No. of Characters Displayed on PRS-505

[AnthonyHogan]

Hi All,

Now that the Sony PRS-505 is going to be available in the UK soon , I'm starting to get interested in E Readers.

I wonder if someone could tell me how many characters can be displayed in normal mode & landscape view?

Also it would be useful to get an idea of how many lines would be displayed.

I'm asking this, as I can see that the reader would be useful as a way for me to to carry around programming source code (I presently have lots of pieces of paper holding code snippets, and examples).

Nearly all the code I've got is based on 80 characters wide formatting. Would these display OK on the Sony reader?

Would I merely have to change the extensions for the files (*.vbs, *.bas, *.c) to add .txt on the end in order for them to be read by the PRS-505.

Many thanks in advance,

Anthony S Hogan

[MickeyC]

Hi AnthonyHogan. I've loaded code samples on my 505 by cutting and pasting the code into a Microsoft Word file then moving that file into my Sony Library and then onto my reader. I've only done that with VBA and SQL but I'd expect it'd work with most other code.

[AnthonyHogan]

Originally Posted by cassidym

Hi AnthonyHogan. I've loaded code samples on my 505 by cutting and pasting the code into a Microsoft Word file then moving that file into my Sony Library and then onto my reader. I've only done that with VBA and SQL but I'd expect it'd work with most other code.

Thanks for your reply. It's an interesting idea to convert into a word file.

Does indentation look ok when you do this?

Can you give me an idea if the 80 charaters/line might be readable?

I've got lots of code which is set out nicely for this screen size, and would look awful if reformatted.

I'm guessing that I'd have to be viewing in Landscape mode.
Looking at the pictures of the PRS-505, it looks like it displays about 40-50 characters when in portrait orientation...

Does the PRS-505 have a fixed size font?

Thanks,

Anthony.

[MickeyC]

Anthony, the only way I could get 80 characters per line was to reduce the code to font size eight on the word doc before I transferred it over to the Reader. Normal font size 12 gets you about 55 characters per line.

The 505 has three font sizes and, at the largest size the 80 characters (font size 8) wouldn't fit in an entire line but would at small and medium 505 font sizes.

Landscape mode gives you about the same results

This was my ugly VBA code but I expect it'd be the same for C++, html, Fortran (ooops, I'm giving away my age) or whatever

[AnthonyHogan]

Originally Posted by cassidym

only way I could get 80 characters per line was to reduce the code to font size eight on the word doc before I transferred it over to the Reader. Normal font size 12 gets you about 55 characters per line.

The 505 has three font sizes and, at the largest size the 80 characters (font size 8) wouldn't fit in an entire line but would at small and medium 505 font sizes.

Landscape mode gives you about the same results

Thanks for taking the time to reply to me.

I think that I'll be able to make this work OK (providing the small and medium fonts are readable) without messing about with the line formatting too much.

Now all I need to do is wait until they start selling the PRS-505 at play.com... :-)

Thanks very much for your help.

Regards,

Anthony