

Yeah, so I've been told... Actually I have used that for several years, but not for the old stuff. Two reasons (one of them I had actually forgotten, but rediscovered after a PM): Very hard to stuff 5 1/4" floppy discs into a VM! And two: It's fun to have. I think I have around 400-500 old 5 1/4" floppys in the archive, and I can find any floppy within a few seconds. And I usually need one of them maybe 2-3 times a year. Easier to have the computer park than to copy all those discs into newer formats. So I keep the old stuff to read them there.

[molly38]

Thank you very much